Yet Another iPod Question

[JoeHill]

John Moniz wrote: 

> 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.

This was mostly copied and pasted from the posts between Chris Aitken and I a
while back. He had exactly the same problem with a new Nano for his daughter :-)

> 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.

It's especially nice on Debian/Ubuntu, as software can be very easily managed
from the command line.
 
> Thanks again. This is good information to have.

No problem, I went through exactly the same thing back in September with my
iPod Classic. So much anticipation, such a sweet device, get it home
and...oooooooh. Luckily, the Amarok and libgpod hackers had cracked Apple's new
encryption scheme for the itunes database just a day or so before, but for a
few hours I was feeling some pretty serious disappointment.

-- 
JoeHill
++++++++++++++++++++
 Leela: That aerosal head spray makes your antenna smell nice... 
 Bender: Thank you.
 Leela: ...but it's doing long-term damage to the planet.
 Bender: So? It's not like it's the only one we've got.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://gtalug.org/pipermail/legacy/attachments/20080306/d0012128/attachment.sig>