I'm trying to get Amarok to recognise my Karma. The packages in the kubuntu repositories don't have karma support so I have to build it myself - a daunting task for a noob.

I found these intructions on  amarok.kde.org. This is a little light on information so I followed the instructions here, i.e.

1. I tested the kernel and have the proper kernel support.
2. I built the omfs driver
3. I built and installed libkarma

I then tried to build Amarok: I downloaded the 1.4.9.1 tarball and followed the instructions on this amarok.kde.org page.

I tried the command

sudo ./configure --prefix=`kde-config --prefix` --with-libkarma

The first time it did not recognise that Ruby was installed ("The Ruby programming language is not installed). I reinstalled Ruby. The next time it did not recognise Xine ("No suitable multimedia framework was detected"). I reinstalled amarok-xine and ran ./configure again. I still got the xine error message.

I decided to forge ahead and used

make
make install

Amarok installed but it says it is Amarok 1.4.8 - the same as before I started. How is this possible, from the 1.4.9.1 tarball? More importantly, when configuring a new media device in Amarok, it doesn't have the Rio Karma option. If I try to autodetect the device I get an error message suggesting I run 'dcop kded mediamanager fullList'. If I do that, the Karma does not show up as an extra hard drive.

Thanks in advance.

possibly the existing version of Amarok you had is installed in a different path which takes precedence over the one you compiled and installed.
Try uninstalling 1.4.8.

Thank you! I had done that the last time, but did it again and it worked. I now have 1.4.9.1 built and working, although I am still having trouble getting Amarok talking to the Rio Karma - it crashes when I try to configure Amarok. I have started a new thread here.