I'm utterly new to both Linux (i'm using ubuntu 8.4.1) and Amarok, so I'd appreciate 2 minutes of someone's time.

I've got an 80gb iPod classic.  I obviously need some way of managing it using Ubuntu, and Amarok comes highly recommended, so I installed it.  I've only had moderate success with it so far, though.

Firstly, when I plug my iPod in, VLC goes crazy and starts displaying loads of non-music files.  This almost certainly has nothing to do with Amarok, but  I mention it in  case it's relevant. 

The first time I played with Amarok there was a list on the main part of the screen with the songs, artists etc, very similar to how iTunes displays them.  This seems to have vanised and I can find no way at all of bring it it back.  The only way I can see what's on my iPod is the tree view on the left. 

When I try and disconnect my iPod it fails. I've tried entering a command in the relevant box based on a search on the net, but that doesn't work either.  Is it possible to disconnect cleanly using Amarok, or do I have to wait a while after making changes to my iPod then eject the mounted drive using Nautilus?

Hopefully someone can help me out here.  It looks like a great app that can do loads of things, but I'm not interested in musicbrainz, album art, managing playlists and libraries and syncing and notwhat - I just want to be able to delete music from my iPod, stick new music on my iPod and perhaps edit mp3 tags if they're wrong (but I'm not so bothered about that as I can do it in Ubuntu).

Thanks in advance for any help.

The first time I played with Amarok there was a list on the main part of the screen with the songs, artists etc, very similar to how iTunes displays them.  This seems to have vanised and I can find no way at all of bring it it back.  The only way I can see what's on my iPod is the tree view on the left. 

That's the playlist, ie the list of tracks that Amarok will start to play (if you click the play button).  Probably you double-clicked an album or something (maybe your whole collection) and transferred those tracks into the playlist.

When I try and disconnect my iPod it fails. I've tried entering a command in the relevant box based on a search on the net, but that doesn't work either.  Is it possible to disconnect cleanly using Amarok, or do I have to wait a while after making changes to my iPod then eject the mounted drive using Nautilus?

I can't really help except to say that disconnecting works for me.  It can take quite a long time (2 minutes or so) but the device listing disappears from the bottom of the tree view on the left and the IPod displays OK to disconnect.

Maybe you can find a logfile to inspect? 

Which distro are you using overall? The answer may help solve some of your problems. I had to modify and add sudo and ensure sudoers could eject /dev/ipod without password.

This MAY work for you but I don't know. It would also help if you could give us any information on which version of KDE you are using if you are using KDE. If you are using Gnome this would also be relevent.