Yet Another iPod Question

Wed Mar 5 23:27:30 UTC 2008

JoeHill wrote:
> 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 :-)
Phew, there's a lot here. I'll only be able to do so much until I can 
get back to London. She and her roomate are behind a router and I 
haven't set up port forwarding (???) to be able to ssh to her PC. I've 
never done it before. However, I think I can get her to find libgpod and 
tell me what version she has. I doubt the newest packages are in the 
default depositories, but I think I can get her to add the depositories 
you listed above to her own list.

It certainly would have been nice if I was able to SSH to her PC.

Thanks again. This is good information to have.

John.
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