Get Your iPod to Work in Ubuntu

Many competing portable media players are on the market today, but iPod by far takes the lion’s share of the market. This little device developed by Apple has revolutionized the music industry, revitalized Apple computers, and changed the way we look at multimedia. Knowing how much the iPod is a part of modern culture, you can be sure that the Ubuntu development team ensured that their operating system would be able to transfer music to an iPod. The iPod should mount when you plug it into your computer. If it does not, please refer to the following How To box. If your iPod does mount, then you can skip to the next section.

Once the iPod is mounted, you need to install a program called gtkpod. This program allows you to transfer files to and from your iPod. Installing gtkpod can be done through the Add/Remove tool under Applications. When the Add/Remove window opens, type gtkpod in the search box. Once it is found, click Apply to install. If you go to Applications | Sound & Video | gtkpod. Minus the bells and whistles of iTunes, gtkpod doesn’t look all that different in terms of functionality.


Connect Your iPod
Sometimes Ubuntu may not automatically recognize your iPod. In this instance, you have to go into the Terminal and get your hands dirty. Once you start up the Terminal, enter the following:

pt-get install ipodslave

After you type this, try reconnecting the iPod to your computer. If it mounts, you are done. If not, you have to mount the device yourself. To do this, you need to find the device. Again, open the Terminal and type

dmesg

This will give you quite a bit of output. Search through this to find iPod and determine how Ubuntu recognizes this device. It will be something like “/dev/sda,” so we will use this for the example. More than likely, the iPod will have two partitions: one, /dev/sda, which contains the device’s firmware, and the other, /dev/sda2, which contains your music and other goodies. This is the partition you need to mount.

Back in the Terminal, enter

sudo mkdir /mnt/ipod

This will create the folder you are mounting the iPod to. Type

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

When the editor opens, add
/dev/sda2 /mnt/ipod vfat user,noauto,umask=000 0 0

Be sure to save this file. Now you can mount your iPod by typing this in the Terminal:

sudo mount /dev/sda2


Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything Ubuntu