Speed Up Amarok With Large Music Collections
Amarok is a wonderful application for managing and playing your music collection, but the default settings aren't optimized for speed when it comes to large collections of music. The problems are especially noticeable while trying to use the search box.
The problem is that the default embedded database uses sqlite to store the collection information, which doesn't scale quite as well as a dedicated database such as MySQL… so we'll switch to use that instead.
Configuring MySQL for Amarok
These instructions assume that you don't already have MySQL installed. If you are already using it, then just skip the first couple of steps.
Assuming you are using Ubuntu, run this command from a terminal to install the MySQL server and client on your system:
sudo apt-get install mysql-client mysql-server
For security's sake, you should probably set a root password for your MySQL server using this command:
sudo mysqladmin -u root password "mynewpassword"
You can use the "flush privileges" command or just restart MySQL:
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart
Next we'll use the mysqladmin command to create a database for Amarok to use:
sudo mysqladmin -u root -pMyRootPassword create amarokdb
The final command line step will setup the user account for Amarok in MySQL. Make sure to use a different password here.
mysql -u root -pMyRootPassword
> GRANT ALL ON amarokdb.* TO amarok@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'amarokpassword';
> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Configuring Amarok
Open the Amarok configuration dialog via the tools menu and then pick the Collection icon on the left.
Change the drop-down to MySQL, and then enter in your details:
- Hostname: localhost
- Database: amarokdb
- Username: amarok
- Password: password from step above
Close out of the dialog, and then you'll have to rescan your collection to move everything into MySQL, which might take a little while the first time.
Enjoy the speedy searching!
I did this a couple of months back, and it made a dramatic difference. Suddenly I'm again very happy with Amarok.
The two SQL statements require semi-colons as terminators:
mysql -u root -pMyRootPassword
> GRANT ALL ON amarokdb.* TO amarok@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'amarokpassword';
> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Thanks for that last comment; I couldn't get it to work.
Sorry about the confusion on that… updating article.
Dosn't work at all here.
Got prompted after install to create a password.
"mysqladmin -u root password "mynewpassword"" didn't work of course since password already was created.
"/etc/init.d/mysql restart" Didn't wotk wither, "No permisson/access" (running localised version) and then gave up.
Tried removing and redoing, same result..
You don't need the mysqladmin -u root password…. step if you set up the root password in the installer.
on the second command (and subsequent commands in the tutorial), try putting a "sudo" in front of it.
I constantly forget to add sudo before the commands when writing articles… updated.
well you dont need to worry about sudo if you
sudo su
when you open your terminal
Oh and I meant to add that your tutorial was very helpful
a few of the instructions didnt work for me either but then again like previously stated you dont need that line if you already put a password in and I didnt finish that last line but I just used user name as root when i setup amarok and it works great… once again thank you… if it wasnt for people like you then there would be alot of lost people and this operating system wouldnt be as popular as it is now