This page last modified: Jul 23 2008
keywords:music,play,xmms,ipod,apple,nano,fedora,gtkpod,amarok,how,to,howto,tutorial,skip,skips,usb,mount,device,media,kde description:Working iPod Nano configuration with Fedora 8 title:Working iPod with Fedora 8, PulseAudio, XMMS, gtkpod Table of contents ----------------- Introduction Overview Synopsis and all commands Amarok Helpful note about yum Introduction ------------ Good news: I was easily able to install gtkpod and xmms-faad2, mount my iPod nano, view albums and songs via gtkpod, and play the music with no skips, noise or other issues. Sadly, I don't have automounting of devices working. I disabled daemons, and I haven't taken the time to enable whatever is necessary to auto-mount devices. Out of the box, Fedora 8 might automount your iPod, especially after you install gtkpod. Overview -------- This howto covers discovering your iPod SCSI device, mounting the iPod, then using gtkpod and xmms to play native iPod songs (encoded in AAC). Install xmms, xmms-faad2, gtkpod. I also installed banshee which I'm not using but I noticed that libipoddevice was installed. I installed Amarok, but it has issues (see below). With a little luck, yum install of gtkpod will get everything you need. You'll need Livna also. There is an rpm which will install Livna as a repository in yum. Once Livna is available from yum, the packages are easy to instll. Livna rocks! Thank you everyone who makes Livna possible!! (If you use xmms and want to play the occasional MP3, you may already be familiar with Livna. Ditto if you use mplayer.) The Livna wiki: http://rpm.livna.org/rlowiki/ The URL of the Livna Fedora 8 rpm installer: http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm Some suggested command lines to install Livna. You must be root to run these commands: rpm -Uhv http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm or rpm -ihv http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm or probably rpm -i http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm Once you have the Livna repository, use yum to install the xmms AAC player extension and to install the gtk iPod graphical interface tool gtkpod. yum -y install xmms-faad2 gtkpod For some reason gtkpod did not show up in my KDE Multimedia menu. If this happens to you, simply run Konsole, and run gtkpod from Konsole. (At the command line prompt type "gtkpod" (without the quotes) and press the enter key.) The remaining problem may be that when plugging your iPod into the USB port, the iPod does not automount. If so, su to root, create /media/ipod, use dmesg to find out the SCSI id, edit /etc/fstab, then manually mount /media/ipod as a non-root user before you run gtkpod. Synopsis and all commands ------------------------- su -l root rpm -Uhv http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm yum -y install xmms-faad2 gtkpod mkdir /media/ipod dmesg ... scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access Apple iPod 1.62 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] 991232 2048-byte hardware sectors (2030 MB) sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 68 00 00 08 sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] 991232 2048-byte hardware sectors (2030 MB) sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 68 00 00 08 sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through sdc: sdc1 sdc2 sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0 [root@tull ~]# tail /var/log/messages Jul 23 09:00:01 tull kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] 991232 2048-byte hardware sectors (2030 MB) Jul 23 09:00:01 tull kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off Jul 23 09:00:01 tull kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through Jul 23 09:00:01 tull kernel: sdc: sdc1 sdc2 Jul 23 09:00:01 tull kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk Jul 23 09:00:01 tull kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0 Jul 23 09:12:22 tull automount[2056]: create_udp_client:99: hostname lookup failed: No such process Jul 23 09:12:22 tull automount[2056]: create_tcp_client:308: hostname lookup failed: No such process Jul 23 09:12:22 tull automount[2056]: lookup_mount: exports lookup failed for .directory Jul 23 09:12:22 tull automount[2056]: lookup_mount: lookup(file): key ".directory" not found in map ... We have sdc, sdc1, and sdc2. /dev/sdc is the device, not a usable partition. I couldn't mount /dev/sdc1. Mounting sdc2 worked, so I added it to my /etc/fstab. Test mounting with a command like this: mount /dev/sdc2 /media/ipod My iPod is formatted for Windows and therefore has a vfat filesystem which the mount command autodetected. I don't know if mount will autodetect hfs for hfsplus file systems. Once you have a working mount command, edit /etc/fstab. Add one line. Blanks can be one or more spaces, or tabs. /dev/sdc2 /media/ipod vfat users 0 0 Fields in /etc/fstab and explanations. /dev/sdc2 The device to mount /media/ipod The directory where this device will be mounted. This directory must exist. vfat The file system type users An option to allow any user to mount this device. 0 0 Configuration to mount. Not important for things like iPods, but I use it anyway. The user mount command is easy once you have an /etc/fstab entry. Plug your iPod in to the USB port. Run Konsole. mount /media/ipod Now run gtkpod. It is pre-configured to use xmms to play songs, but you can check this: Edit -> Edit Preferences -> Tools tab -> field "Command for 'Play now':" -> xmms %s Click Apply, click OK. When you play now on an album or song, xmms will run. Now just use xmms as always. We love xmms :-) I haven't tried it with iTunes Store songs, only with songs loaded onto the iPod from iTunes from CDs. Best of luck. Amarok ------ By the way, I tried Amarok. It uses xine. I had momentary pauses (a few milliseconds) ever 5 or 10 seconds. This is a known bug. Newer versions of pulse and/or xine may fix the problem. However, Fedora doesn't really support people using yum to get a newer version of some package. Either there is an update, or you'll have to install packages yourself. That's not pretty. People report building pulse from source. It sounded like that required kernel sources too. What a mess. Better to use gtkpod and xmms as above. Helpful note about yum ---------------------- I keep a full list of packages available from yum in a local file. I grep this file instead of asking yum what is available. It is very slow to ask yum what packages are available. su -l root yum list all > yum_list.txt grep xmms yum_list.txt