Arch Linux

azurepancake

Member

Registered: 2009-01-19

Posts: 42

[SOLVED] Can't Play Songs off iPod

Hello,

I just installed Arch fresh on a new machine and everything is working beautifully besides one thing. I installed Rhythmbox on this machine and I noticed it was not detecting my iPod. I ran fdisk -l and can see that Linux detected the device:

Disk /dev/sdb: 30.0 GB, 30005821440 bytes
255 heads, 62 sectors/track, 3706 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15810 * 512 = 8094720 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x20202020

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1          11       80293+   0  Empty
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb2              11        3707    29222234+   b  W95 FAT32

So I switched to my /media directory, created a new directory called 'ipod' and mounted the device to it:

mount /dev/sdb2 /media/ipod

No errors. But still, Rhythmbox does not detect the device. So, I unmounted it and tried some different options. I found when I issue the following mount command, Rhythmbox will detect it:

mount -o user /dev/sdb2 /media/ipod

BUT, when you attempt to play a track off the iPod from Rhythmbox, it does not play it. Instead, a little red circle appears to the left of the song title with a horizontal white bar in it. It also spits out the following error into terminal:

** (rhythmbox:5820): CRITICAL **: atk_object_set_name: assertion `name != NULL' failed
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)

I tried remounting it with different options, like 'rw' and 'exec', but no luck! I also tried another media player, 'Banshee' and that doesn't even detect the iPod at all..

I've scoured Google, searching for the answer, but no luck. If anyone has any advice, tips or a proposed solution, I'd be forever in your debt!

Thanks.

Last edited by azurepancake (2009-12-07 16:04:53)

drcouzelis

Member

From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Can't Play Songs off iPod

I'm surprised your iPod isn't automounting. If you are using GNOME, did you start the "policy kit" thingy? This may apply to other desktop environments too.

exec ck-launch-session gnome-session

See here:http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GNOME#Running_GNOME

I'm sorry I don't have more information about your specific problem. One of the last things I have yet to "fix" on my Arch computer has to do with my iPod as well: it will automount just fine, but it takes a couple of minutes from the time I plug it in to my computer to the time the icon appears on the desktop.

azurepancake

Member

Registered: 2009-01-19

Posts: 42

Re: [SOLVED] Can't Play Songs off iPod

Woops, my bad. I should have mentioned that I'm using FluxBox.

But, thank you anyways, maybe I should do some more research on FluxBox's documentation. I'm not too familiar with policy-kit, I'll look into that.

I should also note, that I used to have another computer, setup with Arch and FluxBox, using the same iPod. Then, I never had any issues. Weird..

Last edited by azurepancake (2009-11-20 23:15:46)

azurepancake

Member

Registered: 2009-01-19

Posts: 42

Re: [SOLVED] Can't Play Songs off iPod

Hmm, if it helps, here is what dmesg has to say after I plug in my iPod:

usb 1-8: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 56
usb 1-8: configuration #1 chosen from 2 choices
scsi49 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 56
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
NET: Registered protocol family 10
lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions
scsi 49:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Apple    iPod             1.62 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
sd 49:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete
sd 49:0:0:0: [sdb] 58605120 512-byte logical blocks: (30.0 GB/27.9 GiB)
sd 49:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 49:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 68 00 00 08
sd 49:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 49:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sdb: sdb1 sdb2
sd 49:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 49:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
FAT: invalid media value (0x2f)
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb1.

If there is anything else I can check that will help, please let me know.

Thanks again!

azurepancake

Member

Registered: 2009-01-19

Posts: 42

Re: [SOLVED] Can't Play Songs off iPod

Still no luck getting media players to play songs off my iPod. I also plugged in another functioning iPod and the same issue comes up. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

Last edited by azurepancake (2009-11-30 16:42:20)

azurepancake

Member

Registered: 2009-01-19

Posts: 42

Re: [SOLVED] Can't Play Songs off iPod

In an attempt to remedy my situation, I've tried to install the Gstreamer add-ons. To do so, I run the following command, as directed by this wiki article http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GStreamer.

# pacman -S gstreamer0.10 gstreamer0.10-good gstreamer0.10-bad gstreamer0.10-ugly gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

This returns,

warning: gstreamer0.10-0.10.25-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: gstreamer0.10-good-plugins: requires gstreamer0.10-good=0.10.16

Excuse me if I'm dense, but I'm not too sure what this error is reffering to. I'm guessing it saying that the package 'gstreamer0.10-good-plugins' requires 'gstreamer0.10-good=0.10.16' to install. But when I try to use pacman to download and install that package, it cannot find it.

Anywho, I'm gonna keep searching for the answer. If anyone has any ideas, or needs to know the output of any commands or whatnot, please let me know! I really appreciate it.

Peace.

jocheem67

Member

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 243

Re: [SOLVED] Can't Play Songs off iPod

I remember that I had to install some additional gstreamer-plugins to play my unencrypted aac's

What about :

pacman -S gstreamer0.10-plugins

Something like this gave me a lot of additional plugins, that I actually don't all need, but do use some of them....

Don't know if it's aac's that you're trying to play?

azurepancake

Member

Registered: 2009-01-19

Posts: 42

Re: [SOLVED] Can't Play Songs off iPod

Genius! That fixed everything. I can now mount my iPod and play tunes off it, finally! I am complete.

Thank you so much.

drcouzelis

Member

From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Can't Play Songs off iPod

One of the last things I have yet to "fix" on my Arch computer has to do with my iPod as well: it will automount just fine, but it takes a couple of minutes from the time I plug it in to my computer to the time the icon appears on the desktop.

I just wanted to mention that my problem seems to be fixed with the recent release of the Linux 2.6.32 kernel. When I plug in my iPod, it now appears on my GNOME desktop instantly and I can start browsing it. I am using Rockbox, by the way.

(Sorry for kind of thread hijacking!)

Last edited by drcouzelis (2009-12-31 14:03:44)