Greetings all,

It seems to be a topic that is rampant on these forums and has no concrete answer from any of the moderators or anyone who has a solution (correct me if I'm wrong). I would like to use Amarok as my general purpose music app (but now am leaning toward xmms since it actually does everything and then some with so many special purpose plugins written for it), but I can never get it to spit out the information for a music CD whenever I wanna play one. (It only shows track 1, track 2, etc...).

I am using Amarok 1.4.7 and have the following settings under Audio CD Configuration:

Default Device: /dev/cdrom
CDDB Server: freedb.freedb.org  Port: 8880 (I have also tried ports 888 and 80 with no avail)
CDDB Cache dir: ~/.xine/cddbcache    ( ~/ = my home directory)

I know freedb.freedb.org works with port 80 using HTTP, as I have checked it with XMMS and with KsCD and both fetch the CD information beautifully (The CDDB protocol mirror suggests Port 8880 for freedb.freedb.org and that is the default port in Amarok, so I'm thinking it uses the CDDB protocol to get the information and not HTTP... How can we get it to use HTTP? Just change to port 80? Doesn't solve my problem anyway).

I've tried numerous mirror sites with port 80 and I still can't get the CD track names to display.

So anyone have any suggestions? I've seen verrrry old posts with similar problems and no one responds, so hopefully a moderator will take a look here and answer some of these questions (and hopefully answer if this is a long-standing bug in Amarok or what). It's a nice music player, but this simple problem (which really should be solved) is really making it difficult for me to like it as my main player of choice.

Thanks!

+1

Same problem here. 

Can someone respond to this matter?  Any suggestions welcome, pointers in the right directions, etc.  I can't tell you how many threads I've read through (mostly old) and no solution.  Surely we're not the only ones with this issue?  It plays cds fine and will grab the track and album info if there's already a file in the cache folder, but refuses to do remote lookup.  I've tried http port 80 and cddb 8880, etc. , used cddb retrieval config gui tool, checked the .xine config file, tried different cache dirs (~/.cddb and ~/.xine/cddbcache)...nothing makes a diff.  K3b fetches cd info fine, so go figure. 

might be a xinelib problem - can you try using the xine player and report whether you have the same problem?

dangle_wtf wrote:might be a xinelib problem - can you try using the xine player and report whether you have the same problem?

well, xine player fetches cddb info perfectly.  Hmm...Again, go figure.

This is a real mystery.  Wish we could get to the bottom of it. 

Well I tried reading a cd again after giving up a week or so ago, and it works! Deposited the fetched cddb info in ~/.xine/cddbcache file like it should.  Second CD went ok too, but this time the drive went into its usual elaborate and noisy spin up routine--maybe even minor scratches make a difference, dunno. 

The only thing I can think of that may be causing a problem is that as soon as I use another program, like Audacious or abcde, it ties up the cddbcache folder or something, or in some way prevents amarok from accessing the network.  But it seems to work fine straight after bootup at least.

Back to fiddling with it to figure this out completely.

I just spend 90 minutes or so wrestling with this same issue...

Turns out MOBLOCK was preventing access to the CDDB site!    ("D-oh!!")



[edit]    Here's the pertinent line from my Moblock log:

Sat Apr  5 17:50:13| Marked block OUT: Magix AG,hits: 2,DST: 195.214.216.38

(However, my reward for all that problem-solving effort?  I'm getting returns like "Help Me Honda" and "In the Bach of My Mind" for my "The Beach Boys Today!" album!  LOL!)