Unable to transfer music from Rhythmbox to Ipod

[Ghost175]

Unfortunately at this point I cant use the ipod at all, that is I can use, as long as there is no data on it. It wipes all the supposed data by resetting the ipod upon disconnect. I can charge my ipod, but thats as for as linux (or should I say apple) functionality will carry the issue. Im going to call apple and at least hassle the customer service rep as to possible solution, im also trying to dual boot windows which should be.. interesting.

[pytheas22]

Sorry there's not a better solution. I'm glad that you're going at least to complain to Apple about its refusal to support Linux (which is especially nasty given that so much of OS X was jacked from free-software projects).

Also keep in mind that you could install Windows inside VirtualBox and configure it for direct access to USB devices--this would allow you to install iTunes in your virtualized Windows system and access the iPod that way. There are instructions here on getting all that set up (they're for Ubuntu 8.04 but should work on 8.10).

[Ymse]

I downloaded and installed Songbird 1.0.0, Build 860 (20081124135530 to my Ubuntu Intrepid, added the add-on for iPods, and everything works! I Just uploaded an album, unplugged the iPod and switched it on, and the music was there, and it played. Didn't have any albumcoverpics though, but that could be my music library, songbird or the plug-in - and it's reallt not that important (at least, not for me).

My iPod Nano is one of the newer (A1285, same as Stefanum), so hopefully it works for older versions too.

I just plugged it right in without doing anything with it beforehand.

*happymonkey*

[Glucklich]

The craziest thing happened to me today. I have a 2º Generation iPod Nano as you can see from the lsub:

Bus 001 Device 009: ID 05ac:1260 Apple, Inc. iPod Nano 2.Gen

And here's the funny thing about it. I first installed Ubuntu about the same time I joined the forums. After solving my sound problems, one of the first things I wanted to try was the iPod (for obvious reasons). Clicked on Rhythmbox and it was love at first sight. Everything worked perfectly. Now, I just installed the 9.10 version and apparently I cannot transfer songs to the iPod. I already tried gtkpod and it also doesn't work. On Rhythmbox, when I try to transfer a song it says: "Error creating directory: Permission denied." I will try songbird as previously presented as a solution but I wanted to know what caused the malfunction between versions. This one, seems like a Rhythmbox error to me.

Edit: Yep. Songbird works great and looks pretty cool. Rhythmbox just took a step behind for me, until they fix their iPod transfer issue. I hate when they touch on stuff that was already working.

[culturejam]

I ran into the same issue with an older iPod Photo. I tired RhythmBox and Gtkpod with no joy. I installed SongBird, and it alerted me that the problem is that the iPod was formatted for the MacOS filesystem with journaling turned on. It also said that I would need to turn journaling off (or reformat for Windows) to make it work with SongBird.

[budbaker44]

I don't know if this will help or if you fixed your problem but I have the 2nd gen iPod nano and I installed Banshee music player and plug my iPod right in and it synced right away after the window prompt asking me what I wanted to open my iPod in. Have had no problem sycning or adding or removing playlists or anything. Hope I helped you.

[FoolishStar]

I have the same problem, I think it's because when Ubuntu mounts the device it mounts it with the owner as root and the group root so normal users cannot write to it;

james@orion:~$ ls -al /media/
total 44
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 2009-12-15 07:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 21 root root 4096 2009-12-05 14:12 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 2009-12-04 22:03 cdrom -> cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-12-04 22:03 cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-12-04 22:03 cdrom1
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8192 2009-12-13 18:44 hdd0
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 16384 1970-01-01 01:00 ORION
drwx------ 1 james james 4096 2009-12-13 18:44 usb_disk

My Ipod is call 'ORION', if you look at my other usb disk 'usb_disk' you will see that the owner of that is james.james.

I mount my usb_disk the old fashioned way using FSTAB. Not had chance to try this yet but I'll mount it with FSTAB later and post back here if it allows a normal user to write to it.

I firmly think it's nothing to do with using another application or GCC, it's just permissions, same as my problem with Ubuntu 9.10

[FoolishStar]

Aye it was added it in fstab and behold!

james@orion:~$ ls -al /media/
total 44
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 2009-12-15 08:16 .
drwxr-xr-x 21 root root 4096 2009-12-05 14:12 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 2009-12-04 22:03 cdrom -> cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-12-04 22:03 cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-12-04 22:03 cdrom1
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8192 2009-12-13 18:44 hdd0
drwx------ 8 james james 16384 1970-01-01 01:00 ORION
drwx------ 1 james james 4096 2009-12-13 18:44 usb_disk

james@orion:~$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# / was on /dev/sdb1 during installation
UUID=544c9c60-19dc-4365-ab87-3d68cc1923a8 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/sdb5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/sda2 /media/hdd0 ntfs-3g defaults,en_GB.UTF-8 0 0
/dev/sdh1 /media/usb_disk ntfs-3g defaults,en_GB.UTF-8 0 0
/dev/sdj2 /media/ORION ntfs-3g defaults,en_GB.UTF-8 0 0

I did this by firstly plugging in my ipod. Then I ran 'dmesg | tail' from a terminal, that outputted;

james@orion:~$ dmesg | tail
[49638.093431] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdj] Mode Sense: 68 00 00 08
[49638.093434] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdj] Assuming drive cache: write through
[49638.094925] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdj] 14651280 2048-byte logical blocks: (30.0 GB/27.9 GiB)
[49638.096049] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdj] Assuming drive cache: write through
[49638.096053] sdj: sdj1 sdj2
[49638.139126] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdj] 14651280 2048-byte logical blocks: (30.0 GB/27.9 GiB)
[49638.141679] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdj] Assuming drive cache: write through
[49638.141687] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdj] Attached SCSI removable disk
[49639.452828] FAT: invalid media value (0x2f)
[49639.452835] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdj1.

Which gave me the clue that the actual device was from '/dev/sdj' so I was looking for that from the next command;

james@orion:~$ mount
/dev/sdb1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
/dev/sda2 on /media/hdd0 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/james/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=james)
/dev/sdc1 on /media/usb_disk type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,default_permissions,b lksize=4096)
/dev/sdj2 on /media/ORION type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=devkit,uid=1000,gid=1000, shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1,flush)

As you can see, Ubuntu mounted /dev/sda2 on /media/ORION so I added the following to my FSTAB file in /etc

/dev/sdj2 /media/ORION ntfs-3g defaults,en_GB.UTF-8 0 0

[dentman]

Dude
Sudo Rhythmbox

It opens and you can copy files to your crappy Apple mp3 player.

[andy1964]

I have a 3rd generation iPod (30GB x8484 model) and had this exact problem with mine when I switched to 9.10 Karmic six weeks ago.
Here's how I fixed it:-

1, go back to iTunes on a windows OS (either your own or anyone else with it on their windoze machine.
2, On the options screen for the iPod, click 'Manual data usage' on the main option for the iPod.
3, Close iTunes and remove you iPod. Destroy the windoze box (only joking....)
4, Go back to your Linux machine.
5, Launch Rhythmbox (should do this automatically as soon as your iPod mounts onto the desktop ).
6, Import the music file into Rhythmbox (File >>> Import).
7, Go to the music folder in the LHS bar of Rhythmbox. You should now see the music file you've just imported.
8, Drag and drop this onto the iPod folder on the LHS screen of Rhythmbox. If you're eagle-eyed, you may even see the transfer bar flash up on the bottom RHS of Rhythmbox).
9, Eject the iPod. (File >>> Eject)
10, You should have the track on you iPod now.

I've done similar operations with podcasts.
Haven't been able to work out syncing yet so am manually manage this. I find it not a great problem, however, as I tend to only add music to the iPod and add/subtract podcasts.

Hope it works
Cheers
Andy