Originally posted by thedogsbollock
[...] the annoying error message when I open the application, or click the server.met update button which says "Failed to load server.met file '/Users/bern/Library/Application Support/aMule/server.met.download', unknown format encountered."
The fact that the I get the occasional addition to the list of 300 odd servers suggests to me that this is some sort of bug, rather than a problem with my set-up but I would appreciate any advice or suggestions?
The problem is that the URL you are using to download the server.met points to a web server which is no longer providing a server.met. One of the things we changed in 2.1.1 is the default server.met URL.
The reason you see the message at startup is that you have configured aMule to automatically update the server.met at every startup. Check your preferences. You need to change that URL manually. The reason you get additions to the list of servers even without successfully downloading a server.met is that clients and servers to which you connect will tell you about other servers that they know about. Unfortunately, with the advent of fake servers on the network, this probably does more harm than good. If I were you, I'd turn off these features in preferences and download a clean server.met.
Also I have another query. For the first time I've encountered a file which I am currently downloading (and receiving at a decent enough rate) but where the bar showing the status of the download has remained red in colour rather than turning to blue (and then green) as has always been the case in the past.
Since it's almost a couple of gig big, I am worried I might spend weeks downloading it only to find it is dud or something?
My guess is that it is a fake. Probably some client claims to provide just the last chunk, which may be too thin to actually show up in the progress bar. Then it sends corrupt data over and over again.
Whilst I am at it, I also wondered about the priority of my downloads. With aMule's priority set to "auto" is there any good reason to change the file's download status to "high"? Will this have any impact whatsoever on how quickly the file is downloaded?
Finally are there any other ways I can tweak my preferences or setting to try and increase the speed of my downloads?
These questions can be answered by the wiki.
I notice that when I open aMule occasionally I receive a "low-ID" however this can often be cured merely by quitting and restarting.
This might be caused by network delays or aMule being slow (if your computer is very busy doing other things). You don't need to quit and restart aMule. You should just be able to press the Disconnect button and then Connect again. Or, double-click a server to connect to that specific server.
The firewall is switched off in my "Sharing" settings and I have adjusted the Firewall rules on my wireless router so that it allows any TCP connection from ports 1 to 65,535 and any UDP connection from ports between the same range. Is there anything else I can do to ameliorate aMule's effectiveness?
You should probably be more careful. You've effectively completely disabled your firewall. That's not particularly safe, even with most services shut down by default in Mac OS X.
