Edited to add italicised text.

Hi all, I've just been given a new iPod Nano. It's the newest version with a camera, which would make it the 5G I guess?

When I plug the iPod in, it mounts at /media/IPOD and Kubuntu sees it as a vfat removable drive. Amarok 1.4, Amarok 2.0.1 and gtkpod all detect it as an iPod. All of them can transfer music to and from it with no problem. They can see each others' music too: e.g. Amarok 2.0 can see (and play back) the music that gtkpod put on there. Looking at the filesystem, the music has been renamed and sorted into folders with names like "F12". All this seems great.

Unfortunately, the iPod itself can't see the music. Its capacity indicator goes down by the expected amount, but it claims to have "0 songs" and "0 podcasts".

I assume that I'm having this problem:

...you need to set the ipod model otherwise Amarok doesn't know to write the md5 hash over the database for that model. Without a hash, the iPod doesn't recognise the database correctly...

...but as the brand new iPod nanos are not currently supported, I can't set the correct hash.

I've also tried doing this- the file "SYSINFO" was already there with the correct information.

Finally, in 1.4 every time I clicked disconnect I got the error message that the post-disconnect command failed. And the iPod keeps displaying "Connected - eject before disconnecting", even after unmounting. I've since found an example of the post-disconnect command, but in 2.0.1 I can't work out where to enter this.

To summarise:
1) Amarok 2.0.1 can mount the new iPod nano and transfer music to and from it
2) The iPod knows that something is taking up that space but can't see the music
3) In 1.4 the post-disconnect command kept failing, so the iPod never ejects properly. I've upgraded to 2.0.1 and can't even find where to check or enter the post-disconnect command.

So my questions are:
a) Am I correct that the problem is Amarok doesn't know what hash to write to make the iPod see the music?
b) How can I fix this? Or, if I can't without some serious programming skills:
c) Based on past iPod releases, what's your gut feeling for how long I'll need to wait until someone else manages to fix it?
d) How can I use the post-disconnect commands to properly eject the iPod?

I have access to a Mac with iTunes in work if I need to do some setup, but I'd really like to get working with linux. I don't have a Windows license so running iTunes in a windows VM isn't really an option at the moment.

Amarok 2.0.1 (I think it's the xine engine: I can't find where to check this since upgrading from 1.4)
KDE 4.2.2
Kubuntu 8.10

It seems that the problem isn't just with Amarok. From posts across at ubuntuforums, no-one can get the Nano 5G to work with any Linux application; presumably Apple have done something that breaks compatibility with the gtkpod libraries.

In the meantime, a friend of mine has kindly donated a Windows licence that he had spare, so I've installed XP in a virtual machine and am running iTunes inside it.

In case it helps anyone else, here are the instructions I followed to set up a virtual machine and install Windows on it then allow the virtual machine to see USB devices including my iPod. The instructions are for Gnome, but worked just as well for KDE.

This setup works very well, although slowly because I don't have much memory to spare for the VM. It's a good workaround until some generous programmer releases some code to let new ipods work natively in Linux.

Well, you will need a lot of patience then, Apple does everything to avoid making their hardware compatible with anything else than proprietary stuff. Jailbraking iPods is tough work and very slow in progression.

Basic rule: the newer the iPod the more likely it will not run with Linux.

From what I'm reading on various Linux forums, it appears Apple has implemented a new database setup using SQLite3 in the newest generation devices. Developers at gtkpod are working on it and are offering a bounty for a fix in 2009, but funding restrictions have slowed it down (getting devices to work with, etc...). But sooner or later the Nano 5g and other Apple devices will be working with Linux apps.