Ipod mounting how to for FC2 and FC3T2

Shadow Skill · #1 29th September 2004, 07:37 AM

There have been many people asking how to mount and/or eject their precious Ipods under Fedora Core 2. I seem to keep finding these threads so I decided to write this how-to. Before I begin let me preface this by warning you that this has only been tested with Third generation Ipods; and as far as I know Fourth generation Clickwheel models have not been successfully mounted for use in either Fedora core or any other distribution for that matter. Also note that I am using a USB 2.0 cable and the steps I outline may or may not apply to you if you are making use of a Firewire connection.

The Ipod should be formatted for use with Windows, I recommend allowing windows to handle this for you since it is simply easier to let the machine do it for you.
Now onto the actual mounting of the Ipod…

1. First plug your Ipod into your computer via usb 2.0 cable.
2. Open a terminal and type

Code:

su root

3. Now that you are root type

Code:

 mount –t vfat /dev/sda2 /mnt/ipod

Note that if you get an error that corresponds to “cannot mount device invalid block” or something close to this, you may either need to change sda2 to sdb2 or reboot and hope that its detected properly.
Furthermore forget about umount its worthless for Ipods and will not get rid of the do not disconnect message. You must use

Code:

eject

the full command will look like

Code:

eject /mnt/ipod

after that it will be safe to remove the Ipod.

A word of caution, okay a few words of caution… 
Do not attempt to write songs to the Ipod using multiple Ipod managing programs.. For example do not use Itunes on windows, and then use Gtkpod on Fedora very bad things can happen to your database if you do so. Your best bet is to pick one program and stick with it, so it is in your best interest to reformat the Ipod if you are planning to switch from Itunes to any other program and vice versa.

The above applies to Fedora Core 3 Test 2 as well except that one may feel free to change /mnt/ipod to /media/usbdisk as FC3T2 seems to like the Ipod mounting there by default.

imdeemvp · #2 16th October 2004, 01:44 AM

shadow skill,

very nice but why not use the umount command?

audiphil · #3 16th October 2004, 05:55 AM

Hey,

I thought we should mention this here: for some reason, the 4G and mini models report a wrong block size (bigger than the actual) when negotiating.
If your kernel has support for a new standard of partition tables (EFI), it starts by scanning the drive for this table and tries to read those non-existing blocks -> I/O error...
This is reported here.

A simple solution that will satisfy 99.99% of users out there consists in disabling support for EFI partition tables: unset CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION in your .config file and recompile your kernel

Shadow Skill · #4 16th October 2004, 07:40 AM

Well Mvp umount doesn't actually allow you to safely disconnect the Ipod from your system. you have to use eject its an Ipod design quirk.

Thanks phil ignore my request in your gtkpod related post since you have all but done what I asked here.

imdeemvp · #5 16th October 2004, 07:49 AM

thanks for the clarification, i did not know the umount command was not the safest way.

hatmaja · #6 4th April 2005, 01:40 PM

hey all,
i also recently trying to connect my mini ipod to be used on linux. the how to guide thats posted by shadow skill was very useful. but i had difficulty when i was trying to mount the ipod usign this command:
mount –t vfat /dev/sda2 /mnt/ipod

i kept on getting the 'cant read superblock' message.
/dev/sda2: Input/output error
mount: /dev/sda2: can't read superblock

nyone know wats happening?? ive tried changing sda2 to sdb etc but with no results. any suggestions??? im getting really frustrated.

my system is p4 2gb, FC2 with 2.6.5 kernel
thanks in advance for the reply.....

Shadow Skill · #7 4th April 2005, 11:48 PM

Did you try mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 ? Also I remember there being something "different" about 4g Ipods and I think minis that required a kernel recompile that may or may not be the case in your situation.

Open up hwbrowser and see if it lists your ipod in the hard disk section that should tell you the proper block to use when mounting it.

hatmaja · #8 5th April 2005, 10:36 AM

i did try mount -t vfat /dev/sda1.
thx for the suggestions, i will try it as soon as i get a chance to. umm what exactly is the superblock problem?? can u enlighten me?? it also happens when i tried to mount .cue files using cdemu.....

now if you do have to recompile the kernel?? will that stuffed my settings and functionality of other programs??? how would you recompile kernel??
sorry if i sound like a newbie...which is partly true.....

hatmaja · #9 5th April 2005, 10:50 AM

shadow skill,

in my hwbrowser, the ipod is connected to block /dev/sda then i tried again to mount it using mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/ipod but it still gives me the cant read superblock error once again ......

now should i create an entry to the /etc/fstab file similar to:
/dev/sda1 /mnt/ipod auto user,noauto 0 0

or else??

Shadow Skill · #10 14th April 2005, 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hatmaja

shadow skill,

in my hwbrowser, the ipod is connected to block /dev/sda then i tried again to mount it using mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/ipod but it still gives me the cant read superblock error once again ......

now should i create an entry to the /etc/fstab file similar to:
/dev/sda1 /mnt/ipod auto user,noauto 0 0

or else??

Sorry I took so long to reply, you should be able to mount it with sda1 if you just do sda it won't read properly, don't exactly know why but that is how Linux reads HDD's. If you are using udev you might want to add managed to that entry if you want FC to handle things automatically. If not that entry should work properly anyway.