FileBot will regularly activate and check your license during normal operation. However, in some badly designed automated setups, if FileBot application data and caches are not persistent and lost before or after each run, then some users may inadvertently end up activating their license hundreds of times per day, and thus get themselves auto-banned.
DON'T PANIC! You will not get auto-banned out of the blue. You will receive multiple warning emails over the course of several weeks with detailed license activation statistics so that you can check and fix your automated setup at your own pace.


FileBot will typically check your license 1-2 times per month. If you see multiple activations per week in your local log file, then FileBot running in the given environment is somehow not able to remember previous checks, and will thus check again as if it's the first time around, every single time.


If your license has been Banned due to abuse then please thoroughly investigate and fix the issue on your end, and then contact support via the #license-issues channel so that we can reinstate your license.

General Advice

• Do not power off your computer while FileBot is running. Please close FileBot gracefully via the X window button before turning off your computer.
• Do not call shutdown /f while FileBot is running. Please close FileBot gracefully via PowerShell beforehand.
• Do not habitually kill the FileBot process via Task Manager ➔ Processes ➔ End task. Please close FileBot gracefully via the X window button.
• Do not habitually launch FileBot by double-clicking your *.psm license file. Please open FileBot normally via the Start menu.
• Do not enable the If the running task does not end when requested, force it to stop option if you are using Windows Task Scheduler.

Tips & Tricks for not getting yourself auto-banned next time

1.
DO NOT activate your license before running FileBot each and every time:
2.
DO NOT clear the cache before running FileBot each and every time:
3.
DO NOT delete the FileBot application data folder between runs: If you use docker then you must ensure that the FileBot application data folder is mapped to a persistent volume, otherwise FileBot will run for the first time every time.


4.
DO NOT forcibly kill the filebot process: DO NOT use a cgroup memory limit. Consider using -XX:ActiveProcessorCount=1 and -Xmx512m to limit resource usage. That being said, FileBot may not be suitable for shared virtualized environments where the host OS randomly terminates processes that exceed allotted resource limits without notification or warning.


5.
DO monitor the console output (and not just the --log-file) for crash logs to make sure that 3rd party native libraries (e.g. libmediainfo) aren't crashing the filebot process: If you are using a Debian-based Linux distribution, please use apt to install filebot (and not the *.deb file) to ensure that all dependencies are binary-compatible with your specific Linux system.


6.
DO ensure that there's plenty of free disk space for the FileBot application data folder: FileBot will fail in strange and unexpected ways if it can't reliably read and write application data files.


7.
DO install FileBot on your local system drive. If you run multiple instances of FileBot Portable from the same network drive or synced folder at the same time, then FileBot may not be able to reliably read / write / lock application data files and fail in strange and unexpected ways.

FileBot Portable allows you to run FileBot from anywhere you want, but it also gives you the responsibility to ensure that FileBot can reliably read and write application data files.


8.
DO use --log-file so you can figure out what's going on later: Since FileBot requires a file lock on the log file, this will conveniently ensure that only one filebot instance is running at a time, while other filebot instances spawned in the meanwhile have to wait for that lock. This will ensure optimal cache behaviour.


9.
DO check your --log-file once in a while to see if everything is in order: Activate License MUST NOT show up in your log for each and every filebot call. You will see this message once or twice per month during normal usage. If you see this message hundreds of times per day, then you really need to fix your setup.


The FileBot log file does not include system console output. Please read Shell Script Debugging for Beginners on how to collect complete console output including crash dumps and device errors. (NOTE: extremely useful for debugging strange issues)


The Killed status message is printed to console output by the OS after filebot has been killed, and will thus appear only in the console output but not in the filebot log file:
If you need help, please use the #license-issues channel. Reading How to Request Help first would be much appreciated.