Linux Desktop Hacks

Use an iPod with Linux #97

Chapter 11, Hardware

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297

HACK

Normal Usage

The Linux drivers for the iPod are still a little flakey; sometimes, the sbp2

driver gets stuck indefinitely in its initializing state and cannot be removed,

and at other times the machine hangs.

To minimize the risk of such errors, I strongly advise you to follow a disci-

plined procedure for docking and undocking the iPod. Here’s the order of

events I usually employ:

1. Insert the IEEE1394 PCMCIA card into my laptop. Check that this suc-

ceeded by running

lsmod and looking for ieee1394 and ohci1394.

2. Attach the iPod. This time the sbp2 driver should appear. If it does not,

try detaching and reattaching it.

3. Mount the iPod as a disk, copy files across, and then unmount it again.

4.

rmmod the sbp2 driver.

5. Detach the iPod.

6. Remove the IEEE1394 card.

Note that these steps are perfectly symmetrical. This seems to achieve

greater reliability than performing them in an arbitrary order.

I use two scripts, dock-ipod and undock-ipod, whenever I attach or detach

the iPod to or from the interface card. Here’s dock-ipod:

#!/bin/sh

modprobe sbp2

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/ipod/

And undock-ipod:

#!/bin/sh

umount /mnt/ipod

rmmod sbp2

They must both be run as root:

% su - root -c ./dock-ipod

or:

% sudo ./dock-ipod (if the user is a sudoer)

or:

% su - root

Password:

root$ ./dock-ipod