Amarok suddenly started updating my collection every 10-30 seconds...

I was using Amarok that shipped with Ubuntu Gutsy(1.4.8?) so I thought perhaps it was just that version. I built 1.4.9 from source, it has the same behavior. I can stop this behavior by unchecking watch folders, but that is a feature I like. That way i dont maunually have to update my collection. Has anyone else noticed this behavior?


thanks
Steve

Are you downloading new music into a watched folder?
If so, try downloading to a folder outside your collection and moving the music when the download is complete.

Music is always downloaded outside of watched folders, then moved into collection folder...

computer can be doing nothing, not even playing music but amarok still updates every 30 secs.

I am experiencing the same problem: I am also using Ubuntu Gutsy and Amarok wants to update the collection every few seconds. Apart from high disk usage this also leads to another problem: the CPU load caused by mysql grows up to 98%! This is reproduceable: as soon as I deselected the option "watch collection" everything runs normal. When I tell amarok to watch the collection mysql jams the system.

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Disable "Watch folders for changes" in the collection settings. Instead, click "Update Collection" manually after you have added to music.

Turning off this option was my first response and solved the problem for me. But I wonder if this is normal and desired behaviour of amarok? Is it supposed to check the folders every 30 seconds?

Well, it is, and it isn't.
It's normal for Amarok to detect changes to watched folders which trigger a collection update. The fact that it's doing it at such a frequency suggests that *something* on your system is touching a watched folder on a regular basis - I suspect something that's part of ubuntu's background "stuff".
I'd have a look with something like sarge to see what the culprit could be.

It it possible that the file system's journaling is the one to blame? I'm using ext3 on that partition and if I remember correctly, the journal is committed every 5 seconds. Could it be that Amarok's mistakes the writing of the journal as a chance to the folder containing the music collection?

Not really. Amarok uses the folder mtime for the check, which should not be affected by filesystem journaling.

Of course your right about mtime. It was an idea that crossed my mind, because I there is nothing else that accesses the collection or the partition containing the collection.

Besides: if Amarok uses mtime stamp, it would have to be some program that alters mtime every few seconds. I don't know such a program and I wouldn't install it willingly either.