Strange and a tad scarry bug/trojan/mishap

[blow45]

Had to reinstall my os x on my air via the pen drive (went very smoothly, was very impressed btw) after a weird thing happened, see if anyone can shed some light.

All of a sudden with no apparent intervention or tweaking by me, my hd starts showing low space, I keep deleting and deleting (and getting system force shutdown prompts) and at one point I realise that as soon as I start up os x, and do a get info on the hd it starts incrementally decreasing the stated available space...quite strange, and I did quite a few restarts, it's not as if it might have been some background process....

I can post the console logs too.

 

[GGJstudios]

Had to reinstall my os x on my air via the pen drive (went very smoothly, was very impressed btw) after a weird thing happened, see if anyone can shed some light.

All of a sudden with no apparent intervention or tweaking by me, my hd starts showing low space, I keep deleting and deleting (and getting system force shutdown prompts) and at one point I realise that as soon as I start up os x, and do a get info on the hd it starts incrementally decreasing the stated available space...quite strange, and I did quite a few restarts, it's not as if it might have been some background process....

I can post the console logs too.

First, it's not a virus or trojan. There has never been a virus in the wild that affects Mac OS X since it was released 10 years ago. The handful of trojans that exist can be easily avoided with some education and common sense and care in what software you install:

Mac Virus/Malware Info​

Launch Activity Monitor and look at "All Processes" rather than "My Processes" to see what might be using system resources. Also, use Disk Inventory X or Grand Perspective to see what is consuming space on the hard drive.

 

[blow45]

don't put words in my mouth, I never said virus, I said trojan, I am well aware how secure os x is.

I looked at all the apparent stuff, I am well versed with the os, this is something else.

 

[GGJstudios]

don't put words in my mouth, I never said virus, I said trojan, I am well aware how secure os x is.

I looked at all the apparent stuff, I am well versed with the os, this is something else.

Either one. This isn't the normal behavior of any malware known to run on Mac OS X. It's likely a runaway log file or app. If you looked at how the disk space is being used, then you should know what the cause is.

 

[blow45]

I ll try posting the console logs.

 

[GGJstudios]

I ll try posting the console logs.

Have you tried either of the apps I recommended, to find what is consuming drive space?

 

[blow45]

like I said I reinstalled, and it was something constantly eating up drive, wish I had thought of these then, do they track drive space live?

 

[GGJstudios]

like I said I reinstalled, and it was something constantly eating up drive, wish I had thought of these then, do they track drive space live?

Yes. They'll give you an inventory of what are the largest files on the disk. Check out their sites for more details and screen captures. They're quite effective in situations like yours.