Question about using rockbox for audio and original firmware for video- ipod 5g

[mrufino1]

I'm restoring it now, I will try that in a minute. The fsck did finish before to follow up my earlier post. While we're at it, any ideas on why it randomly decides not to mount in linux? The problem there is that then if I disconnect it, it sounds like I am causing errors. I know it is SUPPOSED to automount in ubuntu.

[Chronon]

You're restoring, as in via iTunes?  This should restore everything to factory configuration.  Though it is probably still worth running the fsck.vfat command that cool_walking_ wrote.

I don't know why it should randomly not mount.  That's peculiar.

[mrufino1]

I am wondering if my ubuntu laptop is messed up. But it is weird. I installed ubuntu on my other laptop the other day but can't get the wireless working yet (wired ethernet is broken- calling dell in a few minutes about that one since they broke it!). I am going to try the fsck again in a minute- I accidentally set the ipod to japanese...

[cool_walking_]

The problem there is that then if I disconnect it, it sounds like I am causing errors. I know it is SUPPOSED to automount in ubuntu.

I'm not sure on the meaning of "disconnect" here. Automount does not include any sort of "auto-unmount".  Are you "safely remove"-ing the disk?

[mrufino1]

No, but what will happen is that ubuntu is not mounting it (or in some cases it is in the media folder  under a name like "sda2") but the ipod itself says it is connected. Therefore, there is no way to safely disconnect it (and I mean physically disconnect it). When I just reformatted it now, the ipod showed up right away on the desktop. I am funning fsck.vfat -at etc. on it right now, takign a while, but if I understand you right, that will find any bad sectors on the drive and in the future avoid writing to those? If that is the case, could that avoid this in the future?

[cool_walking_]

I don't think bad blocks will randomly stop it from mounting, so no, I think that's caused by something else.

[mrufino1]

Any possible reasons you can think of? So far I have not really found anything. As I said, I am wondering if it is the physical computer? My ubuntu may be screwy too because I am still learning it. I may want to do a fresh install one of these days soon. Is there any possibility that the ipod firmware may have something to do with it? It was 1.2.1 when I got it, then 1.2.2 on last restore, now 1.2.3- maybe they did something that would have made it more difficult? The searches on the ubuntu forums didn't really lead me to any understandable answers.

[cool_walking_]

Well I'm thinking it must be a problem with either the physical USB port, or the Apple firmware.  The output of "dmesg | tail" just after plugging in your iPod may be useful.  Though this is straying into being off-topic, so maybe it's best to take it over to http://linuxquestions.org and/or http://ubuntuforums.org.

EDIT: hrm.. it works fine in Windows on the same PC? I'm really not sure then...

EDIT AGAIN: err.. A Windows machine? So you haven't tested it in Windows on the same box? Then.. back to thinking hardware problem with the PC.

[GodEater]

No, but what will happen is that ubuntu is not mounting it (or in some cases it is in the media folder  under a name like "sda2") but the ipod itself says it is connected. Therefore, there is no way to safely disconnect it (and I mean physically disconnect it).

Yes there is.

You need to establish which disk device the ipod is (it sounds like it's common /dev/sda from your text above), but an "fdisk -l" should help you confirm it - an ipod should have two partitions, the first one is quite small (around 100MB or so), and the second takes up the rest of the disk.

Once you've identified it like that, you can use the "eject" command to get your ipod to report that it's safe to disconnect :

Code: [Select]

eject /dev/sda


[mrufino1]

Thank you, that will help if this happens again.

[GuitarRocker2562]

This was surely caused by improperly unmounting your iPod in ubuntu. Your problem may be that you are disconnecting your iPod right after clicking eject, You must first wait for the it's safe to disconnect now message.

[mrufino1]

Well, I am totally lost. Everything was fine, I had my ipod plugged in earlier, it has been showing up fine and did so this time too. Once I transferred my tracks onto it, I right clicked the ipod icon on the desktop (ubuntu 7.1), clicked eject. Ipod says OK to eject. I waited another 20 seconds or so, to see if there was something from ubuntu saying it was OK to eject it. Nothing, so I unplugged it. Listened all the way home in the car (hour and a half). Everything was fine. I got home, plugged my ipod into speakers, and the font was suddenly tiny on rockbox. I went to settings, clicked browse fonts, nothing happens, font folder is suddenly inaccessible? Then, I clicked on the file I wanted to play, and a message came up saying it couldn't access the playlist. I clicked again, and it started playing, but the font was screwy. Now I plugged the ipod into my laptop, the ipod is saying do not disconnect but the ipod is nowhere to be found in ubuntu. None of the dev folders or media folders show anything. What the heck is going on? The only thing I can think of is when I boot into the ipod OS, it screws something up that happens next time I plug it into ubuntu. Yesterday I was watchign a video in the ipod firmware. But why would it work one minute and the next minute the fonts are gone, when I haven't connected it to the computer yet?
So anyway, what the heck is going on? I hate to think I am going to have to give up on rockbox, but it seems like that may be what I have to do because this is not working for me.
I have the 80gb ipod video, and I bought it used on ebay a month ago. Could there be something wrong with the ipod itself?
More importantly for the immediate, how do I disconnect it from the computer right now so I don't mess things up further? Thanks for reading this long, frustrated post, please help!!!

[mrufino1]

I (hopefully) am attaching a screenshot to show what the rockbox folder now looks like- you see all of these characters that are not normal. SOmething is doing this to it- what is it? The fonts folder is clearly renamed. As I said, I ejected it from linux, what is going wrong? I was able to disconnect the ipod from linux using the eject command as stated in a previous post, and then booted the comp into windows, connected to the same USB port and it showed right up. I know apple did something to the new ipods that will not let them work with linux- this isn't true of the 80gb video ipod is it?

UPDATE: I attached the ipod to my other ubuntu laptop, it is not mounting there either, couldn't eject it there doing the same thing I did on this laptop, so I rebooted it (it was in disk mode when I attached it, but it should still be mounted by ubuntu, right?). Connected it back to my laptop runnign windows (the original one running ubuntu if you can follow- my emachines 6805), windows recognizes it again right away. itunes is not on this windows machine. I renamed the .rockbox file, but can't delete it- I replaced it with a new rockbox file and new fonts and the ipod is working right again. Is it possible that ubuntu and ipod just do not get along? I am going to ask that at ubuntu forums as well, it seems like others have this problem, but I can never find a simple answer.

[cool_walking_]

Looks like filesystem corruption again.

I have a 5.5G iPod, and have never had any problems like this.  I didn't update to the new 1.2.3 Apple firmware, as it seemed quite useless.  I suppose if you updated, maybe that broke something, but I doubt it.

Also, last I heard, the new iPods do work with Linux.

How did the bad blocks check go?

EDIT: errr... devs? Does Rockbox actually take note of the bad blocks flagged?

EDIT: Have you been using different builds? Maybe there was a filesystem bug once?

[mrufino1]

No bad blocks found, and when the ipod was restored, no file system corruption found either. Why does this keep happening? This has happened many times, and it is with any of the firware updates that has been on it, so I don't know if that is it. But again, it is working on windows (as far as mounting). Rockbox keeps getting messed up like this though. I am in a quandry here with ubuntu- I love the way it runs, but I do not have the desire to keep fixing things, and I am not a computer programmer. However, I HATE vista (not on any of my machines, but my wife has a new vista laptop which runs SLOW), and I like ubuntu better than xp too. But if none of my stuff is going to work with it, I may have to give up.

EDIT: I did a chkdsk in windows (dos) and it found errors and it fixed them. So, my question remains, what keeps doing this?