[TriLUG] Ubuntu and Amarok Weirdness

[Brian Blater]

Hi everyone! I'm hoping someone here might be able to give me some
help with this issue.

I just upgraded to Amarok 2.4.3 on my Ubuntu 11.04 box using the ppa
by philip5. I'm using an external MySQL database which is finally
working in 2.4.3 as I couldn't get it to connect to the db in earlier
releases (a reported problem from what I saw). I've got the following
issues that I can't seem to get working. Not sure if I just haven't
configured things correctly or what.

1. I can't seem to get the lyrics plugin to work. It just shows a "Fetch Error".
2. The wikipedia artist info isn't working either. I just get
"Wikipedia: unable to retrieve wikipedia information
http://en.wikipedia.org"
3. I also can't get the Cover Manager to find any covers for the
albums that don't have covers at this time. I will go through fetching
the covers, but everything is reported as "failed."
4. I have some playlists in M3U format. How can I import them? I've
tried adding the playlist directory to the amarok library and it finds
the m3u, but if I update the tag of the file, rating for example, the
track in amarok does not recognize the change. I don't really want to
go through and completely recreate all the playlists.

I've done some Google searches and that has not provided any working
solutions to the above problems.

I've queried the Amarok mailing list, but the only response has been
from a person at KDE.org that said I had problems with my internet
connection. That just seemed like a brush off.

In doing some testing I ran amarok in debug mode. I then went to see
what was reported when opening a track. I got the following:

amarok: [CoverFetcher] "Adding interactive cover fetch for: 'Enema of
the State' from Google"
amarok: BEGIN: CoverFoundDialog::CoverFoundDialog(CoverFetchUnit::Ptr,
const CoverFetch::Metadata&, QWidget*)
amarok:   [CoverFetcher] Queueing automatic cover fetch for: "Enema of
the State"
QPixmap::scaled: Pixmap is a null pixmap
QPixmap::scaled: Pixmap is a null pixmap
amarok: END__: CoverFoundDialog::CoverFoundDialog(CoverFetchUnit::Ptr,
const CoverFetch::Metadata&, QWidget*) [Took: 0.059s]
amarok: [CoverFetcher] "Queueing cover fetch query: 'Enema of the
State Blink 182' (page 0)"
amarok: [CoverFetcher] Finished with errors for album "Enema of the
State" "[There was an error communicating with cover provider:
http://ws.audioscrobbler.com]"
QWidget::setMinimumSize: (Media Sources dock/BrowserDock) Negative
sizes (117,-1) are not possible
amarok: [CoverFetcher] Finished with errors for album "Enema of the
State" "[There was an error communicating with cover provider:
http://images.google.com]"
QWidget::setMinimumSize: (Media Sources dock/BrowserDock) Negative
sizes (117,-1) are not possible

Yet on the same machine I can browse to http://ws.audioscrobbler.com
(redirects to last.fm/api) and http://images.google.com

When trying to fetch the lyrics I get the following:

amarok: [WikipediaEngine] Parsing langlinks result failed
"http://en.wikipedia.org"
amarok: BEGIN: void
WikipediaEnginePrivate::_dataContainerUpdated(const QString&, const
Plasma::DataEngine::Data&)
amarok: END__: void
WikipediaEnginePrivate::_dataContainerUpdated(const QString&, const
Plasma::DataEngine::Data&) [Took: 0s]
amarok: BEGIN: void WikipediaApplet::dataUpdated(const QString&, const
Plasma::DataEngine::Data&)
amarok: END__: void WikipediaApplet::dataUpdated(const QString&, const
Plasma::DataEngine::Data&) [Took: 0s]
amarok: [WARNING] [AmarokNetworkScript] Error fetching string:
"http://lyrics.wikia.com"
amarok: BEGIN: void
AmarokScript::AmarokLyricsScript::showLyricsError(const QString&)
const
amarok:   BEGIN: void LyricsManager::lyricsError(const QString&)
amarok:     BEGIN: bool LyricsManager::showCached()
amarok:     END__: bool LyricsManager::showCached() [Took: 0.001s]
amarok:     BEGIN: void LyricsSubject::sendLyricsMessage(const
QString&, const QString&)
amarok:       BEGIN: virtual void LyricsEngine::lyricsMessage(const
QString&, const QString&)
amarok:       END__: virtual void LyricsEngine::lyricsMessage(const
QString&, const QString&) [Took: 0s]
amarok:     END__: void LyricsSubject::sendLyricsMessage(const
QString&, const QString&) [Took: 0s]
amarok:   END__: void LyricsManager::lyricsError(const QString&) [Took: 0.001s]
amarok: END__: void
AmarokScript::AmarokLyricsScript::showLyricsError(const QString&)
const [Took: 0.001s]
amarok: BEGIN: void LyricsApplet::dataUpdated(const QString&, const
Plasma::DataEngine::Data&)
amarok: END__: void LyricsApplet::dataUpdated(const QString&, const
Plasma::DataEngine::Data&) [Took: 0s]

Again I'm able to browse to http://lyrics.wikia.com just fine.

So, this appears more than just "something must be wrong with my
internet connection" as I can get to the web page that it is
attempting to get to.

Any suggestions as to what might fix this? Your help is greatly appreciated.

Brian