I spent a couple days getting my new ipod nano to work in suse 10.0 and with amarok 1.4 (beta1, and then svn). I thought I\'d share my results.

First, read [url=\"http://amarok.kde.org/amarokwiki/index.php/Media_Devices\"]this[/url] great wiki article to understand the level of ipod support in 1.4.

1) First, let\'s disable SuSE\'s automount, this way we can get amaroK to control the mounting of ipod (the ipod manual refers to it as a person, so I might as well too).

Create the following file: /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/95userpolicy/noautomount.fdi

Insert the following text into the file:
[code:1]



false



[/code:1]

Once this is done you need to restart the HAL daemon, as root run: # /etc/init.d/haldaemon restart

2) Create the following directory: /media/ipod (command: # mkdir /media/ipod)

3) Create an entry in your fstab for ipod, just insert he following at the end of /etc/fstab (you have to be root):
[code:1]/dev/sda2 /media/ipod vfat sync,user,noauto,umask=000 0 0[/code:1]

Note: The above entry assumes that when you plug in your ipod, it gets assigned /dev/sda as its\' device. To find out what your ipod is assigned, run the dmesg command after you plug in your ipod.

4) Start up amarok 1.4 (not sure if there are any rpms available yet for suse, since I compiled it from source).
Once amarok 1.4 is started, plug-in ipod, or if it\'s already in, remove it and re-plug it in.

At this point amarok \'should\' prompt you that it has detected a new media device, and it wants to know what plug-in to use. Choose the ipod plug-in from the drop down list and choose \'ok\'.

5) amarok might now give you an error that it couldn\'t find or load the media devices mount point.

In the media device tab, make sure the ipod device is selected from the pull-down list, then click the configuration button (looks like a wrench).

For pre-connect command put in: mount %d
For post-connect command put in: umount %d && eject %d

Choose any other options you want (the transcoding on the fly would be killer, but I can\'t get it to work yet, even after I recompiled transcode with the patch) and click \'ok\'.

6) Now click \'connect\' and you\'re good to go! Don\'t forget to click \'disconnect\' when you\'re done!


If you got stuck on any step, want to add something, or think I\'m going about this wrong please let me know.

Hi Jonny_eh,

thanks for this detailed howto! If you don\'t mind, i might copy some stuff to the wiki, as this information might prove useful for quite some people.

Martin

Sure, copy away!

The only problem that\'s surfaced is that by disabling auto-mounting in suse, the cd-rom no longer works. (that\'s because the cd-rom relies on the system\'s submount/subfs system that is disabled).

This can be worked around by changing the /etc/fstab and changing the cdrom entry.

If anyone knows a way around this, such as disabling automount for just usb devices, it would be a big help.

Why do you need to disable automouting of the ipod? I find this works perfectly well - there are 2 provisos (well three actually):

1. Go have a look at http://www.volker-lanz.de/en/toys/ipod_suse10/

2. Follow the instructions there (see 1. above) to speed up USB transfers to the ipod, otherwise it will take you approximately 5 years to transfer 1 CD

3. Configure the disconnect command of amaroK to execute the command `eject /media/ipod` - this nicely gets round the problem that you don\'t have the permissions to umount the device.

Minimal hassle, and seems to work well for me.

Good luck,

Jon.

and you can still have your CD/DVDs mounted automagically Whoopeee!

Jon.