Amarok is running some type of background copying process that flashes a dialog box on the screen and is eating up system resources. What is it doing and how do I disable it?

version of Amarok? is this a new install? an upgrade? did something in your collection change?

what exactly does the box say? if it flashes too quickly start Amarok in a terminal with the command amarok --debug there will be a lot of output, hopefully something that explains the background copying and the dialog box

If this is what I think it is, it's a known bug with older versions of Amarok and external now playing type widgets (the issue is a bug in transferring cover art via MPRIS).

Update Amarok to the latest version, or remove any such items (e.g. the Plasma now playing widget, modified volume controls that show now playing, etc).

Here's the output from "amarok -v"

Qt: 4.7.2
KDE Development Platform: 4.6.2 (4.6.2)
Amarok: 2.4.0

I was running the plasma now playing widget. Removing the widget stopped the dialog boxes from flashing up. The dialog boxes pop up and vanish too quickly to read the entire statement and its scaled too small so most of lines are truncated, but it appears that its copying something to /tmp/.(can't read). There's a fair amount output from "amarok -debug" and I'm not sure exactly what I should be looking for. Removing the widget worked so for now thats good enough for me.

Thanks for the help.

you should upgrade Amarok, 2.4.3 is the current version and maybe available in the backports repo