I've been using Linux since before 2000, but I've hit burnout after running my own business based on my own software.  I need time to focus on my more creative pursuits and just need to spend less time doing program and admin work, so I've switched to a Mac.

I've installed the Amarok binary on my iMac and, as I expected and as is stated, in the current version you cannot create a music collection on the Mac.

Is there a way around this?  How can I import my collection from my old Linux box?  (I'd have to change the path to the collection, but otherwise, it's the same, since it's on an NFS volume.)

And once I get a collection created, will I be able to rescan it or will it pick up new files automatically like it does on Linux?

Thanks for any help on this!

Who says you can't create a collection on OS X? I'm re-building mine as I type this (intel macbook).

My music is also on NFS shares, and it's working fine. Please make sure you're using the latest OS X version available, currently 2.0, available here: http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Download:Mac ... nt_version

Note that while it says 'beta', this is only because the OS X packages are not considered as a 'final' release. The actual version equivalent is 2.0.0.

If there are particular issues you're running into, please post a bit more info!

That's the version I have.  When I first ran it, several days ago (in other words, I don't remember exactly what happened, but do remember the problem I had), I tried a number of times to have it build a collection, but it would not.

This time, when I get to the Collections tab in the preferences, ALL the directories in the tree listing are ghosted and checked and I can't uncheck or change that at all.

Ah, you might have to persistently mount your share on a permanent directory, rather than relying on automount.
The directory name can change, especially if you have more than one share mounted at various times. Use "directory utility" (found in the Utilities folder), and click "Mounts" to add an nfs share using the format nfs://server/share and a handy local dir - I tend to use /mnt/ because I'm used to it!

You probably won't need any extra options checked.

I was using /etc/fstab to do this, but it caused problems in another app, so I hunted round and found this utility was already there, and did what I needed.

It's not just the NFS mount.  Just in case, I went ahead and re-installed Amarok to see what was going on and if it would work well the 2nd time around.  After installing, I rebooted, then ran Amarok.

In the bottom of the window there is a status bar that says, "Scanning music," but there's no change in it at all.  I clicked the "Abort" button next to it, in case it was scanning, since I had not specified the directory for it to start scanning.  Then I went to the preferences and tried to pick the directory, but *every* directory was ghosted, not just the ones on NFS shares.  Every directory possible was ghosted out and they all had a checkmark in the box by them to select them.

I also found that once I closed the main window, I could not find any way to open it again.

It also crashed on me a lot.

I clicked the Files tab and went to an album and tried loading all the files (or tracks).  I selected all of them, but it only loaded one into the playlist.  I finally tried it by dragging and dropping and that put all the files into the playlist.  I did get some funky behavior, but nothing I could repeat (it seemed like it would play the same track and "next" and "prev" just brought it back to the same track, but I can't be sure since now I can't make it happen again).

At least, at this point, I have a good program to play my flac files on Mac with, but it would be a HUGE help if I could make work like I'm used to it working on Linux.

I'm still getting used to Mac, so I'm not sure yet how to do any debugging, but if there's something I can do that will help in debugging or troubleshooting, I'm glad to help.

I forgot to include the crash issue.

When it starts, as I said, I see the "Scanning music" notice at the bottom, but there is never a change in the progress bar before that label.  Before that bar is the "Abort" button.  Whenever I click on Abort, Amarok crashes.

So when I start it for the first time, does it automatically scan the entire hard drive?  If so, can I change a setting so it doesn't do that?  Is the reason the directories are ghosted in Prefs/Collection because it's scanning the drives?

Thanks!

Odd that it's crashing - if you get the crash dialogue, you could copy/paste the info from the crash report page to a bug report on http://bugs.kde.org to see if anyone else can help.

A couple of things to try though - check for (and kill) rogue amarokcollectionscanner processes; also deleting the amarok preferences (/Users//Library/Preferences/KDE4/share/apps/amarok/ and /Users//Library/Preferences/KDE4/share/config/amarok*) and restarting Amarok. You might have a corrupt database.

Off the top of my head, it shouldn't start building a collection when you first launch, until you select your music volumes, although /Users//Music seems to be always included as a directory.

There were multiple copies of the scan program running after quitting Amarok, so I killed them.  Then I deleted the files specified and ran Amarok.  It came right up to the preferences window and let me select what folder(s) to scan, which it's doing now.  (I do wish my iMac had some kind of disk status light, but on the other hand, the reason I changed to Mac was so I could just do m writing and ignore most of the computer stuff.)

I am thrilled to have Amarok working on my iMac.  There aren't many programs I wanted to transfer from Linux, but Amarok was one.  iTunes just doesn't cut it (and there's that pesky flac file issue -- why does Apple hate flac?).

I'll post tomorrow when I know it's done it's job.

Thank you for the help!

Hope it goes ok - sounds like you've run into some of the issues I did! The collection scanner doesn't die if Amarok crashes while the collection is being built, so subsequent launches start another copy. I'm not sure whether that's been fixed in later source, and it'll be a while before there's a package for a newer version, so I guess we have to work around it for now.
Another thing you might find useful is to disable showing the splash screen when amarok is launched - if there happens to be a warning dialogue for any reason on launch it's almost impossible to clear it when the splash shows, as it steals focus then gets hidden.

Okay, hoped to be in bed by now, but it worked just fine and collected the new data and set it up.  I'm getting used to the different UI in Amarok.

The only problem I have now is that if I close the main window, there's no way to re-open it unless I quit and restart it.

Now if somehow, magically, one feature request were taken care of, I'd consider Amarok the perfect music program and could easily get my ballroom dance teacher (and a few others locally) to start using it in her studio (which would be a highly visible use, since everyone sees the sound system there).  But they say speed control in Amarok will never happen!

Odd, I'm pretty sure "show in system tray" is on by default. If it's not, enabling it will put an icon on your menu bar, allowing some control. Amarok should also show up in the dock, allowing it to be re-shown when you hide it with command-H.

dangle_wtf wrote:Odd, I'm pretty sure "show in system tray" is on by default. If it's not, enabling it will put an icon on your menu bar, allowing some control. Amarok should also show up in the dock, allowing it to be re-shown when you hide it with command-H.

I can get the icon to show up in my dock with no problem.  Then I can start it and the main window comes up.  From there, if I close it by clicking on the close button, there's no way to get it back without restarting Amarok.  If I shrink it, it goes to a new icon on the dock that will open it back up.  If I hide it, with the key shortcut, it'll hide then show up again when I unhide it with the keyboard shortcut.  If I pick Hide from the menu, it hides it, then as soon as I click on the icon it comes up again.

But now I have a new weirdness.  All my collection except one album, which was on my desktop while I was experimenting with flac files and have now deleted, is gone!  So I'll scan again and see what happens.

Note there are two places mentioned! Have you checked in your amarok preferences to see whether "show in system tray" is checked? If it is, then look at your mac menu bar, along the top of the screen. On my system, toggling this setting makes a small amarok icon show up next to the other tray icons (airport, volume, battery, etc). This is the one I meant gives you control of amarok, like the tray icon in linux, and will allow you to restore the player window if you close it using the "close" button.

re collection scan, did you make your shares persistent? I had to restart my macbook before they worked properly.

Okay.  Got it.  I'm still getting used to the Mac and think of the dock as the system tray -- also had a note stuck to the top and the corner came down over the Amorak icon up there (like I said, I'm still getting used to little things like that on the Mac).

It all seems okay now.  I've moved the NFS volumes from my old workstation to my DNS/mail/print/everything server, so I've had to make adjustments and when rsync is done rebuilding the RAID, I'll have to reboot both the server and the iMac to get everything back in sync as far as things like NFS mounts.

One thing I'm surprised about is how quickly a Mac reboots.

Thanks for all the help on this!  I got as far as verifying iTunes did not read FLAC files and gave up on using it for anything else.  (I did play with it a bit, but saw nothing to make me want to use it.)  I don't know why Apple doesn't support FLAC, but here's an example of how, if the did, they might have me using iTunes and spending more money at their store.

One last (I hope!) question: if I download KDE from http://mac.kde.org/?id=download, which appears to include Amarok, will that replace the version of Amarok I've just installed?  Is that essentially the same binary as what I'm using?  There are a few other KDE apps I'd like to use, such as KATE -- at least until I find equivalents on the Mac.  (But even when others are replaced, Amarok stays!)