Hello all.

I used to use Amarok 1.4 a few years ago in Xubuntu. I stopped using it for a while - can't remember why! - but decided to give Amarok 2 when it came out. Unfortunately, there was no way I could get Amarok to generate a music collection. I've just installed Amarok again (different computer, updated OS) and I still have precisely the same problem. Here's what I've been doing.

I am using Ubuntu 10.04 (LTS, Lucid Lynx) and have installed Amarok through the repos. In Amarok I've gone Settings -> Configure Amarok -> Collection and selected my music collection. It is on an external hard drive. I clicked apply but nothing happened. Amarok says my music collection consists of nothing, yet there are close to 10k songs on this external hard drive.

I have also tried copying over some of the songs onto the laptop's internal drive and pointing Amarok to that new directory instead. Unfortunately, I get the same thing. In the lower right hand corner a blue bar fills suggesting it is scanning the directory but nothing is added to the "Local Collection" category.

I know that Amarok can play these music files. I right-clciked on a music file and selected Amarok as the program to play it and it worked. Perfectly. And I have also just found an option to browse the files on my computer. I can happily navigate to music containing directories and play the music files therein but this is inadequate. Other music players, e.g. RhythmBox can happily add all my music without fuss to its collection, but as RhythmBox blows I don't really want to use that - I would like to use Amarok. So, does anyone know why Amarok is not adding my music files to its local collection?

Please make sure you have the necessary MySQL packages installed, without a database, Amarok can't build a collection. There was a packaging error for non-KDE users in Ubuntu 10.04, so upgrading to a more recent Amarok version might be a good idea, see also http://www.kubuntu.org/news/amarok-232-backports-ppa for more information.

Thanks Mamarok! Adding the ppa backport did the trick. You're a star!

hi,

i have the same problem but did not understand your reply. i am using amarok 2.4.3, kde 4.7

thanks for any reply.

i have the same problem and thanks to Mamarok's reply,i have solved it,thankx!

i tried reinstalling with all the optional extras and still nothing happens when i add my collection - though i'm not actually sure what i want to happen.

just to make things clearer - i can add media to a playlist but i assume that there is a command that i can't do [having tried every command available] which will load a collection without a huge lag in booting amarok.


thanks.

Make sure you have the collection location set correctly in settings > configure Amarok > collection.

This will then scan your collection, which can be accessed from the local media section. This is in the left-hand pane by default, and if you're currently looking at a file manager or something else in that pane, click the home icon in the very top left of that pane (not the one attached to the file manager, if that's open, but right in the corner of that pane) to go to the media sources menu, and then click on Local Music.

hi,

it was not clear if i should install the earlier 2.3.2 version of amarok so that i could backport it like mamorak suggested. i tried this after uninstalling 2.4.2 but even-though it was listed under alt f2 i could not run the program and it did not appear in software centre. so i reinstalled amarok through the software centre but then even though it appeared there as installed it did not run through the alt f2 method anyway. i uninstalled and installed again but unfortunately nothing changed.

i think i have tried what you described in the last post but am not sure. i remember finding the directory of music on my external hard drive but not seeing any music through the media sources window.


i might try a new music application but if not i'll try to get a backtrace for when i attempt to run amarok now. i might add that when i do i get no splash screen and running pidof gives me no results.

Installing older versions of Amarok is never going to help. The advice given in the first post was for a user using Ubuntu 10.04, the LTS version, not a current version. Remove any PPAs you added trying to downgrade, reinstall Amarok from the main repositories, and delete ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok and ~/.kde/share/config/amarok* (which are Amarok's data folder and conf files, respectively). Then try starting Amarok again.