My work system automounts lots of samba file systems on demand via autofs/cifs, which are later let go after a short timeout, unless some program holds on to something under the mount point. These mount show up as /<top_level_mount>/<server>/<share>.

Amarok seems to see those mount points, lists them in the local files pushing the real music entries way down in the scroll list (I can have lots of mount points at certain points, via some cron jobs), and worse, it seems my system thus never lets go of those mount points as they never timeout.

Is there a way to tell amarok not to look in certain mountain points? I disabled the smb plugin, BTW

Well, simply don't put any of these mount points in the collection and make sure you have no default playlist containing files in one of these mount points. Amarok by default only checks the collection folders and the URLs of the files in the playlist that is active on Amarok start.
FWIW: mount points are handled in the KDE system settings -> Removable devices where you can set the automount rules.

Mamarok wrote:Well, simply don't put any of these mount points in the collection and make sure you have no default playlist containing files in one of these mount points. Amarok by default only checks the collection folders and the URLs of the files in the playlist that is active on Amarok start.
FWIW: mount points are handled in the KDE system settings -> Removable devices where you can set the automount rules.

I didn't put any mount points in the collection, they just starting showing up all by themselves under "Local files" with no action by myself.
My collection is all under /home/<user>/music. I don't have any playlist, not sure if Amarok set any defaults for me, probably not.
I don't run KDE or GNOME. From GDM I go into xinit/xsession and run FVWM. I manage automount rules myself for /nfs and /smb on demand, to get to other linux or windows machines.
The /smb mountpoints started hanging around shortly after I updated to Fedora 17 and now have amarok-2.5.0-9.fc17.x86_64 on it, not sure if it came with F17 or updated after, and the automount rules are the same I've been running for several years.
Clementine on the same system doesn't exhibit this problem.

Amarok just shows all external devices that are mounted when it runs, as easy as that. Unless you mark these mount points to be scanned Amarok will just ignore them and that shouldn't influence Amarok's performance.

I suggest you look at your automount settings, as Amarok doesn't mount anything (except for the devices that hold the collection) nor does it keep these devices busy unless those are marked to be checked (this is done by right-clicking on the device and changing the options there).

Have you tried checking using lsof, or strace to see which application is holding files open - and what the names of those files are.

My automount configuration and the scripts I run from cron haven't changed.
I have no playlists, my amarok configuration lists only one directory /home/<user>/music.
Prior to updating to Fedora 17 and the amarok that comes with it, the auto mount directories under /smb were not listed in amarok under Local Files, and automount would let go of the mounts after the default timeout.
Now, a bit after some /smb/<machine>/<share> is accessed by my machine, the share shows up in amarok under Local files as <share> on <machine> (give or take a few slashes and colons) and a second line claims no music files, or something of the sort. Lsof shows only the automount process as holding the top level share point, no files open underneath. However automount never lets go of those mount points as long as amarok is open.
If I quit amarok, all those mount points timeout and disappear, like there is some periodic polling of those directories I don't catch with lsof.
Not really pointing at amarok, it could be all the kde daemons that start when I start amarok (I don't run KDE), but certainly starting/stoping amarok, without changing any configuration is the culprit here.