Troubleshooting-FAQ:


Contents:

- Installed libmp4v2 or libgpod from source to /usr/local/lib, but
  gtkpod is unable to locate libmp4.so.0 or libgpod.so.0

- Files copied to gtkpod but they don't appear in the database (0.80,
  Tony Williams)

- Filenames on the iPod appear in DOS 8.3 format and syncing to the iPod
  is not working as expected.

- ./autogen.sh does not work

- The following error message is displayed when accessing the device
  (Markus Gaugusch, Justin Thiessen):
     ieee1394: sbp2: aborting sbp2 command
     Test Unit Ready 00 00 00 00 00

- The following error message is displayed when accessing the device
  (Ingo Reimann)
     usb-storage: Attempting to get CSW...
     usb-storage: usb_stor_bulk_transfer_buf: xfer 13 bytes
     usb-storage: Status code -75; transferred 0/13

- When connecting an iPod via USB to a 2.6 kernel machine the iPod will
  be recognized but not work correctly. In /var/log/messages you'll
  see the a bunch of "Buffer I/O error on device sd?" when connecting
  the iPod (Jonas Bergler, Kevin Venkiteswaran)

- SHUFFLE won't play music after reformatting (Mark Davis)

- Calendar entries mixed up

- m4a files created by faac cannot be added by gtkpod (gentoo)

- gtkpod crashes when reading the iTunesDB (Fedora)

- Problems connecting the iPod to Solaris/SPARC

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Installed libmp4v2 or libgpod from source to /usr/local/lib, but
gtkpod is unable to locate libmp4.so.0 or libgpod.so.0


If you install to /usr/local/lib please don't forget to add the path
to LD_LIBRARY_PATH:

     LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib
     export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

You can add those lines to your ~/.bashrc or add it globally to
/etc/profile.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Files copied to gtkpod but they don't appear in the database (0.80,
Tony Williams)

I'm having a problem that I wonder if you've seen.  I've setup
gtkpod.  launch it and add files.  I can hear the ipod harddrive
spin up.  If I go onto the ipod directly I can see the space being
used and can even see the new files on the ipod.  However the ipod
interface doesn't show the new files and gtkpod keeps telling me
that there are orphaned files.

Solution:

I finally figured out the problem.  In my fstab I had the filesystem
set to 'auto' and it was mounting as msdos instead of vfat.  I
specified vfat in fstab and voila!  I'm a happy happy man.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Filenames on the iPod appear in DOS 8.3 format and syncing to the iPod
is not working as expected.

Solution:

You need to specify "vfat" as file system type. How to do that depends
on which way you use to mount the iPod -- see the README file for more
details.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
./autogen.sh does not work

A ubunto user has reported that he had to set

ACLOCAL_FLAGS=" -I /usr/share/aclocal/"

in order to get ./autogen.sh to work.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
The following error message is displayed when accessing the device:

     ieee1394: sbp2: aborting sbp2 command
     Test Unit Ready 00 00 00 00 00

Solution:

(Markus Gaugusch):
It is possible that hotplug and the "sg" support are not working well
together. Try disabling "sg" support in the kernel configuration or
unload the "sg" module if you are using modules.

(Justin Thiessen):
Forcing the sbp2 module to serialized I/O seems (so far) to have
solved the problem.

Ref.:
------
http://www.netzwerk-aktiv.com/pub/doc/newsletters/linux1394-user/html/1676.html
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/printthread.php?t=6678
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:Xh_gu43y6w8J:themikecam.com/newmikecam/blog/index.php/geek/2005/+ipod+serialize_io&hl=en

Looks like the driver is going to be set to default to serialized I/O
in kernel 2.6.14, anyways.

http://linuxtoday.com/developer/2005093001026NWKNDV


----------------------------------------------------------------------
The following error message is displayed when accessing the device

     usb-storage: Attempting to get CSW...
     usb-storage: usb_stor_bulk_transfer_buf: xfer 13 bytes
     usb-storage: Status code -75; transferred 0/13

Solution (by Ingo Reimann):

I tried to use an iPod Mini with my nforce2-Board, kernel
2.6.14/2.6.15 debian sid and got messages like [above] in
dmesg. /dev/sda appeared, but fdisk -l did not show anything

The solution, that i found in a discussion on
http://kerneltrap.org/node/3844 was to unload ehci_hcd.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
When connecting an iPod via USB to a 2.6 kernel machine the iPod will
be recognized but not work correctly. In /var/log/messages you'll see
the a bunch of "Buffer I/O error on device sd?" when connecting the
iPod (Jonas Bergler, Kevin Venkiteswaran)

Solution (by "jeffmock"):

Disable CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION (File Systems -> Partition Types ->
Advanced Partition Selection -> EFI GUID Partition support) in your
kernel configuration, recompile.

Details can be found at 
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?postid=1197015#post1197015

Excerpt:

"This problem could potentially happen with both 2.4 and 2.6 kernels.

A longer story follows and perhaps someone can come up with a more
sensible solution for the long run.

The iPod looks like a removable disk drive to the host computer. When it
is attached to the computer, the mini iPod reports a capacity of 7999488
512-byte sectors (or about 4GB). This turns out to be wrong for whatever
reason. The mini iPod only really has 7999376 sectors and it exaggerates
by 112 sectors. The other quality of the iPod is that if the computer
attempts to read a sector greater than the actual capacity but less than
the reported capacity, the iPod will dutifully report an I/O error, but
it won't respond to any future requests until you unplug/plug the iPod."

I followed the kernel recompile instructions for distro, disabled only
the CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION option, and things ran perfectly for me
afterwards. As indicated above, hopefully a better long-term solution
will emerge soon."

(Jorg Schuler: it seems a patch was introduced in kernel version 2.6.10:
"<phil@ipom.com> [PATCH] USB Storage: Add unusual_devs entry for iPod
This patch adds an unusual_devs.h entry for the Apple iPod as it
reports one too many sectors. The patch was submitted by
Avi Kivity <avi@argo.co.il> and re-diffed by me.")


----------------------------------------------------------------------
SHUFFLE won't play music after reformatting

Solution (by Mark Davis):

The SHUFFLE seems to care about the volume name which has to be
"IPOD". Try to format as (replace /dev/sda1 with the appropriate
device file for your SHUFFLE!):

mkdosfs -F32 -n IPOD /dev/sda1


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Calendar entries mixed up

The iPod does not appear to like times specified in UTC (indicated by
a trailing 'Z'). KOrganizer seems to do this. If you know how to work
around it let me know.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
m4a files created by faac cannot be added by gtkpod (gentoo)

There appear to be some versions of faac that do not create 'good' m4a
files. The problem could be solved under gentoo by using version 1.24.
In order to make error tracking easier, more detailled error messages
are displayed when tracks could not be added for any reason starting
with version 0.91-CVS of gtkpod.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
gtkpod crashes when reading the iTunesDB (Fedora)

It appears that crashes were observed with kernel version
2.6.11-1.35_FC3. An upgrade to 2.6.12-1.1376_FC3 got rid of the
problem. This was with gtkpod-0.94.0 and Athlon64 3000+. 


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Problems connecting the iPod to Solaris/SPARC

Current (as of 2006/03/30) versions of the Solaris pcfs SPARC driver
have a bug where the correct filesystem/partition layout may not be
recognized, and this is true for iPods.  This prevents the iPod
partition from being mounted on Solaris SPARC.  In order to work
around this, one must prevent pcfs from detecting the first FAT32
filesystem, forcing it to move on to the second one.  This can be done
by changing the filesystem identifier like so:

# dd if=/dev/rdsk/c3t0d0s2 of=/tmp/ipod.orig count=1
# cp /tmp/ipod.orig /tmp/ipod.modified
<edit /tmp/ipod.modified and change the first occurance of "FAT32" (at
offset 0x52 for me) to something else like "CAT32">
# dd if=/tmp/ipod.modified of=/dev/rdsk/c3t0d0s2 count=1

The above modification may or may not affect usage on other systems. 
Some reports encounter no problems using the iPod or iTunes after
making it.  In my own experience, my iPod hard locked moving from a
SPARC system to an x86 system, and I had to undo the change.  Wrapper
scripts to handle this may be desirable on SPARC.

Eric Enright