Thanks Brad for the info. Yes, it's an HFS+ formatted iPod, and hence my problem. I'll try the "touch test" test you suggest. I have a feeling though, I may be out of luck.

My ipod is formatted as hfs+ and i can use it on linux. however i needed to disable the journal feature; that can only be done from within OS X. To do so plug your ipod into OS X and run diskutil -disableJournal <ipod_mount_point>. Although if you plan to reformat the ipod for visit, the format of the ipod will change from HFS+ to vfat, linux has fill read/write support for vfat; so writing to the ipod after you format for visita will not be a problem - brad