Detail
Getting my nice new IPod Nano to work on Linux with gtkpod was not easy. There were a couple of counter-intuitive errors that caused some problems.
Getting Linux to mount the USB scsi interface
Linux, at least on my machine, comes with 2 usb driver modules: uhci_hcd and ehci_hcd. Well - they don't get along - or more specifically, they don't get along with the ipod.
IPod REQUIRES uhci_hcd, but every time I plug it in, the ehci_hcd module tries to grab the ipod, and fails. This happens almost continuously:
Oct 17 20:11:34 pint kernel: usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 114
Oct 17 20:11:38 pint kernel: usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
Oct 17 20:11:38 pint kernel: usb 1-3: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Oct 17 20:11:42 pint kernel: usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 18
Oct 17 20:11:42 pint kernel: usb 1-3: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Oct 17 20:11:43 pint kernel: usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 22
and on and on. The one way I know to prevent this is to unload the ehci_hcd module, however this causes problems because then I can't use my mouse. If anyone has a solution to this, email me at support -- at -- jmatrixl dot net.
Getting GTKPod
You can download GTKPod from gtkpod.org. I initially installed with yum, and got a dated 0.93.1 version from livna. This version has a bug - and when I loaded more than 256 songs onto the IPod, it loaded all of the binaries, but only updated the itunes.db with 256 songs. So BEWARE of the 256 problem.
Configuring GTK Pod
The default mount point on Fedora Core 4 was /media/ipod rather than what gtkpod wanted - /mnt/ipod. This is easy enough to fix with Edit - Preferences, then changing where gtkpod looks for the IPod from /mnt/ipod to /media/ipod. Easy.
Next, all of the documentation available by googling says that step 1 is to open gtkpod, and execute File - Create Ipod's Directories. This failed. So, I'm stuck at step 1. I tried a number of options, including re-mounting, etc, etc. Nothing worked. When create dierctories failed, it very briefly gives an error message in the lower left corner saying: problem creating ipod directory Calendar. Well - it turns out this is because the directory already exists - and I thought that gtkpod would be smart enough to realize this. I was wrong.
So, to fix it, used a shell to go to /media/ipod. I created a directory called "ipod_original". Then, I move EVERYTHING curernly in the ipod directory into the ipod_original directory:
bemo:/media/ipod> mv * ipod_original
Ok, now I exited, and re-started gtkpod. Now, File - Create Ipod's Directories worked!
This is the key. Now, import some songs into the LOCAL playlist from your hard drive. Drag some songs from the list of songs onto the gtkpod playlist. Ok, now click sync. This moves the files to the ipod (in theory).
BEFORE physically disconnecting the ipod, run sync.
bemo@pint:/media > sync
This syncs the local cache with the ipod - if not, the files may not actually be moved there.
Now I unmonted with umount /media/ipod. This is successful, but the ipod still says "Do No Disconnect". Searching on the net tells me to run eject - but this fails:
root@pint:/root>eject /media/ipod
eject: unable to eject, last error: Invalid argument
But what the hell - I can't do any more. So I just disconnect. This seems to work. Make sure you sync. I don't know why eject doesn't work - but if someone does, please post how to make it work.
That's all. Now I'm playing mp3's on my IPod Nano - after a few frustrating hours of fiddling.
Good luck.
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