Hello all,

First and foremost, I want to thank everyone in the community for such a great tool... I *love* Amarok, and ever since I discovered it in 1.4, it's been my favorite music player, hands down. I've dabbled with some other players over the years, but nothing's compared. So - kudos to the team for a job well done!

On to my question:
For years, I've been running Linux at my job, where I used Amarok to listen to music during the day. Recently, I switched positions into an exclusively Microsoft shop. It only took 3 days before I craved music again, so with some trepidation I installed the Windows version of Amarok this morning (specifically, the Nitrostemp binary installer).

So far, so good. Seems to work fine, and I've had nary an error message. Seems to be working well.

Naturally, I'd like to import my library from my old Linux machine. I have several years' worth of tagging, rating, and listening history I'd (really really) hate to lose. Is there any way for me to drop in my old library locally, so that I can pick up where I left off?

Under Linux, I was using the file-based library - not MySQL. I made sure to back up the ~/.kde directory, so I've got access to all the old files (I think). Is there any way I can drop those files somewhere locally to use the library again? How about any other way to import the old data and map it to the new file locations? Any ideas?


Also - I recognize that the Windows install is *not* supported, so I know I'm out in open water here... still, I was hoping someone in the community might have some suggestions or insight as to how I might tackle this. Thanks in advance!

-jubba

It's good to hear you're enjoying your music with Amarok.

To clarify, the "file-based library" is MySQL. So MySQL dumps can be used to export and import your database.

Oh. Erm. Ahem. I didn't realize. Was there a once-upon-a-time when it was a sqlite DB or something? Maybe I was thinking about some other product.

I'll have to give an export / import a try. Thanks for clarifying.

-jubba

In the pre-Amarok 2.0 days, the default was sqlite, and mysql and post-gres were both supported as well. Supporting all three was a nightmare, so mysql was the answer for 2.x on, since both embedded and external are available.

For a little bit of closure (and my own documentation), I got everything working just fine by dropping the MySQL database files (.MYD, .MYI and .frm) into <Amarok install dir>\data\amarok, replacing the existing files.

I also needed to install MySQL on Windows, start up a local server (changing the datadir to point at <Amarok install dir>\data). Then I needed to update the paths of the files and directories in the DB to match the new location. This involved a pretty straightforward script like

Code: Select all

UPDATE amarok.images set path = REPLACE(path, '\\home\\user\\Music\\', 'C:\\Users\\winUser\\Music\\music\\') WHERE id > 0;
UPDATE amarok.images SET path = REPLACE(path, '/', '\\') WHERE id > 0;


A similar script was run on amarok.tracks, amarok.directories, and amarok.lyrics. The useless "WHERE id > 0" clause was because I was lazy in the MySQL workbench and didn't turn off the "safe query" config in MySQL workbench that stops UPDATEs and DELETEs without a WHERE involving the PK.


I'm hoping there's a better way - I'd prefer to just maintain relative paths in the future, so that my collection DB is more portable when I transport it from the Windows machine back to Linux at home. For now, though, it works well enough, and I'm satisfied. Thanks for the insights.