Help with ipod

[patchido]

well... the story goes like this, i have a 80 gb ipod classic, have 30 gbs on music and i had it all synced with itunes on windows, it took me too much time on getting album artwork but i had almost all the music with artwork, and because i need the space on my computer, after syncing my ipod i delete everything, then i plugged my ipod on ubuntu just for me to be able to listen to music in amarok, and when i unplugged it all the artwork was gone -.- !!!! im so pissed what can i do? there is no program usefull such as itunes for ipod?? hell im mad

[Xiong Chiamiov]

Be angry at Apple for making life difficult on developers who want to create software to sync with iPods, and with yourself for buying one.

I'm told Amarok works fairly well with iPods, but I have no personal experience with them.

[Svensk023]

this is definatley not an Ubuntu or an Amarok problem. I have a 60Gb ipod and I was able to transfer my music to several different Ubuntu desktops without it being automatically re-formatted like it would on any windows or mac OS. Plus all of my artwork is there too.. So unless you have alot of DRM encrypted music, I would put new firmware on your ipod, such as Rock Box.

[Simian Man]

Be angry at Apple for making life difficult on developers who want to create software to sync with iPods

Absolutely. Apple went out of their way to make it difficult to use iPods with anything other than iTunes. Even if I was on Windows, I wouldn't use that piece of crap. Rhythmbox works great with my iPod although the album artwork only shows up in the coverflow. I bet the fine folks at libgpod will get it working eventually though :).

[ktrnka]

Just a thought... Did you unplug your ipod before ejecting it from ubuntu? If the filesystem isn't completely clean, your muisc will appear to be lost on the ipod. I would plug your ipod back in and once it mounts, eject your ipod from the system and then unplug your ipod. Your music should still be on your ipod if all you have done is unplugged it without a clean unmount.

[llamabr]

I'd like to second the rockbox suggestion. Rockbox is just an upgrade to the firmware, which makes the hardware much more friendly to linux and open source. It also loads a whole ton of games and other goodies on it. It doesn't delete your original firmware, and you can easily choose between them. It's very configurable. And finally, it's a snap to remove if you don't like it.

It's apple's fault your ipod doesn't work, because of the way they obfuscate the source and the firmware, making it difficult for anyone to make software work for it, besides itunes.

[Cope57]

gtkpod (http://www.gtkpod.org)

[Cracauer]

www.rockbox.org


No more trouble.

[pparks1]

Be angry at Apple for making life difficult on developers who want to create software to sync with iPods, and with yourself for buying one.
Amen brother. That is absolutely where the blame really needs to be placed. My wife has an iPOD and while it works well for her, the restrictions and complexity of getting music onto that device makes me angry. I so much prefer my Creative Labs Zen Vision M.

[hyperdude111]

Songbird Works with ipods and the album art. (It even has an addon to allow you to automatically find the art)

It works on Linux, Windows and mac so no more incompatibility. Search Getdeb for the ubuntu .deb the one on the songbird site is .tar.gz

[Ben Crisford]

Apple's fault. Inconsistent, slow, over-priced... That pretty much sums up every apple product.

The same is true for itunes songs the DRM restricts the song from being played in any player apart from itunes and zune. You can only use the songs in movies when using imovie!

If you want someone to blame, blame apple. I blame them for most things... What I don't blame apple for, I blame windows instead, and that covers everything.

Linux FTW!

[drew.saltarelli]

Same problem here man, except RockBox doesn't run on my iPod :( (80gb 6th gen I think)

[Ben Crisford]

Same problem here man, except RockBox doesn't run on my iPod :( (80gb 6th gen I think)

:o poor you...

I would recommend counselling or something, you can't live with a classic without rockbox.

[patchido]

i cant use rockbox... as i told in my first post it is 80 gb 6th gen, and, i did unplugged it correctly, unmounted it and everything, didnt lost the music just albumwork

[dfreer]

Dunno why everyone thinks this is entirely apples fault. For starters, this problem of iPod's locking the music database has been known for quite some time and is throughly discussed all over the internet. A little prior research would've shown this.

Secondly, since the solution has been around for quite some time and there have been new releases of Amarok/Ubuntu/libgpod, why is this still an issue? Libgpod when updated to at least version 6.0 (which hardy and intrepid should both have) supports iPod Classics, and according to their news post (http://gtkpod.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/gtkpod/libgpod/tags/V0_6_0/NEWS) the Firewire ID can be pulled automatically so there shouldn't even be a need for a "one time setup" for the iPod.

One final thing: the music is still on your iPod and still correctly tagged, it's just that iTunes and the iPod itself will no longer read it. I'm pretty sure that you can still recover all of your original music/artwork, by syncing all the music to Linux from the iPod using rythmbox/amarok/whatever you like. Not sure how the database lock works, but you might even be able to unlock the iPod as well (tried a quick google and didn't find anything but sounds feasible to me).

Beyond that, why would you guys recommend using rockbox? It doesn't support iPod Classics yet.


The same is true for itunes songs the DRM restricts the song from being played in any player apart from itunes and zune. You can only use the songs in movies when using imovie!


http://i.gizmodo.com/5124588/itunes-gets-drm-free-new-prices-purchase-over-3g

Since when could you play iTunes DRM music with Zune? And iTunes has had DRM free music for quite some time, and just recently moved the majority of it's store to be DRM free. By the end of this year every single song is supposed to be DRM free (supposedly). Pay attention please and stop being so narrow-minded.

[patchido]

im pissed cause the only thing i wanted was to listen to music not to move anything on the ipo, but stupid amarok did it, made me lose like 10 hours of my time getting album art

[patchido]

Dunno why everyone thinks this is entirely apples fault. For starters, this problem of iPod's locking the music database has been known for quite some time and is throughly discussed all over the internet. A little prior research would've shown this.

Secondly, since the solution has been around for quite some time and there have been new releases of Amarok/Ubuntu/libgpod, why is this still an issue? Libgpod when updated to at least version 6.0 (which hardy and intrepid should both have) supports iPod Classics, and according to their news post (http://gtkpod.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/gtkpod/libgpod/tags/V0_6_0/NEWS) the Firewire ID can be pulled automatically so there shouldn't even be a need for a "one time setup" for the iPod.

One final thing: the music is still on your iPod and still correctly tagged, it's just that iTunes and the iPod itself will no longer read it. I'm pretty sure that you can still recover all of your original music/artwork, by syncing all the music to Linux from the iPod using rythmbox/amarok/whatever you like. Not sure how the database lock works, but you might even be able to unlock the iPod as well (tried a quick google and didn't find anything but sounds feasible to me).

Beyond that, why would you guys recommend using rockbox? It doesn't support iPod Classics yet.



http://i.gizmodo.com/5124588/itunes-gets-drm-free-new-prices-purchase-over-3g

iTunes has had DRM free music for quite some time, and just recently moved the majority of it's store to be DRM free. By the end of this year every single song is supposed to be DRM free (supposedly). Pay attention please and stop being so narrow-minded.



you are correct, if i click on a song inside amarok the artwork is still there, but what do i want it of the ipod cant read it by now? any solutoin?

[Ben Crisford]

Dunno why everyone thinks this is entirely apples fault. For starters, this problem of iPod's locking the music database has been known for quite some time and is throughly discussed all over the internet. A little prior research would've shown this.

Secondly, since the solution has been around for quite some time and there have been new releases of Amarok/Ubuntu/libgpod, why is this still an issue? Libgpod when updated to at least version 6.0 (which hardy and intrepid should both have) supports iPod Classics, and according to their news post (http://gtkpod.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/gtkpod/libgpod/tags/V0_6_0/NEWS) the Firewire ID can be pulled automatically so there shouldn't even be a need for a "one time setup" for the iPod.

One final thing: the music is still on your iPod and still correctly tagged, it's just that iTunes and the iPod itself will no longer read it. I'm pretty sure that you can still recover all of your original music/artwork, by syncing all the music to Linux from the iPod using rythmbox/amarok/whatever you like. Not sure how the database lock works, but you might even be able to unlock the iPod as well (tried a quick google and didn't find anything but sounds feasible to me).

Beyond that, why would you guys recommend using rockbox? It doesn't support iPod Classics yet.



http://i.gizmodo.com/5124588/itunes-gets-drm-free-new-prices-purchase-over-3g

Since when could you play iTunes DRM music with Zune? And iTunes has had DRM free music for quite some time, and just recently moved the majority of it's store to be DRM free. By the end of this year every single song is supposed to be DRM free (supposedly). Pay attention please and stop being so narrow-minded.

I still blame apple :p...

It must be their fault somewhere along the way, and apple make it difficult for us to sort out, even if it is possible.

[kelvin spratt]

The best cure for your ipod is a 14 pound sledge works every time the other way is to use gtpod and resync it then don't go on the itunes site and download as ipod will mess it all up for you again as they don't like anybody using anything but thier software and site so don't blame linux for your over priced and over rated ipod blame yourself for falling into apples little trap. By the way I've got a ipod as well so I'm just as bad.

[dfreer]

you are correct, if i click on a song inside amarok the artwork is still there, but what do i want it of the ipod cant read it by now? any solutoin?

Worst comes to worse, You can use gtkpod to copy the music from your iPod to a hard drive (along with your playlists/album art/play count etc), and then restore the iPod using iTunes in Windows and resync the iPod again.

But I *think* you can use the correct version of libgpod and compute the Hash sum to fix your iTunes DB; which would allow you to use your iPod normally without the need to resync your music files. Furthermore, you should also then be able to use your iPod in linux without having it lock up on you again.

The way it works (from what I understand of it) is thus:
The iTunes database file on your iPod is protected by a checksum of your music collection + a unique firewire ID. If any program changes the contents of the iPod and does not recalculate this checksum, the iPod will ignore it's database file and say that there is no music on the iPod.

If you use libgpod and corrects the database file so that the checksum of the library equals the checksum in the database file, your iPod *should* work just fine. And once libgpod knows the unique firewire ID, everytime you plug in your iPod it will generate the correct checksum every time.

I'm going to duplicate your problem with my iPod right now (I have the music + database already backed up so it's not an issue for me), and see if it works for me. You can try it yourself or wait for me if you like.

[Cracauer]

Dunno why everyone thinks this is entirely apples fault. For starters, this problem of iPod's locking the music database has been known for quite some time and is throughly discussed all over the internet. A little prior research would've shown this.

Secondly, since the solution has been around for quite some time and there have been new releases of Amarok/Ubuntu/libgpod, why is this still an issue? Libgpod when updated to at least version 6.0 (which hardy and intrepid should both have) supports iPod Classics, and according to their news post (http://gtkpod.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/gtkpod/libgpod/tags/V0_6_0/NEWS) the Firewire ID can be pulled automatically so there shouldn't even be a need for a "one time setup" for the iPod.

One final thing: the music is still on your iPod and still correctly tagged, it's just that iTunes and the iPod itself will no longer read it. I'm pretty sure that you can still recover all of your original music/artwork, by syncing all the music to Linux from the iPod using rythmbox/amarok/whatever you like. Not sure how the database lock works, but you might even be able to unlock the iPod as well (tried a quick google and didn't find anything but sounds feasible to me).

Beyond that, why would you guys recommend using rockbox? It doesn't support iPod Classics yet.



http://i.gizmodo.com/5124588/itunes-gets-drm-free-new-prices-purchase-over-3g

Since when could you play iTunes DRM music with Zune? And iTunes has had DRM free music for quite some time, and just recently moved the majority of it's store to be DRM free. By the end of this year every single song is supposed to be DRM free (supposedly). Pay attention please and stop being so narrow-minded.

My head hurts just from reading that. How can you say this is easy?

Fact is, Apple could easily have made the iPod "OS" read plain files from a "/music" directory and line-by-line playlists from "/playlists", in addition to properly fed iTunes stuff.

They didn't and that is why we have that mess at our hands.

[dfreer]

My head hurts just from reading that. How can you say this is easy?

Fact is, Apple could easily have made the iPod "OS" read plain files from a "/music" directory and line-by-line playlists from "/playlists", in addition to properly fed iTunes stuff.

They didn't and that is why we have that mess at our hands.

Dunno why everyone thinks this is entirely apples fault.

I highlighted my original quote in bold this time since the italics weren't noticed before. The whole issue of the database being locked due to an invalid checksum is apple's fault, the only reason I can think of doing this would be to lock out competitor's media player's syncing with the iPod which is bad IMO.

However, using a database to manage the music info is IMO a much better method than simply dropping the music into a folder and making the iPod with it's relatively weak CPU have to scan for the music and then scan the music's ID3 tags for info. Why waste the battery life doing that when your desktop can compute a database of all this information MUCH faster, and the iPod can then query it for info?

Back on topic:
I synced my iPod with iTunes in Vista, then loaded my relatively new install of Debian Lenny. Plugged my iPod in and after trying to play music from it using Rhythmbox and Amarok (unable to play the music for what I suspect is an unrelated error), ejected it with Amarok. My iPod was locked and unable to access any of the music via the iPod itself.

This puts me in the same place, I think, as the original OP. Now to the solution:

Installed gtkpod/libsgutils and followed the instructions here:
http://gtkpod.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/gtkpod/libgpod/trunk/README.SysInfo

Specifically, I had to run the command:
sudo lsusb -v | grep -i Serial

Then grab the 16 digit firewire ID, looks like this on my 80gb black classic:
$ sudo lsusb -v | grep -i Serial
iSerial 3 000A26001448D91A
iSerial 3 SN0001
iSerial 1 0000:00:1d.7
iSerial 1 0000:00:1a.7
iSerial 1 0000:00:1d.2
iSerial 0
iSerial 1 0000:00:1d.1
iSerial 1 0000:00:1a.1
iSerial 1 0000:00:1a.0
iSerial 1 0000:00:1d.0


Then, I edited the file /media/DAN\ IPOD/iPod_Control/Device/SysInfo to contain the following (the mount point of your iPod depends on it's name):
ModelNumStr: xB147
FirewireGuid: 0x000A26001448D91A

The instructions say to create this file if it's not currently there, I believe it is created by gtkpod itself upon first run with the iPod connected. The ModelNumStr was already in the file, and when you add your firewire ID make sure to add the "0x" in front of the 16 digits.

After that, load up gtkpod, if you haven't already run it once it will likely ask you for your model, and scan your database. You will want to modify a file (I simply changed the playcount on one of my songs), and then save.

If it works correctly (mine did), you will now be able to access your iPod again with all of it's previous music. Furthermore, when accessing it from amarok it should no longer lock up the database as the firewire ID is now saved in that file on your iPod.

Hope this helps and you will be able to access your music/album art again! :D

[abhiroopb]

I wrote a guide to getting your iPod to work well using Amarok...check it out...

http://ubuntuextreme.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-to-ipod-classic-6g-with-amarok-14_18.html

[bodhi.zazen]

well... the story goes like this, i have a 80 gb ipod classic, have 30 gbs on music and i had it all synced with itunes on windows, it took me too much time on getting album artwork but i had almost all the music with artwork, and because i need the space on my computer, after syncing my ipod i delete everything, then i plugged my ipod on ubuntu just for me to be able to listen to music in amarok, and when i unplugged it all the artwork was gone -.- !!!! im so pissed what can i do? there is no program usefull such as itunes for ipod?? hell im mad

Please direct your anger at Apple. They publish software so you can use the device on Windows, but not Linux. When an open source solution is found, Apple modifies the code and the device no longer works on windows.

My advice, return your ipod and by an alternate product. Most MP3 players are half the cost of an ipod and most work with Linux.

I am closing this thread now, I suggest you either search google for a possible solution, contact Apple, or start a new thread with a more appropriate posting style. Keep in mind, we are all volunteers here.