amarok: "Watch folders for changes" doesn't work - no automatic collection updates

[gero]

In the Amarok settings, "Watch folders for changes" is activated but the collection is not automatically updated when files are added to the collection folders.

This is Kubuntu Dapper Flight 5, KDE 3.5.1, Amarok 1.3.8

[gero (gerod)]

Upon deactivating "Watch folders for changes" and restarting Amarok (why is this necessary?) the "Update" button becomes clickable. Clicking it, however, has no effect. The only way to include new files in the collection is to rescan the entire collection

[Francois-Denis Gonthier (fdgonthier)]

I remember that problem happened when I used Amarok 1.3.8, but I decided to upgrade to 1.4.0b2 instead of investigating. The problem seemed exactly like the reporter has described.

[Kenny Duffus (kduffus)]

confirmed by Francois-Denis

[termite (rb6)]

confirmed on Kubuntu Dapper 6.06, Amarok 1.4.2

[Brandon Holtsclaw (imbrandon)]

does this still happen with amarok 1.4.3 , i cannot reporduce it ?

[termite (rb6)]

Yes, it still happens on my machine with 1.4.3

[Nakkis (pharod)]

I can confirm this, Ubuntu 6.10 / Amarok 1.4.3.

 The reason might be ntfs-3g, which I'm using on my collection drive.

[Hans Harhoff Andersen (hansharhoff)]

I can confirm the problem with amarok 1.4.4 on Kubuntu 6.10.

I am using nfs, so maybe the problem relates to filesystems other than ext3 and the other "normal" ones.

[infopipe (infopipe)]

I can confirm on Kubuntu 6.10 with amarok 1.4.4.
My collection is on a local partition (reiserfs), so I guess it is not file system dependant.

In the past moving (as in mv) the added files around triggered sometimes an update. But at the moment I have no luck with this trick.

[gero (gerod)]

I don't see why this bug has status "Needs Info". There doesn't seem to be any outstanding request for info but we have six confirmations. Changing status.

[DrKolossos (roth-simon)]

confirmed on Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 Amarok 1.4.5.
The Problem wasn't there until I formated my HD and installed Feisty.

[Sakumatti Luukkonen (sakumatti-luukkonen)]

My guess too is that this is a filesystem issue. When my music was on a NTFS partition, the Watch folders feature didn't work but when I formatted my music HD to ext3, it works.

[Arnout Vos (arnoutvos)]

i'm having the same problem in feisty with amarok 1.4.5. and my collection is on an external (USB) FAT32 partition.

[Jeff Mitchell (jefferai)]

Okay, this is probably several different things rolled up into one "bug" report. In reality, some of these things may be bugs, and some definitely are not.

It's important to keep in mind that when watching folders, the scanner looks at the mtimes of folders. Note that this means that changing files (and possibly overwriting files already in existence) will not trigger an update. Generally, adding or removing files to a directory is sufficient to change the mtimes of the directory.

NTFS-3G users: Your problem is most likely NTFS-3G. IIRC, for some time it did not properly update directory mtimes. I believe recent versions may have fixed this. Either way, AFAIK from a different bug report Ubuntu is about six versions behind, at 1.328. Enjoy your bugs, or pester the package maintainer to get with it already.

Everyone else: I can't reproduce this, because it works fine on all of my computers. So what you need to do is use stat to take a look at the mtimes of the directories and compare them to those stored in the database.

SQLite users: Run sqlite3 on ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/collection.db, then run "select * from directories;"
MySQL users: Use your Amarok database, and the same thing: "select * from directories;"

The numbers indicate the time since Unix epoch. You can copy and paste the directories' stat mtimes into date as such:

date -d "2007-04-20 03:38:25.000000000 -0400" +%s

to get a number for comparison.

[Szabolcs Szakacsits (szaka)]

NTFS-3G 1.826 has fixed all known mtime update problem.

[Lydia Pintscher (lydia-pintscher)]

Is this still valid or fixed by now?

[Lydia Pintscher (lydia-pintscher)]

Closing due to lack of feedback. I assume it is fixed by now. Please reopen if someone still has this problem.

[gero (gerod)]

I can confirm now that it works in Amarok 1.4.9.1 (using KDE 3.5.10 on Hardy).

Many thanks!

[Nico (nicoadamo)]

I have had the problem in every kde since 4.0.x (Kubuntu distro). Have music in both ntfs and ext4 filesystems.

NTFS-3g is "2010.3.6 external FUSE 28" (output of ntfs-3g --version)

Is there a need to have something special in fstab?
The actual line refering to the ntfs says
"/dev/sda4 on /Data type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096) [Data]" (Output of mount -l)
and
"UUID=0E4ACCA5316508E8 /Data ntfs-3g defaults 0 0" in /etc/fstab

Any clue will be welcome, thanks. [[[f it helps, I'm on Kubuntu 10.04]]]

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

This is most likely a different issue than the one originally reported here. Please report a new bug at bugs.kde.org against amarok.