amarok issues

[Bart Cerneels]

On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 13:44, András Csányi <sayusi.ando at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> This is my first letter to this list. I cant say that I'm a big Amarok
> user. I like the services of the Amarok, especially the lyrics part.
> I have few issues and I would like to get some advises, suggestions.

Thanks, we are happy you like it.

>
> First issue:
> I have a directory (300G) filled with music (~22.000 files) and it's
> growing. I set up this directory in Amarok as collection directory and
> I set up mysql database connection as well. This directory have
> already scanned few times by Amarok but the database is empty. Strange
> the database is already created by amarok but isn't populated. What
> should I do to achieve a populated and managed database by Amarok?

I'm assuming you are using an external mysql database. Something
probably is misconfigured or broken, the best option is to switch to
the regular embedded mysql database which is the default. If you want
to hunt down external mysql issues run amarok in debug mode like this:
amarok --debug --nofork

If the database is not set up correctly the scanner can not work.

>
> Second issue:
> This directory is added to the playlist. I accepted that to adding to
> the playlist it took almost 10 minutes but hard to accept that every
> start of Amarok takes almost 10 minutes. As I saw at every start this
> directory is scanned. Why? This directory already managed by Amarok.

Well first of: the playlist is not intended to contain your entire
collection, just the track you want to play at that moment. We
optimized for the most common use cases.
With that many tracks, even ignoring the processor time required to
load them all, there are physical limits (hard drive read speed, etc)
that will still make loading 22.000 tracks significantly slower then
instantaneous.

But we are currently changing the way the playlist is restored on
start-up so the loading will happen a without blocking the UI. It
might still take minutes before all tracks are playable though.

>
> My questions:
> - What is the advantages set up collection directory? To adding music
> to playlist is faster or Amarok starts faster?

Yes, massively. It's still not recommended to load your entire
collection in the playlist though.

> - What is the advantages of using mysql to store the collection data?

A database is required so we don't need to keep everything in memory
and be able to query easily. The embedded mysqle database is a lot
faster then other alternatives such as sqlite.
External MySQL has little advantage, especially when bumping into
problems like yours. But a lot of people want to avoid running
multiple databases and so opt to use an already running and installed
mysql server.

Bart