gmusicbrowser broken yesterday (will not run)

[Andrew Farris]

On Wed, 2010-04-21 at 16:03 +0100, nepal wrote:
> Are there any other gmusicbrowser users that have had 'gmb' broken by
> an update either yesterday (tues) or mon 19/4?

I use gmusicbrowser, and I haven't had any issues since the updates
monday/tuesday... 

> Unusually, I did'nt play any music yesterday and so am not sure when it
> happened, but I know for definite I did play music with 'gmb' on monday.
> The error may be related to a perl update, but I don't know enough... 

I don't remember seeing any pearl updates, but I could be mistaken.
Here's the packages that have updated for me over the past week:
Monday(4-19-10): 
        chromium-browser
        chromium-browser-inspector
        chromium-codecs-ffmpeg
        playonlinux
        
Today(4-21-10):
        chromium-browser
        chromium-browser-inspector 
        ffmpeg
        kde-window-manager
        kdebase-workspace-bin
        kdebase-workspace-data
        kdebase-workspace-kgreet-plugins
        kdebase-workspace-libs4+5 
        libavcodec52
        libavdevice52
        libavfilter0
        libavformat52
        libavutil49
        libkdecorations4
        libkwineffects1
        libpostproc51
        libswscale0
        plasma-dataengines-workspace
        plasma-widgets-workspace

Your mileage may vary, as I have KDE4 and chromium installed for
testing.

In fact, the only time gmusicbrowser is mentioned in my update logs is
when I installed it last November...and the last updates I received for
perl were in January... so I wonder what the issue is?

To get a similar list of updates/installs, go check out System >
Administration > Synaptic Package Manager > File > History.

> The problem is the application will not run from an icon. So I tried
> running it from a terminal and this is the error messages I'm getting.
> 
> ==========================================
> nepal at nepal-ubu:~$ gmusicbrowser
> Reading saved tags in /home/nepal/.config/gmusicbrowser/tags ...
> skipping invalid song entry : 
> Reading saved tags in /home/nepal/.config/gmusicbrowser/tags ... done
> Use of uninitialized value $col in string eq at /usr/bin/gmusicbrowser
> line 8181. Use of uninitialized value $cmd in hash element
> at /usr/bin/gmusicbrowser line 8183. Use of uninitialized value in
> subroutine entry at /usr/bin/gmusicbrowser line 8183. Can't use string
> ("") as a subroutine ref while "strict refs" in use
> at /usr/bin/gmusicbrowser line 8183. nepal at nepal-ubu:~$ ^C
> nepal at nepal-ubu:~$ 
> ==========================================

This looks to me like corrupted tags file. try this:

>From GUI: (shortcut to get to folder: alt+F2 - run "nautilus
~/.config/gmusicbrowser")
      * Go to your home folder
      * Show hidden folders by hitting ctrl+h or goign to "View > Show
        Hidden Files"
      * Navigate to the folder ".config" (hint: stary typign the name,
        and you should hop to it)
      * within .config, look for the 'gmusicbrowser' folder
      * you'll notice within the 'gmusicbrowser' folder there are
        several files named tags* where the * is .bak or .bak.######:
        try renaming the 'tags' file to something like 'broken-tags' or
        something, and rename the file 'tags.bak' to just 'tags' then
        re-launch gmusicbroswer. my bet is that it will work.

>From Command line (do in this order):
        cd ~/.config/gmusicbrowser
        mv ./tags ./broke-tags
        mv ./tags.bak ./tags
        gmusicbrowser

the last one should result in a successful launch. If it doesn't, try
using an older tags backup (if you can)... otherwise, try renaming the
gmusicbrowser config folder (to something like gmusicbrowser-old) and
launch the program again. it will start like it has never run before,
and it will have to build the tag database back up again if you do it
that way, but it should work.

If that doesn't work, then there's something else wrong entirely.

Hope that helps!

-- 
Andrew
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