moving music folder to another HD

felixj · Post by **felixj** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 5:15 am

hey there, been following the forums for a while but first time poster.

I'm constantly running into the same problem and I'd strongly suggest to change this behavior. In my case all music is stored on a separate truecrypt-encrypted disk which has to be mounted manually at startup. The computer is located in a bar which means a lot of (computer-illiterate) people are working with it. Every time somebody gets the truecrypt password wrong and starts guayadeque, all playlists are lost.

So my suggestion would be to at least by default store a backup copy of the old database (so when it comes to the worst you could at least manually song by song reconstruct the playlists). Of course it would be even more comfortable if guayadeque could restore playlists even if files were moved from outside guayadeque (I for example have most of my private collection on external hds, with backups etc. And, between us, when I do backups I usually do it from within a file browser and don't want to start guayadeque to move files around.And folder paths change a lot on my various computers.). I understand that this would be a lot of work to implement and would also be a bummer when it comes to performance, so I'm just putting it up for discussion.

And now for the praise: I've been through almost all media players with library functionality on linux. Guayadeque is the only one that is up for the task of running about 12 hours a night in a bar, handle a huge music collection and the beforementioned computer-challenged people. Also it is the only player with a stable crossfading-utility (after they discontinued amarok 1.4) which is a must-have in a bar. So if any of the devs make it to Berlin / Germany some time or another feel free to contact me and get plastered at my place. Thanks.

camaron · Post by **camaron** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 7:01 am

I do agree that guayadeque shoudn't delete the database in these circunstances (when it doesn't find the library folder on start-up). There are many circumstances when something like that can happen unwillingly. My music is also in a separate partition and I'm careful but I guess it is just a matter of time.

Regardless of whether anonbeat changes this or not: what i've personally been doing for ages (after a few database loses) is to back it up automatically and regularly. I use backintime but there are others. You can define when and where to save backups and is all very easy and convenient: I recommend it. Whenever happens again just recover the last backup and all is fine again.

Salud

anonbeat · Post by **anonbeat** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 9:25 am

@felixj, @camaron :
If you dont use the automatic update on startup there should not be any problem.

Think for example that you deleted a file and update the library. Its normal that the file is removed from the database. And if that file exists in a playlist makes no sense to keep it there as it was deleted.

The problem comes when all the files are missing... guayadeque deletes all the files as they no longer exists.

Im open to suggestions in ways to solve this but as I alwasy said without making the player slow in any way.

If the automatic update is not used you will see the library and guayadeque will not be able to play any file. At this time you should close guayadeque and mount the drive and reopen it again.

Im waiting for suggestions

Thanks for your help

camaron · Post by **camaron** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 10:13 am

@anonbeat,

Of course you'r right that disabling automatic update on startup helps a lot. In fact it pretty much fixes the problem once you realize. But of course you have to realize first.

It is very kind that you are open to ideas. It is a pretty technical issue so probably other people will give smarter suggestions. Anyway:

Guayadeque is configured to look into a directory (or several) for the music. I think the key is that Guayadeque should look for the folder (directory) first, and then for the files: a two step thing. If Guayadeque does not find the directory it should stop right there and no assume that the files are missing. Notice that it is different not finding a file inside a default directory to not finding the directory at all.

If Guayadeque doesn't find this default directory than I imagine there are several options: a pop up window telling you the situation, etc. At any rate if Guayadeque doesn't find this default directory it should never delete the files unless you give it permission (some how)

Of course i might be wrong but I don't think this would slow the program in anyway. What do you and other people think?

camaron · Post by **camaron** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 10:36 am

Thinking of it I'll tell you how Lightroom deals with the issue: on startup the program does not look for the files, it looks for the database If it doesn't find the database it tells you and gives you options. In fact it doesn't care at all whether the files are there or not (it doesn't use auto update). If it finds the database you still get all the thumbnails and all the information associated to the files. The reason for this is that the program assumes that it is very likely that your files are in a external drive and external drives are not always connected.

Of course all this makes sense when you actually have the option where to keep this database as lightroom gives you.

I think this is a nice approach worth considering too.

anonbeat · Post by **anonbeat** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 4:54 pm

@camaron :
That is exactly what guayadeque does when you have disabled audo update on startup

camaron · Post by **camaron** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 12:28 am

What, it looks for the database? But what about on autoupdate, if it doesn't fine the directory it deletes the tracks?!

Something has to be done anonbeat, because it happens a lot obviously. The very least would be to disable autoaupdate on startup as default behaviour (if it is such, I can't remember).

Then consider other options: get rid of auto update altogether, or let Guayadeque produce a window that tells you "30.000 tracks are missing, do you want to remove them from your library?"

I don't know what the best solution is, but I certainly think something should be done.

Just ideas anyway, I'll leave now for other people to share their thoughts...

Cheers

tamalet · Post by **tamalet** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 5:49 am

@camaron
Autoupdate is not enabled by default.

My 2 cents:
I wouldn't like a popup message saying how many songs are going to be removed every time you do an update. Popups are intrusive and should be used as less as possible.

One possible solution is to add an option to not remove missing songs. Something like this is done in Gmusicbrowser. They have two options "Check for updated/deleted songs on startup" and "Search for new songs on startup". There is also an option "Automatically remove current song if not found".

My suggestion is that if one of the library paths are not found then Guayadeque could ask whether to remove the whole path or not. Preferably the question would not be in a modal window (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_window) but something like the new Gedit or Nautilus dialogs that are embedded on the windows.
Better yet, when you add a directory to the library you should be able to mark it as "not always present" or something like that. Then you scan the library if it is not present then you know that you should not remove it.

But another thing are the playlists. In my opinion you should never remove dead links from a playlist, or at least it should be optional. The reason is that I want to know what songs are not available to add them again if I have just moved them. Quietly removing dead links in a playlist doesn't sound like a good idea to me. If needed you could add an option to the context menu "Remove duplicates and missing songs".

camaron · Post by **camaron** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 8:05 am

tamalet wrote: My suggestion is that if one of the library paths are not found then Guayadeque could ask whether to remove the whole path or not.

Yes, that was one of my suggestions as well. An obvious advantage is that it doesn't give any overhead to guayadeque.

pickarooney · Post by **pickarooney** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 2:37 am

I like this last suggestion.