Creative Zen MP3 player on Linux?

borbjo · 01-30-2003, 01:11 PM

I just bought a Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen. Does anyone know if its possible to connect to this device in Linux?

I found this project on sourceforge:
http://libnjb.sourceforge.net/

.. but it seems they are only targeting Nomad Jukebox (at least according to the picture on the top. I did try it but it couldn't find my Zen).

So, does anyone know if this is possible?

I'd just hate having to transfer all my MP3's to my Windows partition to do it there :|

- bjorn

MasterC · 01-31-2003, 01:18 AM

That looks very nice! How much you pay for that?

Anyway...

Most of these devices can be connected up via USB-Mass Storage. USB 2.0 however will probably require you to either:
A. Recompile your kernel to include ehci usb support;
B. Hope it's in your kernel, modprobe up ehci and storage or usb-storage and give it a try.

Then, plug in your device, open up a terminal and as root type:
tail -f /var/log/messages

It should show what the device name (if any) is going to be. Most likely try things like:
/dev/sda1
/dev/sdb1 and look for similar names.

Good Luck, if you have problems with any of this, or need more clarification, let me know.

Cool

borbjo · 01-31-2003, 01:29 AM

Well, amazon has it for $349 .. pretty cheap considering the low dollar

anyhow, it's got Firewire and USB2 .. I'm running Red Hat 8.0 myself.

I must admit those suggestions of your were a bit over my head :| .. I was more looking for something like; 1. go there, 2. do a rpm -ivh blabla.rpm

hehe .. but I guess that's beeing naive :|

I did the tailing though, and got this response:

Quote:

Jan 31 08:18:29 localhost /etc/hotplug/usb.agent: ... no modules for USB product 41e/4108/1
Jan 31 08:18:29 localhost /etc/hotplug/usb.agent: ... no modules for USB product 41e/4108/1
Jan 31 08:23:35 localhost kernel: usb.c: USB disconnect on device 6
Jan 31 08:23:36 localhost kernel: hub.c: USB new device connect on bus2/1, assigned device number 7
Jan 31 08:23:38 localhost kernel: usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 3, frame# 1828
Jan 31 08:23:38 localhost kernel: usb.c: USB device not accepting new address=7
(error=-110)
Jan 31 08:23:39 localhost kernel: hub.c: USB new device connect on bus2/1, assigned device number 8
Jan 31 08:23:43 localhost kernel: usb_control/bulk_msg: timeout
Jan 31 08:23:43 localhost kernel: usb.c: USB device not accepting new address=8
(error=-110)

Doesn't look like it recognizes it...

- bjorn

MasterC · 01-31-2003, 02:04 AM

Go there and do this...

It's got firewire eh? Then:
Go here:
http://www.linux1394.org/

And do this:
read.

You will probably wanna look here for some ideas on mounting this as an external firewire HD:
http://www.linux1394.org/faq.html
AND
http://www.linux1394.org/faq.html#sbp2

It will be a little technical, so if you've got problems understanding it, post up the section you've got problems with and we'll help you understand them better.

Here's a quick and dirty for ya to try, if it works, cool; if not (which is likely) then go ahead and read up on a few of those pages, and at that website.

Start by plugging in your device. Then as root:
modprobe ieee1394
modprobe ohci1394
modprobe sbp2_1394

You will then have to run this script:
http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/rescan-scsi-bus.sh (To do this: After you download it, in the directory you downloaded it to type:
./rescan-scsi-bus.sh)

After you've ran that script try mounting the device with:
mount -t FILESYSTEM /dev/sda1 /mnt/mp3

Where FILESYSTEM is the filesystem on the drive, probably going to be vfat. Also make sure your mount point exists, so as root type:
mkdir /mnt/mp3

Then if all of this worked, you can access your mp3's and the drive at /mnt/mp3

If it didn't, go ahead and read through those links and post back with any questions you may have.

Cool

borbjo · 01-31-2003, 02:11 AM

Ok, thanks a lot. I'll read through it and test it out. Probably reply in a couple of days since I'm going away for the weekend.

Thanks again, looks interesting.

- bjorn

MasterC · 01-31-2003, 02:26 AM

You're welcome, and have a good weekend, I wish I was going away for it!

Cool

deacon · 04-09-2003, 06:22 AM

hi, i am trying to achieve the same thing as borbjo, except that i don't have the luxury of firewire. I have tried the steps in the second post about usb-storage module and /dev/sda and managed to a simple usb flash memory stick mounted and usable. However when i try and do the same to my Zen I get the same message as borbjo "/etc/hotplug/usb.agent: ... no modules for USB product 41e/4108/1".

What can i do to find a module for this? I don't want some fancy API, i just want to be able to mount the thing for easy access.

any ideas will be gratefully appreciated.

<later edit>
i just thought. very roughly speaking what we need is the same driver as the memory stick to be loaded by force. or some sort of ide driver adaptation. I am not a good enough C coder to work out what, but that is my 2c
</leter edit>

nakkaya · 04-09-2003, 12:46 PM

redhat s kernel has usb support built in so add this line to your /etc/fstab

/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 default noauto,user 0 0
and create /mnt/sda1 folder
this works for a model from creative i am not sure which one.
search the from i just answered someones question like this and worked

deacon · 04-10-2003, 04:25 AM

ok, but when i try to do anything with /dev/sda, where the memory stick showed it as a drive, the zen says 'cannot access device' or 'device does not exist'.

i don't believe there is a relationship with the scsi drive and the usb driver (like there is with the memory stick)

nakkaya · 04-10-2003, 11:52 AM

i am not sure why but when using usb stick redhat loads scsi modul

cav · 05-18-2003, 12:03 AM

I also have the zen, and have found that it is not as easy as mounting it as a usb hard drive. For some reason the filesystem on the zen disallows reading the contents of the player as if it was an external hard drive. Even in windows, you have to read the contents of the zen using the software that creative provides. Right now i'm trying to use Gnomad2 (on sourceforge), which says it should work with the zen. Looks promising, if I could only get it to run.

mhackarbie · 08-11-2003, 05:43 PM

Ok, it's now August 2003 and I just got a Nomad Jukebox Zen for my birthday and am trying to get it to work also. I have only looked around briefly, but it seems that all the apps out there rely on the libnjb, which I downloaded and built. Then I ran the 'files' program in the sample dir as a test, and got the error message 'no NJB devices found'. A quick look at the source code in base.c shows that the library is only going to work with a specific vendor and product id which doesn't match the NJ Zen model. The code was finding my device in the scan for devices, it just had a different product and vendor id:

[sample]$./files
found idVendor 41e idProduct 410b
found idVendor 0 idProduct 0
no NJB devices found

It seems that the author of the libnjb hasn't done any recent updates, so will Zen owners just be out of luck until the library is updated? Or is there any other library to support it? If I knew more about USB stuff and Jukebox operations, I would try bypassing the vendor and product id in the code, but that might not be a good idea.

William
willkn@montana.com

breakerfall · 11-25-2003, 06:54 AM

I can't compile libnjb at all... version 0.9.1 seems to fail. I configure it and then run make and get this:

Quote:

bash-2.05b$ make
cd src && make
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/breakerfall/libnjb/src'
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -c -o base.o base.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -c -o ioutil.o ioutil.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -c -o protocol.o protocol.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -c -o procedure.o procedure.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -c -o usb_byteorder.o usb_byteorder.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -c -o playlist.o playlist.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -c -o usb_io.o usb_io.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -c -o njb_error.o njb_error.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -c -o njb_64.o njb_64.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -c -o datafile.o datafile.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -c -o songid.o songid.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -c -o eax.o eax.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -c -o time.o time.c
ar crs libnjb.a base.o ioutil.o protocol.o procedure.o usb_byteorder.o playlist.o usb_io.o njb_error.o njb_64.o datafile.o songid.o eax.o time.o
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -fPIC -o base.lo -c base.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -fPIC -o ioutil.lo -c ioutil.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -fPIC -o protocol.lo -c protocol.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -fPIC -o procedure.lo -c procedure.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -fPIC -o usb_byteorder.lo -c usb_byteorder.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -fPIC -o playlist.lo -c playlist.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -fPIC -o usb_io.lo -c usb_io.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -fPIC -o njb_error.lo -c njb_error.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -fPIC -o njb_64.lo -c njb_64.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -fPIC -o datafile.lo -c datafile.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -fPIC -o songid.lo -c songid.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -fPIC -o eax.lo -c eax.c
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -fPIC -o time.lo -c time.c
gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,libnjb.so.0 -o libnjb.so.0.9.1b base.lo ioutil.lo protocol.lo procedure.lo usb_byteorder.lo playlist.lo usb_io.lo njb_error.lo njb_64.lo datafile.lo songid.lo eax.lo time.lo -lusb
ln -s -f libnjb.so.0.9.1b libnjb.so
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/breakerfall/libnjb/src'
cd sample && make
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/breakerfall/libnjb/sample'
gcc -g -O2 -I../src -Wall -L../src delfile.c -lnjb -lusb -o delfile
../src/libnjb.so: undefined reference to `errno'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[1]: *** [delfile] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/breakerfall/libnjb/sample'
make: *** [samples] Error 2

What a bummer

Gnomad2 looks promising, but I can't get libnjb installed. I can't even emerge it as that fails aswell. Are there any special config switches I should try? I have the zen and want to connect it via firewire (although I can use USB if necessary).

Any help appreciated

nitzer_slack · 05-24-2004, 02:12 PM

Trying to use my Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra and i cant mount it:

Code:

root@warsaw jasper # mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb/ 
mount: special device /dev/sda1 does not exist

Linux sees it when i connect the usb:

Code:

May 24 13:04:32 warsaw usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using address 3

But I'm clueless to what device this means i should use (sda3? sda2?)

breakerfall · 05-24-2004, 03:20 PM

The jukebox isn't the same as a SCSI special device HD (like some cameras are) because it uses a special filing system that creative came up with. You need the libnjb library and a user interface to access the player as you can't mount it like a HD, unfortunately.

Look up libnjb and gnomad2. Eventually got them working a while back.