On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:00:35 -0400, douglas.r.aker@verizon.com wrote:
Is anyone in the group using gtkpod (iPod GUI) on Ubuntu 6.06 or 7.04?
I use amarok to sync my ipod, but i have used gtkpod in the past.
I installed the gtkpod package yesterday on Ubuntu 6.06 and hooked up my son Dan's iPod Nano using its USB cable. The iPod icon appeared on desktop automatically. I checked, using mount command, to see if /media/ipod was mounted read-write, and it appeared to be. I started gtkpod and was able to completely read the contents of the iPod, all 350+ songs. So far, so good. But, when I tried, as an experiment, to create a new playlist using gtkpod, and write that change onto the iPod, I got several error messages about write failures due to a read-only filesystem.
Anyone had a similar experience? Any fix or workaround out there?
I have had similar experiences using HFS+ (apple's filesystem) formated ipods. What is the format of your ipod? When you plugin your ipod look at the output of dmesg. Sometimes you'll see a message telling you that it's mounting the filesystem as readonly. If the filesystem is HFS+ then you will need to disable journaling on the filesystem in order to write back to the ipod. As far as i know this can only be done from OS X. Since i have run into this problem many times before, i always try to write to the ipod using a terminal. Simply, 'cd /media/ipod', then 'touch test'. This will try to create an empty file on the ipod. If you get filesystem errors then the ipod is likely mounted read-only.
I'm considering either finding another open source iPod utility, something other than gtkpod, or upgrading to Ubuntu 7.04.
I believe most (if not all) open source utils use the same underlying library, libgpod. If you are seeing filesystem errors changing utils will likely not help you.
My ultimate goal is to 1) Transfer all the songs from the iPod to the Ubuntu laptop,
This should be possible even if the filesystem is read-only.
2) Reformat the iPod for use with iTunes running under Vista,
Also, this should be easy to do. If you plugin the ipod to a windows machine that doesn't recognize the ipod's library, it will ask you if you want to reformat it.
3) Transfer all the songs from Ubuntu back to the iPod. I think I can do steps 1 and 2, but so far, step 3 is a problem. And until I'm 100% confident that I can write all Dan's songs *back* onto his iPod, I won't try reformatting it.
Please check what filesystem that currently resides on the ipod. I have done all these steps before several times.
Why, you might ask, don't you just use the Apple eBook that originally wrote (via iTunes) to Dan's iPod? 'Cause that device now sits in my daughter Abby's dorm room 400 miles West of here (R.I.T.).
They can make pretty long USB cables now-a-days. Good luck, - brad