"Append & Play" service menu entry not working: invalid dbus call / no autostart of Amarok

[Daniel Hahler]

Binary package hint: amarok

/usr/share/kde4/services/ServiceMenus/amarok_append.desktop contains:
  [Desktop Action appendAndPlay]
  Name=Append & Play
  Icon=amarok
  Exec=qdbus org.kde.amarok /PlayerList playMedia %U

This fails however:
  $ qdbus org.kde.amarok /PlayerList playMedia /foo
  Interface '' not available in object /PlayerList at org.kde.amarok:
  org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownObject (No such object path '/PlayerList')

Instead, "/TrackList AddTrack" should get used here probably (but supports a single item only), and does not autostart Amarok [1].
The fix for now appears to be adding a script, which receives the list of items (via %U) and then calls "AddTrack" for each. Also, it could start Amarok, if it's not running and this cannot be fixed via [1].

[1] I've tried to let Amarok autostart by creating /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.kde.amarok.service:
[D-BUS Service]
Name=org.kde.amarok
Exec=/usr/bin/amarok
But without any luck:
  $ qdbus org.kde.amarok /TrackList AddTrack foo 0
  Service 'org.kde.amarok' does not exist.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Oct 22 21:04:25 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: amarok 2:2.2.0-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: amarok
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686
XsessionErrors: (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:4923): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

Hi there!

Thanks for reporting this bug! Your bug seems to be a problem with the KDE
program itself, and not with our KDE packages. While we appreciate your issue,
it would be better if it was tracked at https://bugs.kde.org, so that the KDE
developers can deal with this speedily and have direct communication with you
as the reporter for more effective debugging.

Thanks!

 status invalid

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

Harald, have you tried reproducing it?

Does "qdbus org.kde.amarok /PlayerList playMedia /foo" work for you?

And does Amarok fail to autostart for you, too - when called via dbus? Do you know how to fix this? (I've tried it via /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.kde.amarok.service)

[Gabriel Ambuehl (gabriel-ambuehl)]

This seems to be still happening in Kubuntu 10.4. Interestingly, Append to Playlist works just fine in both releases

[Gabriel Ambuehl (gabriel-ambuehl)]

Easy work around: simply opening the file in konqueror (using Amarok if something else is set as default for the file type) does act as Append and Play.

[Myriam Schweingruber (myriam)]

No wonder this doesn't work: the command you try to use is wrong, there is no such thing as PlayerList. Please see http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=229706#c1

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

Upstream patch: http://gitweb.kde.org/amarok.git/commit/f2ac5a2de7259fd143dca00d2ccbb133792918c8