znantho

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I have seen quite a few reports of people being able to use the iPod on Linux, so I was thinking I would have good luck.

The model I bought is new as of this writing and is designed to be compatible with Mac and Windows platforms. From what I understood, the unit comes unformatted and is formatted when you plug it and run the installation software. I used my wife's Windows XP computer to do this initial setup, which formatted the disk with a FAT32 (vfat) file system.

At this point, Windows recognizes it as a removable drive under "my computer". Now, I'm thinking I should be able to plug it in my Linux box and mount it as /dev/sda something -- wrong!

dmesg shows that the device is recognized and driver loaded - but - there is a "Buffer I/O error" that prevents it from being accessed. Here's the text from dmesg:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using address 2
SCSI subsystem initialized
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Vendor: Apple Model: iPod Rev: 1.63
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
USB Mass Storage device found at 2
usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
sda: Spinning up disk......ready
SCSI device sda: 78126048 512-byte hdwr sectors (40001 MB)
sda: assuming Write Enabled
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
sda:end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 78126040
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 9765755
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 78126040
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 9765755
sda1 sda2
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
inserting floppy driver for 2.6.5-1.358
floppy0: no floppy controllers found
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trying to mount it produces nothing but 'can't read superblock' errors.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[root@localhost root]# mount /dev/sda /mnt
/dev/sda: Input/output error
mount: /dev/sda: can't read superblock
[root@localhost root]# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
/dev/sda1: Input/output error
mount: /dev/sda1: can't read superblock
[root@localhost root]# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
/dev/sda2: Input/output error
mount: /dev/sda2: can't read superblock
[root@localhost root]# mount -t vfat /dev/sda2 /mnt
mount: /dev/sda2: can't read superblock
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bottom line, this device does not work on Linux. (At least not for me, on Fedora Core 2).

spaghetti

Generation 4 ipod or ipod mini does work on linux!

This problems arise because the ipod mis-reports it's size and the EFI standard specifies a boot area at the end of the disk. The kernel dutifully goes and look for this end errors when it tries to read a non-existant cylinder.

It can be fixed by patching and recompiling the kernel. The elegant and simple patch (thanks Avi Kivity) is described here:

http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-usb-users@lists.sourceforge.net/msg12302.html

It works in both 2.6 and 2.4.22 and later kernels.

Once you have made this change, you the data area of the ipod should correspond to /dev/sda2. By default, this can only be mounted by root.. On fc1, I find that an entry is automagically put in /etc/fstab. If you edit this line, replace "owner" with "user" and remove the "kudzu" option, you will find that ordinary users can mount it.

Gtkpod has a handy feature that will attemt to mount the ipod on startup and umount it on exit. This is good, but it does not prevent the "do not disconnect" message from displaying on the ipod. To do this, you need to run "eject ipod" as root. However, if you put the following line in /etc/sudoers:

ALL ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/eject ipod

then any user can run the command sudo eject ipod.

You can then create a script ~/.gtkpod/gtkpod.out containing the single line:

/usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/eject ipod

and gtkpod will also eject the ipod when it quits.

I hope this helps.

Spag

GEEF

First step is add this line to "/etc/fstab" (make sure there is an empty line at the end of fstab)

/dev/sda2 /mnt/ipod vfat

(remember to substitute "sda2" with your ipods label.)


Along with making the "gtkpod.out" script. which should look somthing like this:

/usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/eject /dev/sda2
rmmod -f sbp2

(if you dont know how to make a script, all you do is go to "~/.gtkpod" then right click and make a new text file, copy in the example (substituting "/dev/sda2" with whatever your ipod is labelled) into it and save it as "gtkpod.out".

also, if you repeat this step only make a script called "gtkpod.in" and put this in:

modprobe sbp2

it will make it load the module, so if it is in "do not disconnect" than it will switch it automatically when you open GTKpod.

so by using those two scripts, adding the appropriate line in "/etc/fstab" and setting the preferences in GTKpod to handle the mouting and un-mounting, you get the most out of using your ipod on linux.

nascent

I have an ipod photo and got the same problem. When copying large amounts of data I'd get heaps of Buffer I/O errors etc.

I finally figured out after applying the patch spagetti mentioned above the the photo has different USB id's than the 40GB model.

So, if you have an ipod photo just change the product id in the code from Avi Kivity and it'll be happy ever after: Change 0x1203 to 0x1204


I know this isnt about the photo but I'm sure someone will benefit from this.

nascent

Ikebo

With the helpful instructions above, my Windows formatted 4G IPod (the 20GB version) works perfectly well in Gentoo (2.6.10-gentoo-r6) through a USB connection.

(sdb because I have an SATA controller on sda)

$ mount -t vfat /dev/sdb2 /mnt/ipod
...
$ umount /mnt/ipod
$ eject ipod

A great little device to store additional copies of critical backups and still have room for tons of music.

Zsub

Bought myself a shiny fourth generation 40 gig iPod. I used Windows at that time. Then I decided to give SUSE a try. Install was quick and painless. One of my greatest surprises came when I plugged the iPod in. It just _worked_. (KIO-slaves, anyone? :P) Out of the box. Gtkpod recognized, everything worked. amaroK played my songs from it, not a cent of pain.
The only thing I ca think of is the inconvinience to have to open a terminal, log in as root and 'eject ipod'. Just that little step, and this God of Gadgets will get 10 points :D