Howto use Creative Zen Mirco in Hoary

[tora201]

After lots of searching, I finally got it going. Here is a short and very simple How To. Believe me, you wife will thank you for having the time to spend more time with your family. ;-) That is until my next project....

1)Importan: First, DO NOT install gnomad2 from the Ubuntu depositories, instead go to:

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gnomad2

Get the i386 version, download, and install from a terminal:

sudo dpkg -i gnomad2_2.6.3-1_i386.deb

You may have other dependencies that need to be installed before it will let you install gnomad. If that is the case, install the files as needed. I had to install libnjb4_2.0-1_i386.deb

(which is available from: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libnjb4)

Note: maybe the depositories could be updated with the relevant files?


2) Once you have gnomad2 installed, just connect your Zen, fire up gnomad from a terminal: :grin: sudo gnomad2

You can then make an icon for it in your menu, but unfortunately you will need to run it as as a superuser: Since I use Xfce, I just made a launcher in the menu, and in the Command line put: gksudo gnomad2

That should be it! (Unless somebody can CLEARLY tell me how to solve the problem of the thing absolutely wanting to run as a superuser! -- not that I really care anymore, but it would be nice if it could be solved in a simple way)
:wink:

Edit: Apparently this works for most other Creative Jukebox players etc. Just remember to get the latest files, as described above.


A few sources:
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-2700.html
http://blog.clurrcache.me.uk/index.php/archives/2004/12/15/zens-on-linux/
http://www.nomadness.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=2

[poofyhairguy]

Great howto. Glad I dug it out.

[xalphas]

I followed the steps and thank you i had success opening gnomad2 as root. I don't know if this is a problem with my zen xtra but in gnomad i can't see my playlists. When it opens it scans all the songs.. that's ok.. but couldn't transfer any song and see my playlist.

I rebuild the library of nomad by resetting and holding the play button. but no difference. I was not able to use my player for 2 weeks. If someone knows my issue and write something here i would be really glad.

thx.

[tora201]

I followed the steps and thank you i had success opening gnomad2 as root. I don't know if this is a problem with my zen xtra but in gnomad i can't see my playlists. When it opens it scans all the songs.. that's ok.. but couldn't transfer any song and see my playlist.

thx.

hmm... it works for me! Here is list of players that are supported by Gnomad2:

Creative Nomad Jukebox 1 (aka D.A.P.)
Creative Nomad Jukebox 2
Creative Nomad Jukebox 3
Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen
Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen USB 2.0
Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen NX
Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra
Dell Digital Jukebox ("Dell DJ")
Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Touch
Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Micro
(Without the 2.x MTP/PlaysForSure upgrade!)
Second Generation Dell DJ
(Without the MTP/PlaysForSure upgrade!)
Dell Pocket DJ
(Without the MTP/PlaysForSure upgrade!)

Yours seems to be there.... so I have no idea why it does not work for you. What you could do is post your problem in the Gnomad forums and see if that helps. I am pretty sure it is a problem with your particular model, and not the instructions I gave here. Try the following forum and see if any others have having similar problems:

http://www.nomadness.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=4

Best of luck! If you find success, please do post your results here as to help others who might be in a similar situation.

[Josh M]

I installed Gnomad2 a while back by apt. It works great with my Creative Zen Touch. I have to run this program as root for it to recognize and scan the mp3 player.

[xalphas]

@Tora201 thnx for the reply and effort. My Player is in the list. Zen Xtra 60Gb. I was using it 6 months ago with FC3. Then with warty with no problem. And also with Hoary 1 month ago.I reinstalled Hoary and started to have this problem.

Today i did a try again. Your guide is helpful and it installs those packages for njb and gnomad. Np. Today i connected again to my jukebox and can transfer files from jukebox to pc. But still can't transfer from pc to jukebox. I've already left a post to nomadness but nothing..

Anyway i will work on this in my free times. Hope i figure it out. Again thank you for writing.

[vassie]

Help
I cannot install libnjb4 as it depends on a newer libc6, thus meaning I cannot install the latest gnomad2
Someone please help, as there is no point in me using Ubuntu if I cannot copy music to my Zen Micro
Ben

[Joey911]

Yes - I had this problem, too. But you can download the files you need from the server mentionnend in the first post.
There you'll get the libc6 and the libusb (I needed it too)

Then you install these files and after that you can install the remaining files and use gnomad2

It works

[Joey911]

But be careful - Now I have problems with installing other programs..

I hope I'll find a solution for it

[dodongo]

After lots of searching, I finally got it going. Here is a short and very simple How To. Believe me, you wife will thank you for having the time to spend more time with your family. ;-) That is until my next project....

1)Importan: First, DO NOT install gnomad2 from the Ubuntu depositories, instead go to:

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gnomad2

Get the i386 version, download, and install from a terminal:

sudo dpkg -i gnomad2_2.6.3-1_i386.deb

You may have other dependencies that need to be installed before it will let you install gnomad. If that is the case, install the files as needed. I had to install libnjb4_2.0-1_i386.deb

(which is available from: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libnjb4)

Note: maybe the depositories could be updated with the relevant files?


2) Once you have gnomad2 installed, just connect your Zen, fire up gnomad from a terminal: :grin: sudo gnomad2

You can then make an icon for it in your menu, but unfortunately you will need to run it as as a superuser: Since I use Xfce, I just made a launcher in the menu, and in the Command line put: gksudo gnomad2

That should be it! (Unless somebody can CLEARLY tell me how to solve the problem of the thing absolutely wanting to run as a superuser! -- not that I really care anymore, but it would be nice if it could be solved in a simple way)
:wink:

Edit: Apparently this works for most other Creative Jukebox players etc. Just remember to get the latest files, as described above.


A few sources:
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-2700.html
http://blog.clurrcache.me.uk/index.php/archives/2004/12/15/zens-on-linux/
http://www.nomadness.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=2
There is an issue with libnjb I've just discovered... what I think you've bumped into with the "you have to run this program as root" issue.

The problem is that there's a hotplug.sh script that comes with the libnjb package that (may | does) not get run when installing the .deb package. The script chmod's the USB devices for user-level access. Is this a security issue? I don't know... but there's an easy workaround for it. I wrote a quick shell script:

#!/bin/bash

gksudo "chmod -R a+w /proc/bus/usb"
gnomad2

This is the workaround suggested in the libnjb documentation. There, they suggest you have to run the chmod line every time you reconnect the jukebox to the USB bus. However, by using this script, you get the chmodding automatically (still have to type your password), and then runs gnomad2 as a normal user.

To get this to work, copy the above text into a file named [whatever].sh, then run chmod +x on that file.

[mstralka]

I just followed these directions and gnomad2 works great. The problem is, installing these non-Ubuntu packages broke a ton of other packages on my system and now, Synaptic reports 3 broken packages and wants to remove a ton of packages. I can't figure out how to remove gnomad2 without removing all of these packages. Does anyone know how I can forcefully remove gnomad2 without breaking my system?


mstralka@ubuntu:~ $ sudo apt-get -f install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
build-essential dbus-glib-1-dev g++ g++-3.3 libart-2.0-dev libatk1.0-dev
libaudiofile-dev libbonobo2-dev libbonoboui2-dev libc6-dev libc6-i686
libdbus-cil libesd0-dev libexpat1-dev libflac-dev libfontconfig1-dev
libfreetype6-dev libgconf2-dev libgcrypt11-dev libglade2-dev libglib2.0-dev
libgnome2-dev libgnomecanvas2-dev libgnomeui-dev libgnomevfs2-dev
libgnutls11-dev libgpg-error-dev libgtk2.0-dev libice-dev libid3tag0-dev
libidl-dev libjpeg62-dev libmono-dev libmusicbrainz4-dev libncurses5-dev
libogg-dev liborbit2-dev libpango1.0-dev libpopt-dev libsm-dev
libstdc++5-3.3-dev libtunepimp2-dev libvorbis-dev libx11-dev libxext-dev
libxft-dev libxi-dev libxml2-dev libxrender-dev locales lsb nvidia-glx-dev
ubuntu-base xlibmesa-gl-dev xlibmesa-glu-dev zlib1g-dev
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 56 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives.
After unpacking 118MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?


Thanks

[dodongo]

I just followed these directions and gnomad2 works great. The problem is, installing these non-Ubuntu packages broke a ton of other packages on my system and now, Synaptic reports 3 broken packages and wants to remove a ton of packages. I can't figure out how to remove gnomad2 without removing all of these packages. Does anyone know how I can forcefully remove gnomad2 without breaking my system?


mstralka@ubuntu:~ $ sudo apt-get -f install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
build-essential dbus-glib-1-dev g++ g++-3.3 libart-2.0-dev libatk1.0-dev
libaudiofile-dev libbonobo2-dev libbonoboui2-dev libc6-dev libc6-i686
libdbus-cil libesd0-dev libexpat1-dev libflac-dev libfontconfig1-dev
libfreetype6-dev libgconf2-dev libgcrypt11-dev libglade2-dev libglib2.0-dev
libgnome2-dev libgnomecanvas2-dev libgnomeui-dev libgnomevfs2-dev
libgnutls11-dev libgpg-error-dev libgtk2.0-dev libice-dev libid3tag0-dev
libidl-dev libjpeg62-dev libmono-dev libmusicbrainz4-dev libncurses5-dev
libogg-dev liborbit2-dev libpango1.0-dev libpopt-dev libsm-dev
libstdc++5-3.3-dev libtunepimp2-dev libvorbis-dev libx11-dev libxext-dev
libxft-dev libxi-dev libxml2-dev libxrender-dev locales lsb nvidia-glx-dev
ubuntu-base xlibmesa-gl-dev xlibmesa-glu-dev zlib1g-dev
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 56 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives.
After unpacking 118MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?


Thanks
It looks like you're only removing -dev packages (in general, not necessary for system operation unless you're compiling stuff yourself) and the ubuntu-base, which is a meta-package specifying what other packages constitute ubuntu-base, along with some other meta-packages.

As far as I can tell, allowing apt-get to do what it wants here isn't going to hurt a thing. You may have to reinstall the -dev packages if you want to compile something later, but none of that looks to me like it will "break" your system.

PLEASE PLEASE get a second opinion before going thru with the uninstall -- but I think you're safe.

[mstralka]

Thanks for your super-fast response and insight. I didn't notice that it was just DEV packages. I'm going to let it do its thing and then just reinstall it all... Even if I break something I'll probably be able to boot to the command line and fix everything.. I'll let you know if it works

[dodongo]

Even if I break something I'll probably be able to boot to the command line and fix everything.. I'll let you know if it works

Ah, there's the ambitious spirit! :) Good luck!

[mstralka]

alright so I removed them all and nothing seems broken. I haven't rebooted yet though.

I reinstalled Gnomad2 again and don't have the broken package issues now, but Gnomad2 doesn't have a sync feature so I'm going to try to install nomadsync. Thanks again

[vassie]

Now that gnomad2.7.0 is out, it's very easy to install, here's how I got it working....

wget http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/gnomad2/gnomad2-2.7.0-1.FC3.i386.rpm
wget http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/libnjb/libnjb-2.1.2-1.FC3.i386.rpm
sudo alien gnomad2-2.7.0-1.FC3.i386.rpm
sudo alien libnjb-2.1.2-1.FC3.i386.rpm
sudo dpkg -i libnjb_2.1.2-2_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i gnomad2_2.7.0-2_i386.deb

Thats it :)

Ben

[xalphas]

@vassie Thank you very much. Latest package of njb and gnomad2 works great. I want to ask about listening music from gnomad. I select play track in Gnomad. But no sound comes. I also asked this to nomadness forums but i really need a detailed answer of what i am missing.

Thx.

[weeroona]

Has anyone gotten Gnomad 2.8 working yet? I'm trying to download the right libraries to compile it but I keep getting MD5Sum mismatch on a bunch of the library packages needed to install libgnomeui2.0.

[dodongo]

Has anyone gotten Gnomad 2.8 working yet? I'm trying to download the right libraries to compile it but I keep getting MD5Sum mismatch on a bunch of the library packages needed to install libgnomeui2.0.

We're slowly wending this thread off-topic, but I'll bite :) Yes, I do have Gnomad 2.8 working, though I've compiled the 2.2 libnjb by hand and symlinked as necessary, and I have Gnomad 2.8 compiled locally as well. I'm still getting odd errors; it's very picky about when it likes to run and when it doesn't. However, the 2.8 series adds some nice functionality, so as soon as I can track down some sort of bug, I'll toss a report into the hopper.

[vassie]

2.8 works fine too, make sure you download the FC3 packages and not FC4

Ben

[Lord Illidan]

10x vassie!!

[tUrtleAE86]

I installed according to Vassie's instructions, modified to install gnomad2-2.8.0.2 instead. But, I get the following error when I try to run using "sudo gnomad2".

gnomad2: error while loading shared libraries: libnjb.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I already have libnjb installed though.... any ideas?

[vassie]

Try these two debs's

http://195.153.177.76/upload/ben/deb/gnomad2_2.8.0-2_i386.deb
http://195.153.177.76/upload/ben/deb/libnjb_2.2-2_i386.deb

I noticed version 2.2.1 of libnjb is available, but there is only an FC4 rpm, and the last time I tried the FC4 ones, it didn't work

Ben

[tUrtleAE86]

Try these two debs's

http://195.153.177.76/uploads/ben/deb/gnomad2_2.8.0-2_i386.deb
http://195.153.177.76/uploads/ben/deb/libnjb_2.2-2_i386.deb

I noticed version 2.2.1 of libnjb is available, but there is only an FC4 rpm, and the last time I tried the FC4 ones, it didn't work

Ben

Works great! Thanks!

[Royal2000H]

I installed from Adept (Kubuntu's Synaptic), and I can't get it running...

When I was using Windows, I put the PlaysForSure firmware so that I can use in on windows media player, instead of the standard creative firmware. Is that the problem?

Also, most my files are licensed with msn music because my friend somehow got me over 1000 codes for songs on msn music.... any way to play those songs in linux? and do i need the creative firmware for gnomad2 to recognize my creative zen micro?

[dodongo]

I put the PlaysForSure firmware so that I can use in on windows media player, instead of the standard creative firmware. Is that the problem?

Also, most my files are licensed with msn music because my friend somehow got me over 1000 codes for songs on msn music.... any way to play those songs in linux? and do i need the creative firmware for gnomad2 to recognize my creative zen micro?

To the first question, the answer is YES. To my knowledge, the PFS firmware is unsupported in Linux. If you re-flash the unit with the Creative firmware, you'll have better results.

As for the songs on MSN music... I can't speak to that with any authority, but my guess is that you're going to have problems with that, as they're tethered to Windows Media Player and MSN.

[dmartin]

As for the root issue, I followed the instructions here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=1184427#post1184427

You won't have the two files mentioned. Create them, and make their contents what is posted.

They worked perfectly for me, and I no longer need to be root to access my Micro.

As for the prior instructions, yes, making usb a+w is not a good idea at all, in terms of security. There's very little (maybe nothing) on a Linux system that should be writeable by everyone. At the very least, you should have made it writeable by a certain group (maybe a "usb" group) and then add users to that group. Still, I'd recommend the instructions on the page provided, as they work very well.