iPod setup

agentchange · 07-11-2006, 04:23 PM

I went to the Apple Store and formatted my iPod so it was back to the original factory settings. As soon as I plugged it back into my computer, ipod:/ pops up with three different directories - Artists, Playlists, and Utilites. Note that the one song I copied from the Apple Store is listed under Playlists, where I see the name of the iPod and the song underneath that.

When I go to My Computer and select the iPod from that direction, under media:/sda1, it still only shows one directory, iPod_Control.

I then went into /etc/fstab and changed the file system type for sda from vfat to hfs, since I formatted it off of a Mac, to see if that would have any effect. No luck there.

I tried copying a couple of additional songs into ipod:/Playlists/Apple’s iPod from my computer, but it says "Could not write to file zzz.mp3." I tried to copy them into media:/sda1, and it appears that it completes the function, but they do not play when in standalone mode. Probably not reading the songs copied in the Linux file system? I then try to delete them, with no effect. I try to move the file off of the iPod onto my computer and get this, "The file or folder /media/ipod/zzz.mp3 does not exist.

I am thinking that I need to remove some Gnupod software and configuration that I installed, or configure some settings to make it work, or set up gtkpod, as I was directed to, or all of the above. This is how far I have gotten. Here is what my fstab looks like at the moment.

/dev/sda /mnt/ipod hfs sync,user,noauto,umask=000 0 0

FreeDoughnut · 07-11-2006, 04:57 PM

iPods have their own special way of organizing files and playlists. You need to use gtkpod or another program designed especially for iPods.

johnson_steve · 07-11-2006, 07:57 PM

and it's hfsplus not hfs not the same thing. & journaling must be disabled for linux to be able to write to it.

agentchange · 07-12-2006, 03:13 PM

Ok, this time I made double-sure that it was actually done in HFS, not FAT like it was done yesterday. I ran into a slight discrepancy though. I converted the file system to Mac Original, and had the option of converting it to Mac (Extended), but the latter included journaling. It is now empty with the iPod software on there and everything is in Mac Original. I talked to a tech there and asked him what HFS+ was comprised of. He said that "HFS" was considered Mac Original and "HFS+" was considered Mac Extended, since it had the journaling enabled. He also said that there was no way to turn off journaling in Mac Extended, which is what I was thinking was needed. He then said that what I needed to do to make it work in Linux was convert the iPod, from within Linux, to xfs file system, though after searching this forum, I found very little about xfs, in general.

So now I am wondering if it is actually HFS, and not HFS+, and what I need to have in my fstab, and if this guy wasn't giving me the entire run-down just to get me moving along.

johnson_steve · 07-12-2006, 07:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by agentchange

He said that "HFS" was considered Mac Original and "HFS+" was considered Mac Extended, since it had the journaling enabled. He also said that there was no way to turn off journaling in Mac Extended, which is what I was thinking was needed. He then said that what I needed to do to make it work in Linux was convert the iPod, from within Linux, to xfs file system, though after searching this forum, I found very little about xfs, in general.

So now I am wondering if it is actually HFS, and not HFS+, and what I need to have in my fstab, and if this guy wasn't giving me the entire run-down just to get me moving along.

This guy is talking out of his ass.

Yes you can disable journaling this is from the man page of diskutil on osX 10.4 Tiger:

Quote:

enableJournal device
Enable HFS+ journaling on a mounted HFS+ volume. Ownership of
the affected disk is required.

disableJournal device
Disable HFS+ journaling on a mounted HFS+ volume. Ownership
of the affected disk is required.

this is for diskutil a command line utility not Osx's graphical disk-utility.

I've had 3 iPods and 2 macs. I even installed Tiger on my old powerbook lombard even though apple says it's not possible; it is, you just don't get to use their nice graphical installer you have to do it manually. (I ditched tiger in favor of linux on this powerbook now) In my experience mac techs don't know as much as they should about macs and even less about linux.

AFAIK The only Filesystems that the iPod itself can understand are Fat32 (For Windows) and HFS+ (For OsX) I have never heard of converting an iPod to xfs before and am almost certain it won't work. You can format the iPod with any filesystem you want it's an external harddisk; but if the iPod can't understand it itself it wont work in 'stand alone mode' as an mp3 player. a HFS+ (hfsplus for in your fstab) will mount as hfs if you try, but if you look on the disk it will have a little warning file that says it's not actually hfs but hfs+.

at this point stop and post the output of:

Code:

fdisk -l /dev/sda

agentchange · 07-12-2006, 07:29 PM

Correction. I was in a hurry at the Apple Store and in a hurry when I posted, as well, so I didn't really get all of the relevant facts in. Aside from what this tech said, I went back and used the Mac disk utility again and was able to convert it to Mac Extended (without journaling), so it should now be set up as HFS+ (journaling disabled).

So now what? Change the entry in fstab to hfsplus (I haven't plugged it in yet, still in a hurry.) If only have 1 sda device should it be set up as sda or sda1? I then need to install and run gtkpod?

johnson_steve · 07-12-2006, 07:36 PM

your first scsi device (usb mass-storage devices use scsi emulation) is sda. sda1, sda2, sda3 etc are the partitions on the device please plug it in and post the output of:

Code:

fdisk -l /dev/sda

This will give you a printout of the partition table on your iPod. my music is on sda3 for my HFS+ iPod.

agentchange · 07-12-2006, 09:15 PM

linux:/home/justin # fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 519 MB, 519700480 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 63 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 64 507489+ af Unknown
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(1023, 254, 63) logical=(0, 0, 62)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(1023, 254, 63) logical=(63, 46, 47)
linux:/home/justin #

Looks like maybe my system is not set up to recognize HFS+ at the moment?

agentchange · 07-12-2006, 09:46 PM

I changed the setting in fstab to "hfsplus", ran it again, and this is what it says:

linux:/home/justin # vi /etc/fstab
linux:/home/justin # fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 519 MB, 519700480 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 63 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 64 507489+ af Unknown
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(1023, 254, 63) logical=(0, 0, 62)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(1023, 254, 63) logical=(63, 46, 47)
linux:/home/justin #

johnson_steve · 07-12-2006, 10:54 PM

how about:

Code:

dmesg | grep sda

note that that | is a pipe usually shift&\ on most keyboards. do this a couple of minuets after you plug in the iPod.

agentchange · 07-12-2006, 11:23 PM

In the meantime, I installed gtkpod and hfsplus utilities, though I was a bit concerned when Yast told me that hfsplus would only allow reading of files at this time, no writing. I also changed the setting in fstab from sda to sda1. I was getting some message somewhere that led me to believe that it was supposed to be sda1. Anyways, it is showing up in My Computer with the correct volume name and iPod_Control directory with ITunes directory underneath that, though no files are visible. I then switched it to show invisible files, which showed me a couple of hidden folders, but these are inaccessible to even view, at least from My Computer. Needless to say, it wouldn't let me copy a song over, at least not yet.

Here is the output:

linux:/home/justin # dmesg | grep sda
SCSI device sda: 1015040 512-byte hdwr sectors (520 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 64 00 00 08
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sda: 1015040 512-byte hdwr sectors (520 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 64 00 00 08
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
SCSI device sda: 1015040 512-byte hdwr sectors (520 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 64 00 00 08
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sda: 1015040 512-byte hdwr sectors (520 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 64 00 00 08
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
linux:/home/justin #

agentchange · 07-13-2006, 09:33 PM

I read somewhere that fdisk will not work properly on HFS+ disks, that I have to use parted, though I have not figured out the right combination of components to put in the command line to mimic what we are trying to do with fdisk.

I tried out gtkpod and it looks like it will work great, though it gets hung up the minute it tries to do any writing onto the disk. It seems that all I have to do now is install an HFS+ utility that will allow me to write files, though there is nothing like that in the Yast repository. I found a couple of pieces of software located elsewhere that looks like they will probably work, but I am not sure which one to go with, as I have already had a bad experience cleaning up a mess after using a flaky piece of software from a sourceforge page.

One is called Ardis, and the other is called hfsplus 0.2, on sourceforge, though that one looks pretty old, is probably an older version of what I already have. Anybody have any opinion about Ardis or other solutions?

johnson_steve · 07-13-2006, 10:58 PM

Forgive me if this is is short but due to my own unrelated problems this is the 3rd time I've typed this.

fdisk does not support macintosh partition tables but the command I gave you doesn't write anything so it cannot hurt anything and I figured you'd have it. I use macfdisk to deal with macintosh partition tables but I've heard parted can do it.

in your dmesg:

Code:

Yours:
 sda: sda1

Mine:
 sda: [mac] sda1 sda2 sda3

sda1 is the mac partition table.
sda2 is the ipod firmware.
sda3 is the music and other data.

I'm thinking (hopping) that your kernel doesn't have support for mac partition tables. you need this in your .config

Note: I am assuming that you have a 2.6 kernal (why wouldn't you)

Code:

CONFIG_MAC_PARTITION=y

while your at it you should also have these

Code:

CONFIG_HFSPLUS_FS=y
CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=n

If you kernel is configured this way you can read and write (not if it's journaled) HFS+ without any utilitys (thats whay there are no new utilitys for hfs+)

also like that other guy said you can't just copy music to your ipod you need to use a utility that does it properly and updates the database. (I use gtkpod.)

agentchange · 07-13-2006, 11:31 PM

I may need to remind you that I have a little bitty iPod Shuffle. Partitioning is probably not needed or recommended. I'm totally new to checking to see if these lines are in my kernel, or adding them. How do I do this?

johnson_steve · 07-14-2006, 11:44 AM

Ok I don't have a shuffle so when you said iPod i thought iPod (though I should've noticed how small it was.) With an iPod shuffle sda1 is the one you want (it doesn't appear to have a partition for firmware.) I did find this on apple's page though.

from: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60957

Quote:

iPod only works (as a music player) when its hard disk is formatted for the appropriate platform using the Mac OS Extended (HFS Plus) or FAT32 formats. Do not reformat the disk using Mac OS Standard (HFS), New Technology File System (NTFS), or UNIX File System (UFS) formats.

Whether you use a Mac or Windows, iPod shuffle only works (as a music player) when its disk partition is formatted as FAT32 format.

So I don't think you can use a shuffle with hfs+ only fat32 on the bright side this probably means that your kernel is fine. but you probably have to run the iPod restore utility (from any pc or mac) on your shuffle. then mount sda1 somewhere (I think your system is trying to automount it this can conflict with mounting it manually or putting it in your fstab. All that is needed is a stable mount point if it mounts to the same dir every time you don't need an entry in your fstab; if it doesn't then you need to make it stop trying to automount it and put it in your fstab, but not both.) then if you fill in the mount point in gtkpod's preferences it should be able to add songs.

Incidently if you do want to see how a particular kernel option is configured in you currently running kernel you would do it like this:

Code:

zcat /proc/config.gz | grep CONFIG_MAC_PARTITION

but I don't think you will have to change anything in your kernel now. if you can read and write to a normal usb drive it should work with your shuffle.

I apologize for the misunderstanding.