Migrate from eMule to aMule

Migrate from eMule to aMule

Here you'll find some tips about the migration of configuration & download files from eMule (read Windows) to aMule (read Linux).

1. Brief history

EDonkey born some years ago and its great protocol takes itself into the Olympo of file sharing programs.

Some coders, unsatisfied by that client, starts developing a new one, called eMule. Its source code is open, so anyone (able...) can read it and modify it, and so was. Many client versions came up with patch and new code. Fastly, the EDonkey guys starts arguing against eMule, blaming that the p2p network goes constantly slower due to the large number of eMule clients. After an initial study phase, eMule developers decided to create a new p2p network leaving EDonkey net alone. It was a success.

The Linux community starts developing a Linux client able to connect to eMule network: xMule is born. A multi p2p network program, MLdonkey added the support to eMule network; even another client came out, lmule. But the winner has yet to come...

xMule got few coders but a project starts rumping up: try to port the changes from eMule to a Linux client: aMule was born. This fastly became the de facto standard enkey client for Linux.

EDonkey is now almost dead, and wants even to be payed for a professional version of its client...

1.1. Migration

Searching around the web you will find a lot of people saying the migration is easy: do not believe them! ;) Or better, it's easy because temporary file format is compatible, but if we are talking about configurations files, then the things change.

Below follow my notes about the migration from eMule to aMule of all my downloads.

2. Configuration Files

There are two important parts in eMule: the configuration files and temp/shared files. Let's start with configuration files.

In eMule, these files are store under config directory. In aMule, instead, the configuration files are store under ~/.aMule directory. So the easy step is copy the files from the configuration directory of eMule to the one of aMule. Good, so let's look further...

2.1. Configuration Files Automatically Imported

Many files are read and correctly imported into aMule; from them we can find:

• clients.met, stores the other clients credits. When you download some from a client, you'll store in this file how much have you get, so you could promote that client when it will be in your upload queue;
• known.met, it's where were stored the downloaded files, the ones printed in green when searched again (I really don't know what contains the known2.met eMule files...);
• server.met, it contains the saved eMule servers;
• ipfilter.dat ipfilter_static.dat, which contain the IP denied to connect/share files with you;
• emfriends.met, it contains the friends list;
• criptkey.dat and preferences.dat: they uniquely identify you for other clients, so you can keep credits to their side;
• other files: key_index.dat, load_index.dat, nodes.dat, preferencesKad.dat, shareddir.dat src_index.dat; I don't know what's written inside, but I think some are Kademlia related (but they were written running aMule, so I suppose they are used...).

These were the good news, the bad ones have still to come...

2.2. Configuration Files NOT Automatically Imported

Here start the "war bulletin":

• configuration file: eMule uses preferences.ini but aMule uses amule.conf;
• categories: they are the tabs separating files in the download list; in eMule they are written in the file Category.ini but aMule writes them down into amule.conf;
• some files in eMule config directory seems not to be used by aMule: AC_BootstrapIPs.dat, AC_IPFilterUpdateURLs.dat, AC_SearchStrings.dat, AC_ServerMetURLs.dat, adresses.dat, fileinfo.ini, k_index.dat, preferencesK.dat, s_index.dat, staticservers.dat, statistics.ini and webservices.dat. I don't know their function under eMule and maybe some of the above files come from old eMule installations and know their are not used anymore even by eMule.

Further you'll find how I've imported the missing configurations.

3. Importing Missing Configurations

We have just said that some configurations are not automatically loaded into aMule from eMule; try to find out what we can do to import those data into aMule.

3.1. Importing Categories

This command line should help you generate the categories information from eMule Category.ini file (put the commando on the same line):

$ grep -E "^\[Cat|^Title|^Incoming|^Comment|^Color|^a4afPriority" Category.ini | sed 1,6d | sed 's/#/\\#/g' | sed 's/&/\\&/g' | sed 's/a4afPriority/Priority/g'

this escapes even # and & characters, because I've got in my Category.ini file; maybe there will be other chars to be escaped that have to included in the script (let me know, in this case). The script deletes the first 6 rows, that is the first category, since it's a dummy one: that category is the first one in eMule, which contains all/uncategorized/etc files; aMule has its "all" tab and do not need this entry. Cut&paste the script result into amule.conf.

Under [General] of amule.conf, you have to define a variable count (or change its value if already defined) with value:

$ echo `grep -c "^\[Cat" Category.ini` -1 | bc

this variable holds the number of tabs to display: note that even if you have imported 10 categories, but leave count=1, only one category will be displayed.

At the end, the categories configuration in amule.conf should look like:

[General]
Count=...
[Cat\#1]
Title=...
Incoming=...
Comment=...
Color=...
Priority=...
[Cat\#2]
Title=...
Incoming=...
Comment=
Color=...
Priority=...
...

I don't know if importing the categories before importing the temp files, they will be classified as in eMule; I've imported temp files before the categories, but I don't think they will be placed in the tabs as they were in eMule (if someone can confirm this...).

3.2. Importing Statistics

eMule statistics are available in two distinct files: preferences.ini and statistics.ini. I found statistics in the latter file more up-to-date than the ones in the former file.

Looking into statistics.ini you'll find that all statistics are under [Statistics] tag. Even inside amule.conf there exists this tag, so the logic conclusion is to copy from statistics.ini to amule.conf. In this last file, there are two keys, MaxClientVersions and DesktopMode, that should not be deleted (I don't know what they mean, so leave them where they are...).

Sadly, very few values get imported: seems only downloaded and uploaded bytes. Maybe it's not the right place where I've written those keys, or maybe aMule uses other ones. Only using aMule will reveal it...

3.4. Other configurations

Configurations not yet imported are the program strictly ones. They are, for example, about the TCP and UDP port to use, Incoming and Temp directories, network limits and so on.

Since they are very client-specific and important for its correct behavior, I suggest to redefine them by the Preferences aMule form. Maybe it would be long and boring, but done it once, they will last forever, almost...

If you're a real brave guy, you can try to import directly some keys from preferences.ini to amule.conf, but then do not argue it won't work anymore...

4. Temporary & Sharing Files

Temporary files are compatible between eMule and aMule, so you only have to set the Temp dir inside aMule (and let it rehash all files) to have them newly available to download.

For sharing files we have very few things to do: since they are already downloaded, the only thing to do is say to aMule where they are and waiting for rehashing.

5. At the end...

Those are the steps I've followed to migrate from eMule to aMule; something maybe wrong, and something maybe could be do better, so let me know any correction/ideas/addition come to your mind.