# iPod Nano under Linux

## Xaid

I'm just ordered one of them from Apple's website and was wondering if anyone got it working fine with gtkpod/GNU pod?

----------

## justincataldo

I've got my mini working with gtkpod before. I don't imagine it would be any different since it interfaces in the same way...

----------

## DanielM

Yep, mine works great.

I have no idea how to get any photos to the iPod (that is currently what I'm in the process of working out..), but gtkpod detected it straight away, and uploaded things to it without any problems whatsoever.

So far, the only "issue" I had was putting "sync" in the mount command for the ipod. Make sure that is *not* there, so that music will transfer over the USB connection at a decent speed. 

Just follow the normal ipod guides and all will be well.

(ps.. I love my nano :>)

----------

## Xaid

That sounds great, I'm still waiting for it to arrive, hopefully it'll be here before friday so I can have some time on the weekend to mess around with it.

Thanks for the tip about the 'sync' flag btw.

I know about the photos since I checked gtkpod's homepage, it seems the album covers are not there yet either (or I could be wrong).

I never had an iPod before, so I wouldn't know know where to start when it comes to adding support for album covers/photos but if you have an idea on how to do this and need an extra hand with the code then drop me a PM and I'll be happy to help during the weekends.

 *Quote:*   

> (ps.. I love my nano :>)

 

 :Very Happy:  which color did you get? I ordered a black one.

Edit: Fixed tags

----------

## DanielM

I was going to have a look at the photo stuff, but I have too much Uni work to do. If it's not supported by the start of December (when I graduate), I'll have a bit of a hack around then.

I got the white one. The black was very nice, but there's just something about a white ipod...  :Smile: 

Also, I had issues with gtkpod when it was set to handle the mounting of the ipod. I had to do the following to make it all work nicely together:

fstab:

/dev/sda2               /mnt/ipod       vfat            nodev,nosuid,user,rw,noauto 0 0

gtkpod:

UNCHECK handle mounting/unmounting of iPod drive

CHECK Automatically import iTunesDB on startup

Whenever I plug the ipod in, I mount it myself. I umount it myself when I'm done, and then do # eject /mnt/ipod (as root). Until the eject command, the iPod tells me not to disconnect it. After the eject command, you can safely disconnect it from the USB cable.

There are probably more automated (and better) ways to do the above (perhaps the mounting/unmounting will work for you in gtkpod), but the above *worked* for me.

Enjoy your midgipod    :Razz: 

----------

## Apreche

I had a mini that worked just fine with gtkpod. I have udev/hal/dbus/ivman do all the mounting and unmounting for me, it's quite nice.  I tried to use gtkpod with my nano and everything seemed to work just fine. There was a problem with the checksum on the itunes db, but that happened all the time with mini.  I loaded a whole mess of songs onto the thing at night and in the morning when I was on the train I realized it was empty!  You said your nano worked just fine with gtkpod, so I'll try again and see what happens. 

As for loading pictures on there, the only way to do it right now AFAIK is to use iTunes.  Kind of annoying, but I don't really use the picture feature.  Unless there was a way to directly transfer pics from my cellcam to the ipod, that would be hot.  

As for album covers I'm pretty sure they work via id3-v2 tags.  Don't quote me on that though.  However, I have noticed that some songs I put on my ipod had album cover pictures.  I'm pretty sure there weren't any image files with those pictures in them on my hard drive.  I do know for a fact that album cover pics can be embedded into ID3-v2 tags.  There is no other way I know of to embed that data in an mp3.  Because the album cover pics showed up that implies that id3-v2 is the way it works.  I will do some experiments at home soon to be 100% certain.  

The nano rules, I got black. Only complaints are that it is hard to remove the USB cable if the headphones are plugged in.  Also, while it is very durable it gets very many small scratches, blemishes and fingerprints/oils very easily and quickly.  It was pristine for maybe 10 minutes before it took a trip in my pocket.  Still, the damage is invisible unless you inspect it closely and shine the light a certain way.  Other than that the device is great.

----------

## Xaid

That sounds great, if its only the id3-v2 tags then it should be a piece of cake to get working.

If you have the time, can you post your results? if you have a song thats part of an album and its album cover works, can you post the tags for that song / picture name and path..etc?

Thanks

Edit: Also, I dont want to use vfat if I can help it, so the next question is, how stable is reading+writing HFS+ partitions under Linux?

----------

## Apreche

HFS+ works great. There is a problem with the current version of gtkpod with the nano. You have to click "create ipods directories" before the nano will work with gtkpod.  That problem is fixed in the cvs version of gtkpod.  

I am going to test album covers tonight and I will post the results here.

----------

## HackingM2

I also had to chown everything in the iPod dirs to my user as they come set as root.    :Rolling Eyes: 

----------

## Apreche

After some experimentation I can say that I am 100% sure the album covers are encoded in the id3v2 tags.

1) I transferred some mp3s from linux to windows and added them to the itunes library. The album covers appeared which means they must have been part of the mp3 itself and not a separate file.

2) In winamp if I view the id3v2 of these files there is some binary data in the comment field.

3) Removing the id3v2 tag from these files in winamp makes the album covers dissapear in itunes. 

Now the trick is to figure out exactly how these album covers are encoded in the id3v2 tag so we can replicate the functionality in gtkpod and such.

----------

## Xaid

Hi Apreche,

I got my iPod nano today and to my surprise, it was formatted fat32 and not hfs+ but thats not a big issue.

gtkPod detected it fine and I transferred a few songs to test it out and it seems its fine, I'm currently making a big playlist to transfer in a few minutes so I'll see if that causes any problems.

I checked the directory structure on the nano and apparantly, its Contact list is basically vCards so that means it'll work fine under Linux since most of the Address book applications can export to vCards, I'll test it tonight and report back. I haven't checked the "notes" section yet, but I think its a simple format (text maybe?).

As for the pictures, which field was it that held the binary data? I'll check the id3lib and see if there is a maximum fixed size for the fields,

do you think its possible that the whole picture is basically in the field? simply grabing whats in that field and dumping it to a file might shed some light on this, unless its some proprietry format.

Edit: I just noticed you said it was in the comment field.

----------

## DanielM

Notes are just text files. 

I think, however, that there is a 3984 byte limit (or thereabouts). The rest of the text file isn't displayed.

I wrote this to split up files into 3984 byte chunks

```

#!/bin/bash

# ipodify.sh

# Daniel Marks - madmax@theonering.net

# 2005/09/16

BITS='3984'

COUNT='0'

FILESIZE=`wc -c $1 | gawk '{ print $1 }'`

LOOPTO=$(($FILESIZE + $BITS))

while [ $BITS -lt $LOOPTO ]

do

    FILENAME=$2

    FILENUMBER=`printf %03d $COUNT`

    head -c $BITS $1 | tail -c 3984 > $FILENAME'_'$FILENUMBER'.txt'

    BITS=$(($BITS + 3984))

    COUNT=$(($COUNT + 1))

done

```

So if you, say, have a book as a text document you could do

# ./ipodify.sh book.txt NameForIpod

And then copy the resulting text files to /mnt/ipod/Notes

Works for me   :Razz: 

----------

## Apreche

I'm not sure which field contained the picture. Though I am positive that the entire image was stored in that field. ID3v2 was designed to support that sort of thing.  In winamp the field was listed as "comments" but that might be because that is the field winamp supports. I'll have to actually use id3lib to figure out the real deal. All we really need to know is which field and whether the image is jpg/gif/png/bmp and we're good to go. 

The only reliable way I've found to get an ipod switched to HFS+ is to use an actual mac. As I have a windows laptop from work and no macs I've stuck with fat32. There's no real advantage or disadvantage either way.

----------

## Xaid

Hi DanielM,

Thats a pretty cool script   :Very Happy:  thanks!

Apreche, 

I took a quick glance at the ID3v2 specs and it seems the field size limit is 256 mb (but I could be wrong).

As for the image type, I think the easiest thing to do is to open up an image file regardless of its type, and dump all of the contents in one of the ID3v2 fields.

I have a small program I wrote a year or so ago (uses id3lib) but all it does is query the id3 fields and print them, I'll either hack it or write a fresh new one on the weekend and post back the results, I think it should be a fairly easy task, all it'll do is take whatever file you give it and write it into one of the fields (I'll start with the comment fields first), so this way we can try any image format and see which one will work.

----------

## DanielM

You can set images in the idtag using easytag. Pretty easy to do, too.

However, they don't show up on the iPod.

----------

## Xaid

After a bit of looking around, I found out there there is actually a field called 'APIC' which is used to store pictures in an MP3 file, I emerged pyid3lib and its straightforward to write a script in python that embeds a picture into an mp3 file. The problem I'm getting is, I cant see the pictures after I upload them to the iPod, but then again, I dont have an mp3 with an embeded picture to make sure that what I'm doing on the ipod is right (can someone can send me a url to an mp3 with a proper image embeded into it).

Here's the short script, mostly taken from the pyid3lib website.

```

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys

import mimetypes

import pyid3lib

imageFile = open(sys.argv[1], 'rb')

mp3File = pyid3lib.tag(sys.argv[2])

mimeType, encoding = mimetypes.guess_type(sys.argv[1], True)

id3TagField = { 'frameid' : 'APIC', 'mimetype' : mimeType, 'description' : 'Album cover', 'picturetype' : 3, 'data' : imageFile.read() }

print "MIME type of the image is " + mimeType

mp3File.append(id3TagField)

imageFile.close()

mp3File.update()

```

This is just a quick and crude code, there is no error checking at all so use it at your own risk.

Its just to test if the method works and if so then I'll try to write something decent.

To run it, name it something like embed_picture.py and chmod it 700 then do ./embed_picture pic.jpg file.mp3

The "picturetype" field is what I think might make a difference, the number 3 means its a front cover of the album, here's the rest of the codes:

```

Picture type:  $00  Other

                  $01  32x32 pixels 'file icon' (PNG only)

                  $02  Other file icon

                  $03  Cover (front)

                  $04  Cover (back)

                  $05  Leaflet page

                  $06  Media (e.g. label side of CD)

                  $07  Lead artist/lead performer/soloist

                  $08  Artist/performer

                  $09  Conductor

                  $0A  Band/Orchestra

                  $0B  Composer

                  $0C  Lyricist/text writer

                  $0D  Recording Location

                  $0E  During recording

                  $0F  During performance

                  $10  Movie/video screen capture

                  $11  A bright coloured fish

                  $12  Illustration

                  $13  Band/artist logotype

                  $14  Publisher/Studio logotype

```

The page I got most of this stuff from is http://pyid3lib.sourceforge.net and http://id3.org/id3v2.4.0-frames.txt

Report back any successes failures, try different image formats, bmp, jpg, png..etc, hopefully that mime function will parse it right  :Smile: 

----------

## Apreche

I have discovered itunes can encode multiple images into a single mp3.  Using itunes you can select which image actually appears in itunes and on the ipod.

----------

## LucaSpiller

Off topic, but heh:

I want to get an portable music player, and I think I might get an iPod - but all of my music is encoded in Ogg Vorbis format, so would I have to convert it before I could put it onto the iPod, or does gtkpod do that itself?

----------

## erikm

 *LucaSpiller wrote:*   

> Off topic, but heh:
> 
> I want to get an portable music player, and I think I might get an iPod - but all of my music is encoded in Ogg Vorbis format, so would I have to convert it before I could put it onto the iPod, or does gtkpod do that itself?

 

Or, better still, does anyone know of an extension / dirty hack / module / whatever that let's the IPod play .ogg files as is?

----------

## Apreche

The only way to get the iPod to play ogg files is to install linux on it. It works, but I personally wouldn't reccomend it.  AFAIK gtkpod does not convert ogg files by itself. In fact I've had it yell at me when I accidentally try to transfer ogg files. The only way to go is to convert the oggs into wav/aac/mp3 on your own.

----------

## erikm

 :Sad: 

I'm in the market for an mp3 player, and the Nano is the sexiest I've seen. I'm a little hesitant to spend big bucks on something that will have me converting my .ogg's, though... Maybe some MAC OS savvy type could implement this on the iPod's somehow?

----------

## Xaid

ErikM, check this site, I havent personally tried it but you asked for hacks   :Smile:  http://ipodlinux.org but I'm not sure if it'll work with the iPod nano yet.

LucaSpiller, you'd have to convert it if you want to play it on an iPod, if you find another way (beside ipod linux) let me know.

Ok, a small question, for some reason, I can't figure out how the display pictures on my iPod nano   :Embarassed:   I uploaded a couple of mp3s that  have pictures embeded into their id3 tags but when I go to "Photos->" I only see the settings for slideshows, is there a special thing that I have to enable to get this working?

Apreche,

From checking the specification page for id3v2, I'm almost sure that you can add multiple pictures (as long as they 're in different APIC frames I think, and then you should be able to choose which one you want when you play them.

This is the paragraph describing this (section 4.14 of the id3v2 document)

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> There may be several pictures attached to one file, each in their individual "APIC" frame, but only one with the same content
> 
>    descriptor. There may only be one picture with the picture type declared as picture type $01 and $02 respectively.
> ...

 

I tried to see the picture in the mp3 file that you sent me once I uploaded it to the ipod but for some reason I cant see it but I can play the song fine.

For anyone who's interested in extracting the pictures from an mp3 file, the following quick hack (use at your own risk, no error checking at this point):

```

import sys

import mimetypes

import pyid3lib

mp3File = pyid3lib.tag(sys.argv[1])

imageField = mp3File[mp3File.index('APIC')]

imageFile = open(sys.argv[2]+mimetypes.guess_extension(imageField['mimetype']),

        'wb')

imageFile.write(imageField['data'])

imageFile.close()

```

So basically if you called this extract_image.py then do chmod 700 extract_image.py you have to pass it the mp3 file name and the name that you want the picture to be saved in (without the extension), the mime handling is a bit flaky, I tried an image/jpeg and it picks the default extension of .jpe but it works fine though.

On a sidenote, it seems iTunes doesn't set the picturetype to indicte if this is a back/front/etc but sets to 0 which means "other", so I updated the code in the above posts to reflect that.

----------

## pau

Just a comment...

Have you realised that ogg files are smaller than mp3 and the sound quality is better?   :Wink: 

Ogg is open, mp3 is commercial.

It's based on lossless compression algorithms produce compressed data that can be decoded to 

output that is identical to the original... With mp3 you're losing data...

Rio is producing music players that support ogg... as well as mp3, wav etc And they've even thought

about the linux community. they provide a java interface to upload, change, delete, edit etc your songs

This is my rio

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2003/karma.html

cheers,

Pau

----------

## NilOGrav

I myself were also wondering about obtaining a Nano. But today there was a topic on slashdot that stated that the nano is up for scratching, the frontcover and display that is, not any records. I seems as serious as not being able to read the display anymore, just from having the thing in your pocket. So be aware before you buy!!

I'm a little reluctant right now till Apple says a few words on the subject, since the looks is an important thing with the Apple stuff. In that thay will have the production adjusted or something. 

Please checkout this site as well: http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?14@823.1UXDaaTXUpD.0@.68b94d61

Let's hope this is solved quickly and let there be Nano's for everyone  :Smile: 

----------

## Apreche

I got a nano, and yeah it scratches. But it doesn't scratch to the point where you can't see the screen. It just gets lots of little tiny scratches all over it. Especially if you put it in a pocket with some spare change or keys. The back of most ipods now, including the nano, is made of this shiny metal that gets fingerprints all over it and also scratches. The plastic front of the nano scratches exactly the same as that one. Which is exactly the same way a GBA scratches. Other mp3 players like sony's new walkman probably scratch just the same. It doesn't affect the functioning or the sexiness of the device at all. But it will definitely make you grumble if you are obsessive compulsive. If it bothers you that much just wait a few weeks for a greater selection of protectors to come on the market. I know tunewear makes some great ones.

----------

## Xaid

Mine got scratched after one day, not a big scratch but I can see the small scratches if I tilt it in the direction of the light.

This is the first product that I buy from Apple and frankly speaking, I was expecting it to be a bit harder to scratch since all I did was put it in my jacket's pocket with nothing else but a tissue....

I ordered one of those "StickIT" packs from ebay which should arrive shortly, meanwhile I wrapped it up in one of those "Glade cling" plastic wraps, so hopefully that'll keep it safe for a while.

Meanwhile, about the album covers, I'm starting to think that just embedding the pictures into the mp3 is not enough, it seems that we'll have to update the "Photo Database" on the ipod since if I'm not mistaken, you should be able to see all the album covers if you go to Photos->..., the picture format for the photos is ithmb and I found a description of it on http://ipodlinux.org. The cool thing is that there is already preliminary support for it in the CVS version of gtkpod, but I'm not sure when will that be functional yet.

If someone wants to verify this, I could send them two mp3s, one made with iTunes 5 and one made with that little script I posted a few posts back, if I'm right then none of them should show the album covers.

----------

## red2

Here's my blog entry discussing my experience so far with the Nano (walking through all the steps I did)

http://panela.blog-city.com/ipod_nano_on_linux.htm

----------

## ph03n1x

Thx for the info from your blog. Had to create those dirs first.

Dunno why. used it with itunes and all was ok before...

----------

## Zyzzyva100

Can someone help me with writing the udev rule?  I can't seem to get it right.  I used dmesg and udevinfo to find the needed information (then again iPod was all I needed).

Then I added this to /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules:

```
BUS="usb", SYSFS{product}="iPod" NAME="%k", SYMLINK="ipod"

```

Then I made the /mnt/ipod directory and added this to fstab:

```
/dev/ipod               /mnt/ipod       auto            nodev,nosuid,user,rw,noauto             0 0
```

I couldn't get it to work so I rebooted and tried again, but I still get an error saying the special device /dev/ipod cannot be located.  Also, the iPod still shows up as an unmounted usb drive in media, so I don't think this rule is taking presedence.  I am using hal and dbus to control my mounting along with udev.  The only thing I was unsure of though, is the hfs file system.  Is this needed since the nano is vfat formatted?

Any help here would be appreciated, I have never had to write a udev rule before.

----------

## Xaid

Zyzzyva100,

This is my 10-local.rules entry for the ipod (notice the spaces after the iPod):

```

BUS="scsi", SYSFS{model}="iPod            ", KERNEL="sd?2", NAME="%k", SYMLINK="ipod", GROUP="usb"

```

the KERNEL="sd?2" depends whether your ipod is HFS+ or FAT32, mine is FAT32 so the sd?2 works just fine, if it was HFS+ I think its either sd?1 or just plain sd? (not sure which one). But it seems yours if FAT32 formatted.

The device should show up just fine in /dev once connected, if that doesn't work post back.

Good luck.

----------

## Zyzzyva100

That seems to have done it.  I wonder why it didn't work with usb as the bus.

The weird part is that under /media, I can tell it to mount, but it never actually says that it is mounted.  But if I don't tell it to mount, I can't use it in gtkpod (regardless if I tell gtkpod to mount it).  But since konqueror never sees it as mounted, I can't unmount or anything.  Eject /dev/ipod does actually "eject" it though, since the do not disconnect warning goes away, but it gives an error saying invalid argument.

Everything works fine, I just wonder if something still isn't wrong in the way I have it set up.  Oh well, as long as I can get music on and off.

----------

## Apreche

To be perfectly honest with everyone. I didn't make the udev rule and everything works just fine. Here's what I did.  

1) make sure to have kernel/module support for USB storage and such

2) Setup gentoo with udev

3) Install and start hal, dbus and ivman

4) in /etc/conf.d/rc I set use_fstab to yes. Not sure if this is necessary or not. 

5) plug in ipod. 

6) ipod automatically is mounted to /media/name_of_ipod

The name of your ipod can bet set with itunes, but it is actually just the volume name of the file system on the ipod. 

That's all I did and my ipod works just fine. Maybe if you aren't using hal, dbus and ivman you need to make the udev rules and such. I don't know for sure, just saying what worked for me.

----------

## pau

I really insist on the fact that the ipod is for mp3, which is a close thing... Go for the Rio, which supports ogg...

And, on the other hand, it's really limited... If you really want to but such a thing, maybe you'll find useful this guide to 

increase the available storage capacity to 200 GB

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Ipod_Nano_200gb_Instructions

you're welcome

Pau

----------

## ph03n1x

 *pau wrote:*   

> I really insist on the fact that the ipod is for mp3, which is a close thing... Go for the Rio, which supports ogg...
> 
> And, on the other hand, it's really limited... If you really want to but such a thing, maybe you'll find useful this guide to 
> 
> increase the available storage capacity to 200 GB
> ...

 

Hmm I think they pay you money for doing that. Stop the spam!

But then all please support http://ipodlinux.org so these ogg-fetish-dudes have to stop blaming the Ipod  :Very Happy: 

I can't wait to run linux on my ipod unfortunately I'm lacking the technical skills to help developping...  :Sad: 

----------

## Axander

 *pau wrote:*   

> Just a comment...
> 
> Have you realised that ogg files are smaller than mp3 and the sound quality is better?  
> 
> Ogg is open, mp3 is commercial.
> ...

 

Not to mention each time you encode to MP3, God kills a kitten. With OGG this doesn't happen, because God uses Open Source.

----------

## pau

No, they are not... I'm just a fan of free thingies...

Anyway... I love the page you posted! If I ever buy an ipod, I'll go for the linux thing!

----------

## pau

 *Quote:*   

> each time you encode to MP3, God kills a kitten. With OGG this doesn't happen, because God uses Open Source.

 

Well, I don't like kittens... they don't give a XXXX for anything... if you die alone in your flat and nobody realises, your kitten will eat you without big troubles

God uses open source? Is God open source himself? Can we hack him? What about a wiki page on linux installation on celestial entities?

----------

## hans0r

 *pau wrote:*   

> 
> 
> It's based on lossless compression algorithms produce compressed data that can be decoded to 
> 
> output that is identical to the original... With mp3 you're losing data...

 

*cough* dude, this is plain bullshit   :Shocked: 

----------

## pau

 *Quote:*   

> *cough* dude, this is plain bullshit

 

Buf man... wenn Du Dir vorstellen könntest, wie bescheuert ich so einen Kommentar finde, dann würdest Du den Mund halten. 

English: If you could figure out how stupid I find such a comment then you'd keep your mouth quiet

What is this? A post?! Try to argue a bit, but avoid lossy comments... 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_data_compression

Ogg can embed lossy and lossless codecs, Mr Cough. 

Again... read

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_data_compression

Maybe you understand now a bit better what I meant.

----------

## hans0r

 *pau wrote:*   

> 
> 
> English: If you could figure out how stupid I find such a comment then you'd keep your mouth quiet
> 
> 

 

just because you think my post is crap i'm not allowed to write it? wow. you're really open minded...

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> What is this? A post?! Try to argue a bit, but avoid lossy comments... 
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_data_compression
> ...

 

What is this? Try to argue a bit, but avoid using your hands to type and words with the letter E.... else: "Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200."   :Rolling Eyes: 

yes, this is a post. if you did some reading yourself then you would have realized for yourself that it's just wrong.

instead you just come up with some links that don't prove anything and make me do the research for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg

shamelessly using code cause quote doesn't show indents...

```
Ogg is only a container format. The actual music or video will be stored as a codec inside an Ogg container. Ogg containers, may contain mutiple codecs as for example a audio video file may contain both an audio codec and a video codec.

Ogg can embed the following codecs:

Audio codecs 

   lossy 

      Speex: handles voice data at low bitrates (~8-32 kbit/s/channel)

      Vorbis: handles general audio data at mid- to high-level bitrates (~16-256 kbit/s/channel)

   lossless 

      FLAC: handles archival and high fidelity audio data

Text codec 

   Writ: a text codec designed to embed subtitles or captions

Video codecs 

   Theora: based upon On2's VP3 adapted to the Ogg framework, multiplexed with Vorbis-encoded audio channels

   Tarkin: an experimental codec utilizing 3D wavelet transforms

```

yes, i know that ogg is just a container format, just like avi is.

yes, i know that ogg can be lossless.

BUT

let me quote what you said in an earlier post

 *pau wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Have you realised that ogg files are smaller than mp3 and the sound quality is better? 
> 
>  Ogg is open, mp3 is commercial. 
> ...

 

without a doubt you were talking about the LOSSY audio codec ogg vorbis since it is the only codec that ogg supports that can sound better while being smaller than mp3 at the same time.

hence: "*cough* dude, this is plain bullshit   :Shocked: "

and i dare to say it again: *cough* dude, your posts are still plain bullshit   :Shocked: 

----------

## pau

 *Quote:*   

> just because you think my post is crap i'm not allowed to write it? wow. you're really open minded... 

 

I didn't say you're not allowed to write anything. I was upset to read your comment and the use of "crap".

It's a pity that people like you are to be found around here... you just botch the forum.

I don't claim I never say something wrong... what's more: I am sure I do. That's the reason why I'm here. 

Your reason seems to be coughing at people and prove yourself to be "cool"... and that's sad.... and boring. 

Still, I think you didn't understand a word, but it's not worth to argue with you. 

"You're not fun anymore"

bye, happy coughing

Pau

----------

## hans0r

first you challange me to argue with you, then after i proved you wrong you get personal by accusing me of botching and not understand a word?

stop being childish.

once again you prove how open minded you are...

----------

## DanielM

So, the ipod nano.

Seriously guys, stop, take it to PM or get a room or something.

To get things back on track, here is link to a way of getting rid of the scratches from your midgipod.  :Smile: 

----------

## frederik

There is a description about the picture stuff:

http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?s=b19e61600abd9f15236c6bb4ecab0742&threadid=66435

----------

## flipy

too bad for me, I can't get my nano work with gentoo  :Sad: 

```
usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4

usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 2 choices

scsi5 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices

usb-storage: device found at 4

usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning

  Vendor: Apple     Model: iPod              Rev: 1.62

  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 00

SCSI device sdc: 3999744 512-byte hdwr sectors (2048 MB)

sdc: Write Protect is off

sdc: Mode Sense: 68 00 00 08

sdc: assuming drive cache: write through

SCSI device sdc: 3999744 512-byte hdwr sectors (2048 MB)

sdc: Write Protect is off

sdc: Mode Sense: 68 00 00 08

sdc: assuming drive cache: write through

 sdc: sdc1 sdc2

Attached scsi removable disk sdc at scsi5, channel 0, id 0, lun 0

Attached scsi generic sg2 at scsi5, channel 0, id 0, lun 0,  type 0

usb-storage: device scan complete

FAT: utf8 is not a recommended IO charset for FAT filesystems, filesystem will be case sensitive!

Unable to load NLS charset cp437

FAT: codepage cp437 not found
```

:'( any hints?

----------

## ph03n1x

 *DanielM wrote:*   

> So, the ipod nano.
> 
> Seriously guys, stop, take it to PM or get a room or something.
> 
> To get things back on track, here is link to a way of getting rid of the scratches from your midgipod. 

 

I ordered some protective skins from decalgirl.com Think they should arrive during the next few days. Will post my experience. (btw they have a hal9000 skin  :Very Happy:  )

I can't wait for ipodlinux.org to port their linux to nano. I hate f*cking Itunes and I refuse to use that piece of crap. Apple is imho not slightly better than MS having expensive products and forcing you to use it with a certain piece of software, their own shop included... itunes crap bundled with quicktime crap => foul apple

FREE THE NANO!!!

ipodlinux.org  :Very Happy: 

----------

## asiobob

 *hans0r wrote:*   

>  *pau wrote:*   
> 
> It's based on lossless compression algorithms produce compressed data that can be decoded to 
> 
> output that is identical to the original... With mp3 you're losing data... 
> ...

 

Ogg and mp3 do the same thing, remove things humans can't hear, the result is less data, both are lossy. Then you compress the result using a losseless algorithm just like zipping up a file to make it even smaller.

The difference is in the algorithms to decide what to keep and remove. ogg does a better job, mp3 is much older than ogg

----------

## iphitus

iPod Nano here, 4gb, black, works awesomely.

For those who want podcast support, it's in gtkpod CVS

----------

## asiobob

 *iphitus wrote:*   

> iPod Nano here, 4gb, black, works awesomely.
> 
> For those who want podcast support, it's in gtkpod CVS

 

Awsome. then my old mini is feature complete under linux  :Very Happy: 

----------

## hans0r

is it possible to boot from the ipod nano?

for example it would be quite nifty if you could put a small rescue system like RIP on it.

----------

## Apreche

You can boot from the nano. When you plug it into the computer it works just like any other USB hard drive. So if you follow directions for booting off a USB stick they will work.  However, don't expect it to also be a working ipod at the same time. I mean, there's probably a way, but it wont be easy. There is a very particular partitioning scheme for a working ipod. There is also an iTunes database file on there. That's really the reason people need special software to send mp3s to the ipod. Just sending files to the ipod works just fine, but you wont be able to play them and the ipod wont see them.  Only if there are appropriate entries in the itunes database will you actually be able to play things. 

So reformatting your ipod to just be a USB drive and boot off of it will work.  But don't expect to have it be a working portable music player.

----------

## Apreche

I found out how to add an image to an mp3 file that iTunes and the iPod can recognize. 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/massid3lib

It looks like it's a C++ library with some visual studio gui tool to go with it.  Maybe after I finish some other work I will parse out the relevant code and make a linux command line program to just insert the images. Unless someone beats me to it.

----------

## opqdan

Has anybody firgured out how to transfer photos to the iPod (specifically nano, but it should be the same for any, right?) without using itunes?  I'm not talking album art here (which would be neat, although I didn't even know that the nano supports it), but rather just plain photos.  I realize that, considering the size (physically) of tha nano, this is a pretty useless feature, but if it is there I would at least like the option.  I would try to figure out how the iPod stores photos, but I would need to put some on befroe I caould do that and I do not have access to a windows or mac computer with itunes.

----------

## Xaid

Hi Apreche,

I haven't gotten any reply notification about this thread for some reason, so I didn't see your post...

Did you get a chance to try it? 

opqdan,

I'm not sure if Amarok/Banshee do it yet, but from looking at the CVS branch of Gtkpod (the code is in libgpod) you'll see many commits about reading/writing art for the iPod, so I'm guessing there will be an option to add pictures from Gtkpod soon, meanwhile you can either checkout a copy from CVS and write a commandline tool to add picture, or wait a little longer and it'll be in gtkpod.

----------

## Iron_Mike

Whenever I plug in my Ipod, it doesn't even show up in dmesg...

anybody has an idea?

----------

## ph03n1x

 *Iron_Mike wrote:*   

> Whenever I plug in my Ipod, it doesn't even show up in dmesg...
> 
> anybody has an idea?

 

You may be missing the proper usb-modules. It's like an usb-stick.

----------

## Iron_Mike

I thought so too, but my usb HD and my usb stick are working properly...

----------

## daryl

i remember seeing somewhere patches being submitted to gtkpod cvs, that support transferring video

i have made ebuilds for it and the supporting library, libgpod

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112752

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112751

hope these help

----------

## beatryder

I dont think that the iPod stores the album art in Photos->

I recently exported some mp3s with album art from a friends nano, and put them on mine, and I saw the album art when I played the song, as i expected.

----------

## fury

Sorta random question: is there any real advantage towards either HFS+ or VFAT partitioned ipods?

According to this gentoo-wiki article, it doesn't really matter.  I've used that to sucessfully mount an HFS+ ipod on linux, but now that my new nano is on it's way, I'm wondering how I should set it up.

thx

----------

## Apreche

Personally, I thought that doing HFS+ would be all cool, but I stick with fat32. There is no real performance or reliability difference between the two. But if I use fat32 I can connect my nano to a windows machine. With hfs+ I can't do that. I haven't had access to a mac, so I don't know if you can use a fat32 ipod with one. If you can, then fat32 is the way to go for maximum compatability. If you can't, then you have to choose fat32 or hfs+ depending if you're going to be more likely to use your nano with a mac or a windows box. 

If you're only ever going to connect your nano to linux machines, then it doesn't matter at all which filesystem you use. In that case i would reccomend hfs+ for the l33t factor.

----------

## keyser_soze

 *flipy wrote:*   

> too bad for me, I can't get my nano work with gentoo 
> 
> ```
> usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
> 
> ...

 

I know this was a while ago... maybe you have fixed it by now...

If you see in the error message you are missing cp437 NLS character set.

This is set in the kernel configuration under the file-system section. you just need to compile thc cp437 stuff as a module or into the kernel. I think that will fix your problem.

How do you go mounting floppies or usb-sticks?

it is a more general problem than just your ipod.

This is how mine looks

```

File systems  --->

     Native Language Support  --->

          <M> Base native language support

          <M>   Codepage 437 (United States, Canada)

```

----------

