Unable to 'mount' and use my itouch 8Gig device. I use Ubuntu 9.10 s/w
 

What do I call this device in /etc/fstab. Currently the line I'm using is...

/dev/sdc0 /media/ipod auto nosuid,noauto,nodev,rw,umask=077,gid=1000,uid=1000,user,defaults,noatime,iocharset=utf8 0 0

/etc/mtab does not update when device is plugged in.

Having made a mount directory (/media/ipod) an error message tells me
... mount: special device /dev/sdc0 does not exist...
when I try to mount it.

I cannot see it in 'gparted' or 'disk utility' but I can see it on sys log and kern log when I plug it in and remove it.

I have visited several help forums and loaded several types of recommended software (ifuse-libs and mux's etc) but with no satisfactory result.

I have successfully 'Jail broken' the device using 'Blackra1n' on a windows machine.

It used to appear on the desktop but alas...no more. I've obviously broken something!

I'd appreciate any help going.........

maybe a stupid question, but are you sure kernel.log reports it as /dev/sdc0 and not some other device?
before and after you plug it in, does `fdisk -l` show anything different?

Where are the sdc0 and other disk names derived from
 

I guess my problem is (amongst others) that I do not know where the name sdc0 is derived. I copied that name from advice given on another forum.

The puter is (of course) scratching its head.

Plugging in and unplugging the device gives the readout that follows.

Jan 7 14:18:28 jh-desktop kernel: [ 570.488570] usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
Jan 7 14:18:28 jh-desktop kernel: [ 570.625069] usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 3 choices
Jan 7 14:25:23 jh-desktop kernel: [ 985.807889] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, address 3


I suspect that until I can resolve the correct naming of the device in 'fstab', I'm not going to get very far.

BTW, I am able to 'ping'it ok.

run `fdisk -l` before and after you plug it in.
If it detects the device as a block device, it will tell you.
/dev/sdc = the device, /dev/sdc1 = the first partition on the device.
But you have know way of knowing whether it will be sdc or sdb or sdd as it depends on how many other devices of that type are in your system.

fdisk gives me no result. When I enter fdisk -l, I get the '$' sign after my user name. i.e. ready for another command.

Perhaps I need to download something ?

sorry, are you running this as the root user? You need to be.
If you don't know how, try `sudo fdisk -l`

Running fdisk as root - results
 

Running fdisk as root shows me my two hard drives and partitions thus:-

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x86e38f3b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9543 76654116 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 9544 9729 1494045 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 9544 9729 1494013+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 40.1 GB, 40060001280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4870 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe87fe87f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 4683 37616166 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 4684 4870 1502077+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 4684 4870 1502046 82 Linux swap / Solaris
jh@jh-desktop:~$

Plugging in the ipod and running fdisk again shows no change. The ipod connection is picked up in the log file however.

That is why you are getting your initial message then - because it isn't a block device. I dont have this device, but some quick searches indicate it needs fuse and bunch of other stuff. you may have already installed it (you mentioned it in your 1st post), but you mentioned something broke and stopped working. Do you recall editing /etc/fuse.conf? Are those settings still in effect? You may have to go back to those settings and check. I found this which looks like it might be complete http://www.ghacks.net/2009/12/20/syn...ch-with-linux/ but I really cant try it for myself.

Partial success
 

Hi zQUEz

Thank you for your help this far. I feel like I'm starting to get somewhere with a program called 'iFuse'. I'll let you know how I get on.

It was mounting the ipod and giving me a desktop icon yesterday. Now I need to go back and find out what has changed to cause it to break once again !

Partial Success
 

Hi....

I can now mount my iTouch and transfer files using gtkpod. This was achieved by loading and running Sun Virtualbox. Win XP was installed to the Virtualbox then iTunes loaded onto Win XP. This worked fine but slow.

I then discovered that I didn't need to run the Virtualbox anymore to get my iTouch to mount. I guess some files loaded as a result of the Virtualbox installation have taken care of that.

Now I just issue the command "ipod-touch-mount" into the CLI then give the SSH password. The iTouch mounts and I can access it through gtkpod.

With every "upside" there is a "downside" however !

I am now unable to mount my cdroms. This kind of negates the reason why I wanted to connect the iTouch to this machine in the first place.

There must be a way that I can get the cdrom drives to mount as well as the iTouch.:banghead:

Thanks so far......

Is the CDROM problem just happening with the iTouch is mounted, or does it happen all the time now as a result of the changes that make iTouch work. Do you recall what the CDROM device name was? Can you provide any syslog output (like from the "dmesg" command) when the CDROM is attached, if it is an attached device? Or is the CDROM a permanently attached device? By "unable to mount" CDROMs, does this include manually doing the "mount" command as root?

Fixed
 

The cdrom problem was permanent. No matter what I did or what I called it (even renaming it to its original state) nothing worked.

It was time for a rethink.

When I first got the ipod and plugged it in, I could see its icon on the Desktop. I couldn't access it though. Right clicking and looking at properties gave me an ipod with a couple of widgets of memory. All cdrom/dvds worked perfectly as did the rest of the system.

During my attempts to get it all working I had varying degrees of success with Sun Virtualbox and various flavours if Fuse/iFuse etc. Again I had varying degrees of success with s/w like gtkpod/rthymbox and so on.

I was now in the state of owning a 2 week old, Jailbroken ipod and a system with non-working cdroms.

I guess you know what's coming......

Yup, backed up everything I could think of and reinstalled Ubuntu 9.10

I then recovered the ipod with itunes on a spare laptop and using the knowledge gleaned whilst trying to make it all work earlier installed all the necessary s/w to make it work.

The result is a fully working system with a non jailbroken ipod. I can take tracks off cd's, change them to Mp3's and save them to the ipod. I can also post pictures etc.

The web site that gave me all the info necessary was:-

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/ipod-touch...tu-karmic.html

I still can't get Rythmbox to read off a cd then export in mp3 format. I have to use a separate third party program to do that but I consider it a small price to pay for what I've now got.

My thanks to zQUEz for the help and time spent trying to help me. It came out right in the end and I learnt a lot along the way.

yep - I get to that point sometimes .... I attempt so many things trying to get one thing working, I end up breaking a bunch of other stuff and well it's often easier to reinstall at that point. The benefit as you said, is that you learn a whole lot during that time :-)
I can't help you with RythmBox as I use Songbird for all my audio playback + iPod (nano) syncing. Like you, I use a 3rd party app (Sound Juicer) to rip my CD tracks to mp3's. It's fast and does it perfectly and 95% of time even gets the CD text.

Rythmbox
 

Rythmbox is now working. It will read a cd, save the tracks and convert to mp3 on the fly. It's a bit slow though.

I got it to work by uninstalling the (older) version I had, then installing the latest version. It all then worked.

How do you get Sound Juicer to work ?

When I downloaded it, it just sat there with most menu options greyed out. When I tried prefs etc, it didn't make any difference. I just couldn't get it to run.

Cheers.....

With Sound Juicer I just installed from yum repository (I use Fedora so YUM is like "apt-get" on Ubuntu - in case you didn't know :-) ).
All the options in SJ are grayed out until you insert a CD. It then automatically reads the tracks, lists them and waits for you to click extract before ripping them down. It takes about 5 mins to get all tracks from a standard 70min commercial CD. I call that fast - not sure about others. I suppose if your machine wasn't automatically mounting CD's at the time you tried SJ then that is why it never did anything; because it never saw a CD as loaded.

But anyway ... sounds like RythmBox is working for you so it is a mute point.