Dear all,

I am having a problem with my amarok on kubuntu 14.04 (Version 2.8.0
Using KDE 4.13.0).

I have a large collection (30k tracks) on an external usb drive. Each time I plug the drive in, amarok starts doing something which takes a few minutes. During this time:

1) amarok is completely unresponsive
2) the UI displays a "Counting..." below the collection header, with the track number increasing until, eventually, it reaches the total tracks in the collections

Incidentally, this "Counting..." is also done for the local collection on the non-removable disk. It just happens to be a lot faster because I only have a few tracks there. So this is not related to the external USB support, but it looks more like a general feature. I gather this must be some sort of "lightweight" collection rescan, since a full rescan takes a lot more time (also, in this phase there is no progress bar at the bottom, like there is for a full rescan). Still, it is annoying that I have to wait every time I plug/unplug my external device.

So, just for my education: what is exactly amarok doing, and why?
And for my sanity: how can I ask it not to do it anymore?

Thanks for your help,

Andrea.

It is scanning the collection. How is the external USB disk integrated in Amarok? Hopefully not as a media player, it should only be added as part of the collection. And you really should plug that USB disk in before Amarok starts, it would be certainly much faster.

Hi Mamarok,

thanks for your reply. Concerning the USB drive, I tried two different solutions:

1) use the external USB drive plugin
2) add the mountpoint of the external drive to the local collection

The result is the same: "Counting..." going on for quite a while and amarok unresponsive (the latter looks to me like a bug in itself).

Do you happen to know how can I force amarok to stop scanning? Really, I promise I won't change the collection behind its back

I shall add that:

1) the order of amarok launch and USB insertion does not appear to have any effect
2) I already have the "Watch folders for changes" unselected

Cheers,

Andrea.

Well, once it is added to the collection it should then not rescan completely the next time. Of course a first scan of 30k files takes a while.

The unresponsiveness of the GUI is a bug, though, and already solved for the next version.

Oh, and btw, if you added is as a media device, you need to remove the hidden file .is_audio_player from the disk, else it will indeed take up a lot of time every time you plug it in.