Gentoo, iPod and gtkpod

[BuzzMoo]

Ahoy,

I'm new to Gentoo and indeed Linux but i feel i've learnt a lot over the past few days. I'm an iPod user and i've been looking through the forums and a friend and i pretty much have it sorted except for a few minor things.

The background:

I'm a PC user with firewire cable and a quick search revealed that firewire probably wont work within linux and indeed this is the case. dmesg saw that something was attatched but never got any further than that. A trip the the apple store and a surprise present later, i was using a USB2 cable.

Detected, mounted and accessing fine, my problem is more with gtkpod. I've emerged the latest ver 0.07 and while it sees the pod, when i first ran the program it failed to read my iTunesDB. Unmounting the pod, much to my horror, revealed that it'd wiped the database from my pod aswell, so that the songs were still on the drive but the ipod itself didn't see them as music. Due to apple's insane filing techniques, as i understand it anyway, iTunes will number MP3 files and then reference the numbers against the database it creates when you upload the file. This is to ensure speedy playback and navigation (again, this is just what im told, it's not factual :p)

I copied all the music out and then back into the ipod via itunes which retagged most of my MP3s so that they could be played on the iPod. Some songs weren't retagged and are now pretty much useless to me.

My question is to anyone else out there who has used gtkpod - have you had any database troubles and if so, did you work around it somehow? Also, do gtkpod and itunes have problems with eachother sharing the Pod? I will be switching between XP and Gentoo frequently, so im in trouble if they do.

I'm hesitant to try again lest i screw my music collection, which is why im seeking feedback first :p

Cheers,
S.
_________________
The Bee.
The Cow.
The Legend.
www.buzzmoo.com

[barlad]

Hey,
yes there are some problems with gtkpod and itunes sharing the same ipod. I would recommend reading the documentations of gtkpod and gnupod (gnupod are scripts used by gtkpod) for it explains all of it with much detail.

Anyway, when you want to use your ipod for the first time with Linux, I am pretty sure the first thing you have to do is create the gnupod directories. (there is an option for that in gtkpod or you can run the script gnupod_INIT.pl or something like that). After that, your iPod is ready to be used with gtkpod.

If you want to use itunes aswell, everytime you use your ipod with gtkpod, you have to use the "Sync iTunesDB" option so that you are sure that your itunesDB matches your gnupod DB.