I'm using Amarok v1.4.4.  I've been using it now for a couple
of years, across several re-installs of Linux, etc.

The one thing I've never figured out is a clean way to get
Amarok to ZERO OUT it's knowledge of my 'collection'
of MP3 files, so that I can then do a subsequent
'build collection' from scratch.

[I'm assuming that of course, I'd lose all associated data,
such as my playlists, etc, but that's FINE!]

I realize that such a thing would be 'unsupported', but that too
is cool.  I'm looking for something along the lines of
going into the file-system structure under my account,
and just deleting (certain?) Amarok-maintained files.
(But, if there's another approach, I'm open.)

TIA...

Dave

deleting ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/collection.db should do the trick
(from memory, so the path might be slightly off )

Well, I FOUND the 'collection.db' file you mentioned.
And, with Amarok shut-down, I deleted it.
(And, I checked...it DID get deleted from that directory.)

But, alas, it has NO EFFECT on Amarok at all.  When I bring up
Amarok still shows my whole collection as it saw it (glitches and all)
as it saw it before.

I am using the (default) SQL Lite for the database.

So, maybe that 'SHOULD do the trick', but it doesn't.  SIGH.

Well, MAYBE what's going on is that Amarok, upon re-launching,
it AUTOMATICALLY re-scanning and rebuilding my collection
(without prompting me).  But, even THAT doesn't quite fit the facts,
because I see an EXISTING list (hmm...stale date from my playlist
of the whole collection).  So, maybe, in ADDITION to deleting that
DB, I also need to clean out some other files (containing playlists)
and more specifically, to tell Amarok that I'm back at some earlier
state?!?

Any other ideas?

Ok, after much hacking around, here's the answer I found:

Simply locate and delete the file in your tree named: 'amarokrc'

(That has the behavior I really wanted:  It then FORGETS that you
ever did a 'build collection'.  I then choose the 'skip' option of using the
wizard that it asks you about.  Then, you can go into settings, specify
a new location of sub-directory(s) that you want it to look in, and
when you choose 're-scan collection, it will build you a whole new view of your collection.)

The nice 'side-effect' of doing it this way is that it does NOT
forget any album-cover images, etc, etc.

SOLVED!

Cheers...

Dave

Hey cookdav
Thanks a lot for the hack. For months I've been strugling with playlist issues with new versions of amarok. Everything was nice and well until the 1.2 version. Then came 1.3 and 1.4 along with all kinds of "bugs" or issues that I could not handle anymore. The old playlist was shown boldly and amarok refused to see new entries added. I was fed up because even Jukbox does a much better job than this bloated 1.4.4 version. JUKBOX can scan the whole collection of mp3s in seconds as compared with long minutes of wait in amarok...just to see that same old playlist and same number of songs everytime. ****!

So I did your hack. First deleted collection.db
then deleted amarokrc and followed your advice.

Its now 5 minutes since I see the message "BUilding Collection Database: Please be patient while amarok scans your music collection...". Boy! Jkbox did that in less than one minute with about 4500 mp3s. Yet I see that not all the music albums are detected, but Jukbox did. What the heck! where is supposed to be the superiority of amarok?

Oh no! My new playlist shows every album repeated three times now. What would be the problem? Maybe that **** SQLlite should be deleted as well? Any  ideas on which SQLite file amarok keeps all data so I can delet it and start clean from zero? Thanks.

update: Amarok displays 4251 songs while JUK shows 4662. I wonder if the difference is in that some albums have their metadata tag broken, so it seems that amarok does not count them but show them in the whole collection list anyway? No complain here but this behaviour of amarok should be corrected IMHO.

Maxei

guess juk is probably more suited to your needs, then.

Looks like I bumped on some sensitive soul. It was not my intention to hurt people.

I want to leave all feelings outside of this and keep a logic discussion, and try to find out what is wrong with amarok or if I'm doing things wrong, what are these things wrong..

For example, I just added 30 songs yesterday after my post. Today I opened Amarok, and still found the same number of songs as before. So I click on Tools, then on Rescan Collection, and the newest songs do not show up at all, I search for their names...nothing.

So I open Juk and see that the new songs have been added already!

So I conclude that something is wrong in Amarok, the settings perhaps? Who can tell? Can you help me to find out?

Thanks

Are you fully sure that your tags are OK? I haven't used juk for three or four years, and not planning to use it anymore, but the Amarok should show your albums. Corrupted files? See them with EasyTAG and check their tags. Hre's my suggestion.

Thanks for the suggestion Enric. Yes I have a few albums with corrupted tags but they are shown (only the song titles) anyway in both Amarok and Juk. The albums that Amarok does not show have their tags in fine shape, and I say "fine" because they are all shown with Juk. So that is not likely the problem about missing albums in Amarok.

It seems that I will need to repeat the hack described in this thread every time I add new songs/albums?!

By the way, thanks also for the Easytag. I haven't used it before. I fiddled a little bit with Ex Falso, but I havent understood this program yet ( ;[
Is it easy as the name suggests?

To be honest, you really might want to consider upgrading Amarok... 1.4.4 is seriously out of date now, and there have been so many bug fixes it's hard to even know if your problem is a bug subsequently fixed, or something wrong with your tags, or even unsupported file types.