AniDB O'Matic - Documentation: FAQ.5

Questions

What kind of hardware does AoM need?

A Pentium 2 or later should work fine along with a minimum of 512MB of RAM would be the minimum really. However please note that the initial dump parsing would be horrendously slow on this kind of hardware. A more reasonable setup is a semi recent 1.5GHz or faster CPU along with enough RAM to not make your computer constantly write to the HDD. ;) (Which is size of OS etc. in RAM + 400MB for AoM.)

When I first start AoM there's no data, my MyList is empty and no anime are shown.

AoM does not contain any data about AniDB when you first start it. It must connect to AniDB and download this information. This download is quite large and grows ever larger as AniDB grows. There will first be one large file then possibly several small ones. All must be downloaded and parsed before AoM is up to date.

You can see the current status of AoM in the Log frame.

My computer is dying! What are you doing to it after the big download?

The dump parsing can be quite heavy. AoM needs to decrypt then unpack the dump, parse it and insert the data into an encrypted database. The current progress and speed of this can be seen in the status bar and in the Log frame. While AoM does this at a low thread priority many systems can't handle the load on the HDD the database creation generates and the system will seem unresponsive.

Also, as the dump parsing is actually quite stressful, if your computer go all bonkers it might indicate faulty hardware too. (Has happened several times...)

When I hash files my computer experiences slowdowns, how can I fix this?

This is almost always HDD related, not CPU related, just like when parsing dump files. AoM runs it's hashing in low priority threads and most windows tasks will take precedence. However, this is not true for HDD access (pre-vista or with crap drivers).

If you're experiencing slowdowns please first don't hash stuff on your windows drive, swap disk, games drive or whichever other important drive that is being slow today. Second, if you have a single core / celeron / duron CPU, please realize it's slow and don't expect it to be all super duper super computer, anything which runs heavy stuff will probably tax it anyway. With semi-decent hardware it's quite possible to hash stuff while playing games without noticing anything, assuming you have enough RAM for the game that is. ;)

When I hash files the application sometimes locks up at 98-99.9%?

While many things in AoM does run in separate threads a lot of it doesn't. When hashing completes for a file the it's the main thread which updates the local data files, this sometimes takes a lot of time, especially if you're doing something else like moving files over a network in Vista or similar.

If you're using the known files copy to / move to features they can block hashing in some cases. (Ask Microsoft why, not me.)

Please note that some users have had application hangs on Linux when hashing with the Avdump integration enabled.

My MyList in AoM does not match my MyList on AniDB!

AoM only updates it's cache once every two hours, so if you add/update/remove items on AniDB it'll take up to two hours before AoM sees them. You can force it to update faster by restarting AoM.

However, if your MyList still does not match after two hours, please try starting AoM with the /fullupdate switch to force a full update of your cache. If the problem persists please contact me in the #aom channel on IRC. While I wish this was easy to fix it's a design mistake which will have to wait for the next major version.

AoM can not hash some of my files with international characters.

While most of AoM is Unicode enabled there are some rough parts in the hashing which does conversion between Unicode and the system code page. Bad design I know but that's how it is. While most files will open just fine a few rare ones might not, to increase the compatibility you can change the locale for AoM to a locale which includes the characters you have in the filename. (For example Japanese for files with Japanese characters.)

If you wish to hash the file to let AoM rename it, just renaming it to something like abc.avi and AoM will fine and rename it. This stuff will be fixed in the future.

I feel AoM uses too much RAM/CPU/HDD.

AoM was written when AniDB had less than 15000 files. When this is written AniDB has close to 400000 files, the original AoM was simply not designed for this huge amount of data. I have optimized the program somewhat so start-up time shouldn't be too bad any more but it'll still tax a low end system.

There is work being done on a new version of AoM which is coming along nicely but sadly the author now has a job and can't spend the same amount of time on it as when AoM.5 was made. Development has not been abandoned however.

I still feel AoM uses too much RAM/CPU/HDD and it's a major issue. Please fix this?

... Please note that I've made elite Visual Basic programs so I know what I'm talking about. ... blabla ...

I would like to encourage you to write your own AniDB TCP Client. Please take up this challenge, tell me how trivial and quick it'll be then disappear without a word after 1-6 months when you realize it's not trivial just like everyone else.

If system resources are a problem for you please either:

• Use an UDP Client if all you want to do is add files to your MyList. There's a huge amount of UDP Clients for AniDB. WebAOM is a great alternative with lots of features.
• Use a web browser if you feel it's memory footprint of 60MB or so is more reasonable.
• Visit #anidb on IRC and get to know Chii, our very own MyList tampering bot! (No pantsu shopping though, sorry.)
• Use lynx to browse AniDB instead.

Can you prevent AoM from connecting to AniDB automatically?

Yes, AoM has an off-line mode, however it has several limits. To use it enable the "Off-line mode" under the File menu.

Note that AoM can't make changes to it's own MyList data nor perform many other similar tasks without sending a request to AniDB. Thus all changes will be queued instead and sent once the off-line mode is turned off again. If the client is closed all queued changes will be lost.

Does AoM run on Linux? / Will there be a Linux version?

AoM does not and will not for the foreseeable future run on Linux without help in the form of Wine or similar. Please realize that AoM is written in Delphi (since I love it) which does currently not support Linux (since no one bought Kylix), maybe I'll one day rewrite AoM in another language but currently I see this as extremely unlikely unless the TCP API can be used without encryptions so I can clobber something together in mono / whatever and not care about performance / encryption / etc.

I have a question not answered in the FAQ, where can I get help?

There are multiple places where you can get help:

• The AniDB wiki: http://wiki.anidb.net/w/AOM (read only, kind of)
• The AniDB forum: http://forum.anidb.net/ (answers usually given within a day or two)
• The AoM IRC channel: irc://irc.synirc.net/aom (answers given if anyone is awake / present)
• Rar: The AniDB mod Rar has on multiple occasions exclaimed his delight about AoM having zero documentation whatsoever so I'm certain he's willing to help any lost souls! :P

Please be as detailed as possible when you ask for help and remember this isn't a 24 hour hotline, we'll help as soon as we're free / awake / have time. :) You don't pay for this, hence you get whatever service we're willing to provide for free. Remember, being a nice pleasant person usually gets you help faster.

Will AoM.6 ever be released?

Time will tell, sooner or later, time will tell.

Why does the release date of AoM.6 keep getting pushed back?

Well, there is no release date any more since I grew bored of breaking them. ;) AoM is a hobby project, I use it to test out new things and fool around in general. I.e. it's the classic programmer pet project that never gets done. The base of AoM.6 is on it's 3rd rewrite ATM (which is working much better than no 1 and 2). I still have every intention to release the program and to be honest I work more than ever on it now but still, AoM is AoM.5 at the moment, see AoM.6 as a distant dream that might happen.