coacharnold wrote:Great that this is devolving into a programming discusiion cause yes thats entirely important .... but my original post was on the simplicity if MASS storage device ..... I should be able to plug in a thumb drive and have it work ..... it shouldn't matter

You are making it sound like it is a simple problem to fix. It isn't. It is only going to get fixed if people can figure out where, exactly, the problem lies and alter the amarok code to correct. Both involve "programming discussions". Amarok is, after all, a program.

bcooksley wrote:Unfortunately only an Amarok developer will know how to adjust the code to detect it properly.

Hmmm... Guess I'll have to step up and figure it out for myself. I'll have to upgrade to a more recent OS. I can't currently compile the sources because I lack recent versions of a bunch of stuff. Dang! My Fedora 11 install is only a year old and I was hoping to keep it limping along for a while longer. My wife thinks down time for an OS install is play time.

Thanks for the advice.

Paul

Help

I have A USB device mounted on the computer is a USB device Mounted on the computer ...... Explain the difference, unless you have a real question about HAL .... but since you asked so nicely

Sansa e260, sansa clip, htc hero ....... all mass storage devices .... thanx .... if you had listened instead of getting your feathers in an uproar ... you'd have known that wasn't my point .....

When I load Amarok .... i can not direct it to a generic device easily.... ther is nothing intuitive in the UI that would suggest how to make that happen ....

I have an x 86 computer running feora.... tring to connect to a Sansa mass storage device ... ( E260 and clip ... both running rockbox. ... I also have a HTC hero android device ...... AL MOUNTING AS MAss storage device ....

I would like to be able to intuituvely make this happen .

I am aware of several "Hacks" to make it work. But it might be a problem that it doesn't appear clearly in the UI ...

Thanks

I've asked this question nicely several times over the last 2 years of amarok 2 and it had been taken as insulting and gone into arguments ... please... I love the software and think its beautiful, do not take this as a critique of all the hard work thats been done ....... I just can't use it because I need device support... and hacks won't do ....

Is Device support integrated into hal?
if so why?
is there a way to disable it and have it manually connect to a device? Plugin? script?

TheBlackCat wrote:

coacharnold wrote:Great that this is devolving into a programming discusiion cause yes thats entirely important .... but my original post was on the simplicity if MASS storage device ..... I should be able to plug in a thumb drive and have it work ..... it shouldn't matter

You are making it sound like it is a simple problem to fix. It isn't. It is only going to get fixed if people can figure out where, exactly, the problem lies and alter the amarok code to correct. Both involve "programming discussions". Amarok is, after all, a program.

I don't think it's an Amarok bug. Amarok calls Solid::StorageAccess::isAccessible() on each device reported to it by HAL. The isAccessible() method is defined in kdelibs. It essentially just return HAL's "volume.is_mounted" property for the device. On my Fedora 11 system, this property is false even though HAL (or somebody) automounted the iPod. If I manually unmount and re-mount the device, Amarok suddenly sees it. Testing on my wife's Fedora 13 laptop shows that Amarok sees the iPod fine shortly after it is plugged in.

So, the bug is likely in HAL, or somewhere nearby, and it is fixed in a version more recent than 0.5.12. My fix is to bite the bullet and upgrade to F13. Coacharnold, what's your OS version? Or, more interesting, what's the version on your hal package?

Paul

coacharnold wrote:I have an x 86 computer running feora.... tring to connect to a Sansa mass storage device ... ( E260 and clip ... both running rockbox. ... I also have a HTC hero android device ...... AL MOUNTING AS MAss storage device

I would like to know a little more about your setup as I have a slightly different setup here and my MP3 player is mounting fine and I can see it in Amarok.

First of all - your computer - processor, RAM
Second - You use Fedora - what release?
What KDE version are you using?

In one of your other posts you mention that you are running Amarok in a virtual machine. Is this still the case? If so, what kind of VM are you using and what is the version number?

I am running Kubuntu 10.04 with KDE 4.4.5 and Amarok 2.3.0.

My MP3 player is a Creative Zen and I did not have to do anything special to make it appear. No hacks and no workarounds.

Mind you - I do have to click on it in Dolphin or do something else to mount it as I do not have automounting of USB drives.

In Amarok, I can right-click on a song and choose "Copy to collection" and choose the MP3 player. For me, right-clicking is the first thing I try in any situation like that. Maybe not intuitive for everyone, but it works for me

The very nature of Linux - multiple choices - can also be a backdraw. Things can work in one distribution and not in another one. In that case, you might want to also try to get the people responsible for the distribution to comment on your problem.

coacharnold wrote:Is Device support integrated into hal?

Amarok uses hal (through a KDE layer called "Solid") to discover the status of devices.

if so why?

Because it's better to get it right once than to have each application implement its own hot-plug device support.

is there a way to disable it and have it manually connect to a device? Plugin? script?

I don't think this is possible without changing the code. It currently queries hal to discover which devices are available and which might have media collections on them.

But, there is no reason to abandon hal. It appears to me as if at least some cases of iPods and other devices not being seen by Amarok are caused by hal not correctly updating the is_mounted property for the device when it automounts. This is the case on my Fedora 11 setup. If I manually unmount /media/IPOD and then manually mount the device on /mnt, hal sets the is_mounted property and Amarok magically sees the device. On my wife's Fedora 13 setup, Amarok sees the iPod as soon as it is plugged in. Both machines are running Amarok 2.3.1.

I and at least one other have asked you to reveal the version of Fedora you've got installed in your VM. Please?

Also, when your device is plugged in, what is the value of the volume.is_mounted property for the device in the output of the lshal command? If it's "false", you need a newer version of hal and all your yelling at the Amarok developers has been mis-directed. If it's "true" then run Amarok with the -d flag and stdout redirected to a file. (I ran it like this: "amarok -d >amarok.txt 2>&1". Not certain if redirection of stderr was necessary. Did it out of habit.) Look to see what Amarok said about your device when it queried hal about it.

Paul

using 10, but with 1.4 ... but quick ubuntu amarok 2.3 testbuild in VBOX .... current edition with USB support ... ... thanks ... long day ....

ps using Atunes as of my board warning ... think I've finally given up on Amarok