Keep a safe list of servers
Description
Most ed2k users know that the network is plenty of bogus servers which throw useless (but harmful) data to clients in order to corrupt their downloads.
Also, many users set up aMule to automatically add servers into its list under some circumstances, since the wrong belief that "the more servers in the list, the better" is very extended.
Sadly, fake servers are very popular, which makes a big chance you get unwillingly connected to one of them if they, for any reason, get to your server list.
This article pretends to guide on how to avoid this.
Procedure
Follow this steps in this exact order:
Go to Preferences -> Server and disable the "Update serverlist when connecting to a server" and "Update server list when a client connect" options.
Make sure you have a good list of servers: Start by removing all the servers in your server list. If you are absolutely sure that none of the servers you have in your server list is a fake server, you may keep that list.
Then download a valid server.met file. aMule's default configuration proposes http://www.gruk.org/server.met.gz as it is a very well known and verified list of valid servers. That should be fine. You can use too the peerates.net servers list by using this url http://peerates.net/servers.php (see http://edk.peerates.net website to get information about online eDonkey servers) To add that list to your aMule, just put it on the Networks -> eD2k top text bar and click the "blue play button" http://forum.amule.org/images/bunfirlite/lastpost.gif by that bar (see this article for more details).
Note: The above step will not remove the servers you already had in your server list, but simply add the servers in the downloaded list.
Now you will have a list of valid non-fake servers.
Optional
If you want to be up to date with the servers, in Preferences -> Server, enable the option "Autoupdate serverlist at startup", then click the "list" button and add the url you used above.
Additional notes
If for some reason you someday find out you have no servers in the server list, just click the "blue play button" http://forum.amule.org/images/bunfirlite/lastpost.gif again to get the latest list of known good servers.
You may want to take a look at this article to discover other tricks about maintaining safe server lists.
Note
Since the Razorback servers (the real ones, meaning Razorback 2 on IP 195.245.244.243 and port 4661, and Razorback 2.1 on IP 195.245.244.244 and port 3000) are down since february, 21st 2006, also its services are not longer available atm. This also means the serverlist on gruk.org. Unfortunately, this site has been shutdown and it is not certain that they will return. You can get a serverlist from gruk.org as well, following the link on the bottom of the site, but it is possible, that you receive an empty list atm. So it is recommended not to use it for automatically updating it on startup.
You can get a serverlist there:
- Gruk's serverlist in html is here: http://gruk.org/list.php
- Shortypower's serverlist in html is here: http://shortypower.org
- and you can get a verified servers list here: http://www.peerates.net
- ServerList for eMule & MlDonkey/aMule is here: http://www.server-list.info/
Some additional articles:
