Yet Another iPod Question

Tue Mar 4 05:49:48 UTC 2008

Moniz Family wrote: 

[whack]
> 
> It was success and heartache one right after the other.
> 
> Everything worked perfectly as soon as I plugged it in my daughter's 
> Ubuntu 7.10. It self-mounted and was recognized by Amarok and gtkpod 
> after I set them up. My daughter spent the rest of the evening loading 
> songs with Amarok, the one she favours. Then Amarok crashed, 
> disappearing from the screen altogether.
> 
> All of the songs diasappeared from the ipod. However, they were all 
> visible and playable with Amarok and gtkpod. If I added or removed a 
> song with one player, the change would show up on the other. But nothing 
> in the ipod. The usage reading in the ipod was showing "Other" as being 
> used, but not "Audio". I deleted all of the songs and the usage of 
> "other" went way down. The songs were there, but not registered as an 
> Audio file.
>
> I figure the itunes database must have gotten corrupted.

Not corrutped, it's just that Apple's new database cannot be read by older
versions of libgpod, which as I mentioned above Amarok and gtkpod depend on to
work properly.

> She's off to a friend's to reinstall itunes and start all over again. She's
> at UWO, so I can't really help her. I was thinking of backing up the entire
> ipod onto her PC next time I'm there. I mean all of the files, not just the 
> songs. Maybe any corrupted files could be brought back with a back-up???
> 
> It's a bit disappointing for her and I know she'll worry every time she 
> uses either Amarok or gtkpod from now on.

Continuing to use older versions of libgpod will cause problems, as the
database will be out of sync, ie. itunes can write to it but gtkpod/amarok
can't.

> Thanks for all of your help.

This is why I brought up the thing about libgpod above: you need at least
libgpod 0.6.0 for newer ipods to work. Otherwise, they will mount, and you can
load songs on them, and yes you will even see the space on the ipod used up,
but you will not be able to play anything.

I am sure there are packages for Ubuntu 7.10 that will get this working, though
I'm not sure if they are in the default repositories yet. These are the repos
that worked for my 7.10 install:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/rharding/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/rharding/ubuntu gutsy main

Here are the instructions for building from SVN, but you say your daughter is
away at school, so I guess you would want to go with the packages for Ubuntu.
More recent SVN revisions do have a lot of improvements for both libgpod and
gtkpod, so if there was some way you could do this for her remotely I'd
recommend it (ssh?).

Whether you load the Ubuntu packages or SVN, make sure you read the
documentation regarding loading the ipod for the first time. Last I checked,
libgpod could still not read the ipod's firewire ID, so you need to have that
added or add it yourself. It's pretty simple, just editing a text file. This is
from my README.sysinfo file that came with libgpod SVN:

"There are two ways to set up the iPod to make libgpod able to find its firewire
id.

The 1st one is mostly automated. First, make sure you have libsgutils installed
before running configure/autogen.sh. If you built libgpod without it, install
it and run configure/make/make install. You should now have an
ipod-read-sysinfo-extended tool available. Run it with the iPod device path
(eg /dev/sda) and the iPod mount point (eg /mnt/ipod) as arguments. This may
require root privileges. ipod-read-sysinfo-extended will read an XML
file from the iPod and write it as
/mnt/ipod/iPod_Control/Device/SysInfoExtended. See
http://ipodlinux.org/Device_Information for more details about the method used.
Having that file is enough for libgpod to figure out the iPod firewire id.

The 2nd method requires more manual intervention. First, you need to get your
firewire id manually. To do that, run "sudo lsusb -v | grep -i Serial" (without
the "") with your iPod plugged in, this should print a 16 character long string
like 00A1234567891231. For an iPod Touch, this number will be much longer than
16 characters, the firewire ID is constituted by the first 16 characters.
Once you have that number, create/edit /mnt/ipod/iPod_Control/Device/SysInfo
(if your iPod is mounted at /mnt/ipod). Add to that file the line below:
FirewireGuid: 0xffffffffffffffff
(replace ffffffffffffffff with the string you obtained at the previous step
and don't forget the trailing 0x before the string)
Save that file, and you should be all set. Be careful when using apps which
lets you manually specify which iPod model you own, they may overwrite that
file when you do that. So if after doing that libgpod still seems to write
invalid content to the iPod, double-check the content of that SysInfo file to
make sure the FirewireGuid line you added isn't gone. If that happens, readd it
to the end of the file, and make sure libgpod rewrite the iPod content.

Once that is done, if you compiled libgpod from source, you can test that
libgpod can find the firewire ID on your iPod by running
libgpod/tests/test-firewire-id /ipod/mount/point"

Building from source (not nearly as difficult as you might think, and a lot of
benefits):

0. Install libmp4v2-devel so that gtkpod is build with support for...well, mp4.

1. Grab libgpod svn:

svn co https://gtkpod.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/gtkpod/libgpod/trunk libgpod

*Important* read the README.sysinfo file and follow the instructions.

...then build and install the usual way (I used ./configure --prefix=/usr)

2. Grab gtkpod svn:

svn co https://gtkpod.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/gtkpod/gtkpod/trunk gtkpod

...and build and install the usual way.

If you have any trouble, or I've missed something, do not hesitate to ask me,
I've been through this frustration myself :-)

-- 
JoeHill
++++++++++++++++++++
 "Bender, we didn't mind your drinking or your cleptomania or your
pornography ring." -Leela 
 "In fact, that's why we love you." -Zoidberg 
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