Today my brother brought itself 1GB iPod Nano. It’s black, it’s thin and looks so cool.
I just love the smooth lines and the color, but I don’t like the software wich comes with the iPod. iTunes don’t like some songs
and the software instalation is quite anoying because it require to supply some personal information (according to Apple, this information is only requied for better customer support but I’m paranoic
). So after some Windows XP testing I brougt the iPod home with the idea to test it on my Gentoo Linux system.
Thanks to the perfect combination (not so perfect I still have some troubles with keeping entryes in /etc/fstab for my floppy and CD-R/RW/DVD-R drive and using them at same time with Gnome Volume Manager) of DBUS + HAL + Gnome Volume Manager the iPod was detected just after pluging it and mounted for me.
Here is the output of tail -f /var/log/messages
Jul 9 15:45:54 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
Jul 9 15:45:54 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 2 choices
Jul 9 15:45:54 localhost kernel: scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jul 9 15:45:55 localhost usb.agent[9864]: Keeping default configuration with /sys//devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.2/usb1/1-1
Jul 9 15:45:59 localhost kernel: Vendor: Apple Model: iPod Rev: 1.62
Jul 9 15:45:59 localhost kernel: Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
Jul 9 15:45:59 localhost kernel: SCSI device sda: 1999871 512-byte hdwr sectors (1024 MB)
Jul 9 15:45:59 localhost kernel: sda: Write Protect is off
Jul 9 15:45:59 localhost kernel: SCSI device sda: 1999871 512-byte hdwr sectors (1024 MB)
Jul 9 15:45:59 localhost kernel: sda: Write Protect is off
Jul 9 15:45:59 localhost kernel: sda: sda1 sda2
Jul 9 15:45:59 localhost kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sda
After sucessfull detection and mount I was able to browse the iPod as an ordinary USB memory stick, but scince the device for some reason can’t read mp3-s withought renaming them (sonata arctica – 8th commandment.mp3 will become S8xxx.mp3) I searched my portage tree (emerge -S iPod) for software. The result was the application called GTKPod, after emerge -av gtkpod and several minutes for compilation and configuration (how to configure GTKPod will be the subject of other post) I was able to browse the iPod to upload and download songs or listen them directly from the device.

Click on the image to view the actual size.
GTKPod is cool application, but when I have time I will probably contact the author to discuss possible changes to the application GUI and if he/she allow me I will code them.
Final note: DO NOT FORGET TO UNMOUT THE DEVICE before disconect, or your iPod will become corrupted. And sorry for my bad English…