My scans keep failing due to an exceeded archive file number, how do I determine the number of files in an archive and then configure my process settings accordingly?
This article applies to all MetaDefender Core V4 and V5 releases deployed on Windows or Linux systems.
MetaDefender Core’s built-in Archive Extraction Engine supports a wide range of archive, archive-like, and encrypted file formats, many of which can contain hundreds or even thousands of child-files that will need to be extracted for processing.
Our supported file types include the following.
| Pure archive formats | Zip, 7z, JAR, RAR, RAR5, TAR, ISO, CAB, ARJ, LHA, LZH, RPM, DEB, LZMA, WIM, DMG, XAR, MSM, SFX, XZ, VDI, VHD, CPIO, HFS, APK, GZ, MSI, TAZ, TGZ, TBZ, BZ2, VIB, AR, ALZ, TSE, TSEC, TSEZ, ACE, PST, OST, OFT, IPA, JMOD, MSIX, APPX, EGG, DLL, and PGP (with password only) |
| Self-extracting archive formats | which are created by both 7zip, WinRAR, PKZIP and IExpress |
| Microsoft Office Documents | (e.g. DOCX files) which are detected as archive files by default |
| Email/Calendar files | (e.g. EML, MSG and ICS) which are extracted to scan header, body, attachments |
| Encrypted files | 7z, Zip, RAR, PDF, MS Word (DOC, DOCX, DOCM, DOTX and DOTM) / Excel (XLS, XLSX, XLSM, XLSB, XLTM) / Powerpoint (PPT, PPTX, PPTM, PPSM, POTX and POTM) which can be decrypted by the archive module with a given password. |
To avoid seeing your scans fail due to Exceeded Archive File Number and other archive related issues, users attempting to scan large volume archives, large image files and other archive-like formats should adjust their settings accordingly.
Unfortunately, there’s no quick-fix in terms of estimating the number of child-files or folders within a given archive, so it is recommended that you test and adjust your settings against a file that is a fair, general representation of the larger files you’re expecting to scan.
To access these settings, follow the instructions below:
- Go to your MetaDefender Core Management Console>Workflow Management>Workflows, to select your chosen workflow, as illustrated in the screenshot below.
- Inside your chosen workflow, click on the Archive tab, as shown below, where you can configure a range of archive-related rules.
- Now, adjust the following values to a level that lets your test-file scan to completion. Then allow some room for error:
- Max recursion level
- Max number of files extracted
- Max total size of extracted files
- Archive analysis timeout
So, if your test archive is allowed through at 4500, set the levels to 5000, etc.
- Finally, click Save to apply your settings before processing your files as needed.
By adjusting this set of rules on any workflow in which you’re expecting a throughput of large volume archive, image and archive-like files, you can minimize or even eliminate the number of scans that fail due to archive-related factors, including exceeded archive file numbers.
If you have followed the instructions above but are still Experiencing Failed Scans Due To Exceeded Archive Numbers, please follow these instructions on auto$, before creating a support case or chatting with our support engineer.