I got my iPod Classic to work with Amarok

By probabilityZero | December 26, 2007

It was a bit harder than I expected it to be (the new iPods are apparently encrypted somehow to prevent anything but iTunes from syncing with it), but now it’s working perfectly. It even downloaded all of my cover art.

Basically, all I had to do was compile a new version of libgpod and run a few commands. The one in the Ubuntu repositories that was automatically installed by apt-get is outdated, so I had to download the source here and compile it.
Here are the commands I used:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libglib2.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libsgutils1-dev checkinstall
tar -zxvf libgpod-0.6.0.tar.gz
cd libgpod-0.6.0
./configure
make
sudo checkinstall

I entered some random description and set the name to “libgpod2.” Only a few more steps after that:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libgpod.so.3 /usr/lib/libgpod.so.2
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libgpod.so.3 /usr/lib/libgpod.so.3
ipod-read-sysinfo-extended /dev/[ipod device address] /media/[your ipod device name]

After that I reinstalled amarok, though I’m not sure if it was necessary. Amarok now has more options for iPod models to choose from, and I just picked iPod Classic and it connected perfectly. Yay!

Thanks to the guys at the Ubuntu Forums.

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5 Comments

  1. Anonymous
    Posted January 3, 2008 at 9:34 pm | Permalink

    i tried to copy songs over with amarok and now my ipod classic reports no songs… I tried following your guide but i dont know what my “ipod-read-sysinfo-extended /dev/[ipod device address] /media/[your ipod device name]” should be…

  2. probabilityZero
    Posted January 3, 2008 at 9:38 pm | Permalink

    You can use the “df” command to find your ipod’s device address and name. And don’t worry about it reporting no songs. That happened to me too. The above commands will fix it.

  3. DragonJoker
    Posted January 23, 2008 at 6:18 am | Permalink

    hi, I’ve done all you said and it worked…great! I thought but I’ve been no longer happy cause when I download on my ipod classic black 80gb many songs amarok send out an error: transfer of X failed and says it to all the songs with a lot of messages…
    please help…thanks bye

  4. DragonJoker
    Posted January 23, 2008 at 6:20 am | Permalink

    and when I disconnect ipod from amarok “writing media database failed”
    but when i do it from the desktop ipod resets strangely…

  5. probabilityZero
    Posted January 23, 2008 at 4:31 pm | Permalink

    Are you ejecting the iPod before disconnecting it?

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