Aerospace Software Ltd.

Apple iPod Howto

For Mandriva 2007, GPL.

Scope

This guide briefly describes how to get an iPod to work with Mandriva. Despite the ubiquity of these devices, it is not recognized by default on a Mandriva system, so you have a little bit of work to do.

Udev Setup

Mandriva uses udev to handle hotplug events. It recognizes when the iPod is plugged in and loads the modules, but to automount it some more work is required. Create the file '/etc/udev/rules.d/70-ipod.rules' containing this single long line:

BUS=="usb", SYSFS{manufacturer}=="Apple", SYSFS{product}=="iPod", 
KERNEL=="sd?2", SYMLINK+="ipod"

Restart udev:

# /etc/init.d/udev restart

From now on, when the iPod is plugged in, the symbolic link '/dev/ipod' will be created by udev.

Add this line to '/etc/fstab' to set the mount point:

/dev/ipod /mnt/ipod vfat user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,users 0 0

Remember to create the mount point:

# mkdir /mnt/ipod

Install 'gtkpod' using 'urpmi gtkpod' and set it to turn on automounting when 'gtkpod' starts and unmount when it exits, in the 'gtpkpod Preferences' menu. The big advantage of 'gtkpod' is that it can repair a corrupted iPod database.

Plug your iPod in. You should a discovery message in '/var/log/messages':

# tail -f /var/log/messages

that looks something like this:

usb-storage: device found at 16
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
  Vendor: Apple     Model: iPod              Rev: 1.62
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 00
SCSI device sda: 58605120 512-byte hdwr sectors (30006 MB)

Now when you plug the iPod in and start 'gtkpod', it can mount '/mnt/ipod' and life should be good...

La Voila!