Get iOS4 Mount/Sync Working In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

If you've recently upgraded to iOS4 (now 4.2) and use Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, you can see your photos in Nautilus, but you have no access to your music using Rhythmbox or GTKPod (the device shows up but quickly disappears). However, you can easily get it to work using the instructions below.


Important: WebUpd8 reader rkv reports that the below instructions work with iPhone 3GS (using iOS 4.2) and the music he transfers shows up on his iPhone, while a friend who has tested this on an iPod Touch 4G says the device now shows up in Rhythmbox but the files he transfers don't show up on his iPod, so it seems this doesn't work for iPhone / iPod Touch 4G!

Get iPhone / iPod Touch 3G with iOS4 mount/sync in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

The packages required to get iPhone / iPod Touch to work with Ubuntu 10.10 are available in the official repositories now, however they are old and do not support iOS 4, so you'll have to add the Paul McEnery PPA and upgrade the packages:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pmcenery/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

At this point, if you plug-in your iPhone / iPod Touch, it should show up in Rhythmbox or GTK Pod. If it doesn't, restart your computer.


Note: I do not own an iPhone / iPod Touch so if the above instructions don't work, I can't help you.

Thanks to rkv and Radu for the tip, testing and PPA. Screenshot thanks to Radu.

Fix Banshee iPod Sync (Podsleuth) In Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

This post is thanks to Ricardo Ferreira who sent us the tip (actually most of the post is written by him).


iPod sync with Banshee is broken in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx since HAL is now D-Bus activated and does not have an init script. This bug was fixed by Banshee developers last night but isn't yet available anywhere - except GIT.

So here is a short guide to compile the latest podsleuth from Git in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.

1. Install the dependencies required to compile Podsleuth

sudo apt-get install git-core automake libmono-dev libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil-dev libndesk-dbus1.0-cil-dev libhal-dev libdbus-1-dev libsgutils2-dev mono-mcs mono-gmcs

2. Get podsleuth from GIT:

git clone git://git.gnome.org/podsleuth 

3. Compile podsleuth

cd podsleuth
./autogen.sh && ./configure --prefix=/usr && make

And finally, install it with:

sudo make install

Credits and many thanks for this how-to: Ricardo Ferreira.

Now You Can Say: "Linux Supports iPhone / iPod Touch Out Of The Box" [libimobiledevice 1.0.0 Released]

libimobiledevice is a FOSS software library that talks the protocols to support iPhone ® and iPod Touch ® devices on Linux. Unlike other projects, it does not depend on using any existing proprietary libraries and does not require jailbreaking.

When we posted an article named "Ubuntu 10.04 supports iPhone / iPod Touch out of the box", it was actually libimobiledevice (and usbmuxd/gtkpod) who made this possible, not Ubuntu (thanks to Karl for mentioning this).

libimobiledevice (formerly known as libiphone) development started in 2007 and today it hits the first stable version: 1.0.0 and was followed by the release of usbmuxd 1.0.3. The result is that now you can say that in fact "Linux supports iPhone / iPod Touch out of the box!". Most distributions will feature the library in their next release. For now, the following have confirmed using libimobiledevice: Ubuntu Lucid (for Ubuntu Karmic, see THIS), Fedora 13, openSUSE 11.3 and Mandriva 2010.1.

libimobiledevice 1.0.0 has been tested with iPhone/iPod Touch 1G, 2G and 3GS running up to firmware 3.1.3. libimobiledevice is used by other components like GVFS, libgpod/gtkpod, and libusb to provide a pleasant experience when connecting your iPhone or iPod to a Linux desktop.

What can and can't libimobiledevice do?

For now, you can sync your music/video, access the filesystem from your Linux Desktop, manage your SpringBoard, managed installed apps, create backups and a lot more.

The contacts/calendars/notes/bookmarks synchronization capabilities are in progress while updating/restoration, camera/photo synchronization, and profiling/debugging are not yet supported.

Credits / further reading:

• Phoronix
• sukimashita
• libimobiledevice
• If you want to install libimobiledevice in Ubuntu Karmic, see StoneCut's post (a complete how-to)
• Image credits: WebUpd8 reader RKV

Update: Linux And iPhone / iPod Touch Support

This is a follow up on our "Confirmed: Ubuntu 10.04 Supports iPhone / iPod Touch Out Of The Box" post (the initial post has been updated also). I just wanted to write the update in a new post so the credits go to whom deserves them.


Thanks to Karl , we find out that the iPhone / iPod Touch support in Ubuntu 10.04 is in no way thanks to Canonical:

It happened thanks to Marcan (and the other fellows) from usbmuxd. The libgpod and GNOME integration is mainly from Bastien Nocera of GNOME and Fedora fame. usbmuxd/gtkpod/libiphone etc. are the one who deserve credits for that.

He also says it works on Fedora 13 and it will probably work with most distributions upcoming releases.

Is Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid) iPhone / iPod Touch Ready?!?

Robin Nixon, an UbuntuForums.org user has reported that the latest Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 3 worked out of the box with his iPhone and he was able to browse everything using Nautilus. He also reports Rhythmbox "working like iTunes".

Not only that, but his iPhone is not even jailbroken. In case you are interested, he uses an iPhone 3GS 32Gb with the latest 3.1.3 firmware. You can read about all this HERE.


Have you tried browsing your iPhone / iPod Touch with Nautilus in Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 3? If so, did everything work out of the box? How about Rhythmbox?

WinFF Is A Great Audio / Video Converter With Presets For iPod-iTunes, Google Android, Blackberry, Etc. [Windows, Linux]

Winff is a GUI fronted for the very well-known FFmpeg, which works on Windows and Linux (unfortunately it doesn't work on Mac OS X).

WinFF converts multiple different files in the same time, can convert video to audio, convert between different audio formats with no external codecs required (other than ffmpeg, of course), includes lots of presets for converting video into formats for common devices such as iPod-iTunes, Blackberry, PSP, PS3, Palm, Nokia, Creative Zen, Google Android, Rockbox, DVD and so on.

For a complete list of features, see WinFF page.


WinFF 1.2.0 was released a few days ago and it brings 2 new very interesting features: preview and cropping for videos.

To install the latest version in Ubuntu, simply paste this in a terminal:

wget --quiet --output-document=- "http://winff.org/ubuntu/AAFE086A.gpg" | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb http://winff.org/ubuntu karmic universe" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winff.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install winff

Note:

-Jaunty users will have to also install libavcodec-unstripped-51:

sudo apt-get install libavcodec-unstripped-51 

-Intrepid users will have to install libavcodec-unstripped-52:

sudo apt-get install libavcodec-unstripped-52 

WinFF 1.2.0 didn't work for me: when trying to convert something, nothing happens. But maybe it's something wrong with my system so please let us know if WinFF 1.2.0 works for you, in the comments. Thanks!

Update: this is how to get the latest WinFF version to work under Ubuntu (with Gnome) - tested on Karmic:

1. Firstly, make sure you have libavcodec-unstripped-52 installed:

sudo apt-get install libavcodec-unstripped-52

2. Then go to Edit > Preferences, on the "Linux" tab, under "Terminal to run FFmpeg" enter: "/usr/bin/gnome-terminal" and under "Terminal options" enter: "-x". Also make sure the "/usr/bin/ffmpeg" and "/usr/bin/ffplay" paths are correct.


For other Linux distributions and Windows, see WinFF download page.

Thanks to Bruce Ingalls for the tip and for the Ubuntu w/ Gnome fix!

Backup Your iPhone / iPod Touch Music Collection [Ubuntu]

One more interesting thing you can do with the packages we installed in our previous iPhone article is to backup the music on your iPhone / iPod Touch back onto a computer again, for example, after a PC crash that rendered your hard disk with your music collection useless. This is not possible with iTunes if the new PC account hadn't been activated before. However, this procedure will only work for non-DRM'ed files.

There are more ways to skin a cat, as they say ...

Backup via GTKpod:

This is the best way to do it: Just right-click on any file and choose "Copy selected tracks to folder" (or similar). Files get copied to your PC with a filename based on their tags. However, copying in GTKpod may not always work. In those cases, choose one of your other options down below.

Backup via Rhythmbox:

You can backup files from your iPhone back on your PC again by simply drag'n'dropping them into a local folder. However, they will have cryptic names (see next section on backing up manually).

Backup manually:

This method is fast but has the drawback that you'll need to do some things manually. Anyway, just double-click on the phone icon that should appear on your desktop after plugging it in via USB. Your music can be found in the directory relative to the iPhone mount point:

iTunes_Control/Music

In there you'll find many folders with numbers such as F00-F49 (or more). In there are your individual music files, but their filenames are destroyed so they now have file names such as libgpod004452.mp3 (for files copied with Linux; files copied with iTunes will have similarly cryptic names, however). The good news is that all tags are still intact so you can easily rename the files automatically again based on the metadata with your favourite tag editor. So, copy the entire collection to your PC again and let your tagger app do the rest.


Note: what's really special about this procedure is that it's not possible with Windows this easily. You can only copy your music BACK from the iPhone on Linux (or using really slow SSH on Windows).

This is a guest post written by StoneCut (thank you very much!). Browse all the posts by StoneCut.

Tips On Tagging Audio And Video Files For iPhone / iPod Touch Under Linux

StoneCut continues his series of posts for WebUpd8. In his last 2 posts he explained how to sync your iPhone / iPod Touch with various music players in Ubuntu and also the current status for Linux music players and iPhone / iPod Touch sync:

Easy Way To Sync Your iPhone With Rhythmbox, Nautilus, Etc. In Ubuntu

Reviews Of iPhone/iPod Synchronizing Applications For Linux


Today, StoneCut gives you some tips for audio and video tagging for iPhone / iPod Touch under Linux. Read on!

Converting Videos to M4V format and tagging files

Video File Conversion into an iPhone/iPod Touch-friendly format is easiest accomplished with handbrake which you can install like so:

sudo apt-get install handbrake

(or you can download the latest version Ubuntu .deb from HERE).

Handbrake is our first option as it has good presets for iPhone/iPod Touch. Just choose the template and convert. However, the files won't be properly tagged and will just show up with their filenames in your iPod app. To tag them properly you need to install this:

sudo apt-get install atomicparsley

After conversion you can tag your files according to this example:

AtomicParsley Name_of_Video.m4v --tracknum 01 --title "01 - Testvideo" --artist "Testartist" --album "Testalbum" --albumArtist "Various Artists" --compilation true --year 2010 --artwork artwork.png

You can leave out the track number, compilation and year stuff. I strongly suggest setting the other parameters, though. When adding a lot of videos onto GTKpod at once it will ask you a name for the Playlist; quite handy to keep the track numbers in sequence. Artwork can be in JPEG and PNG format. I haven't fully exploited all the functionality of this app so if you find something noteworthy let me know in the comments.

And no, I wasn't able to find a GUI for this purpose, if you do find one let me know in the comments.

Tagging MP3's with iTunes' compilation flag

As people who want to copy compilation albums to their iPhone via Linux have probably noticed by now, there's a problem ... iTunes will oftentimes not see them as compilations despite them having a common Album Title and Album Artist set as "Various Artists". The reason for this is that iTunes is using its own atom in the MP3 metadata to flag an album as an iTunes compilation.
Unfortunately I haven't found a single application for Linux that will set the required tag. But the (excellent) application "mp3tag" works fine via Wine (well, I use Crossover Pro 8.0). It's available from www.mp3tag.de.

Mark the songs you want to tag with the compilation tag and then do a right-click -> Extended tags. Click on the "Add field" button (only a symbol) and choose "ITUNESCOMPILATION" from the dropdown list. Underneath enter "1" (without quotes) as value. That's it, just write the tags again and you're done.

If anyone figures out how to do this with a native Linux app then please let me know. Maybe even AtomicParsley can do it ?!

Tagging M4A

M4A files are just MP4 audio files. For M4A files you can use AtomicParsley again (see section on convertig and tagging M4V files). M4P files are DRM-protected files from the iTunes store and should not be edited. They would need to get decrypted first. M4R are ringtone files which are just renamed M4A files. So rename them to MP4 and tag them with AtomicParsley, too.

Update:

Set iTunes Compilation Flag using eyeD3

"eyeD3" is a native linux terminal application that I only just discovered. You can set and unset the iTunes Compilation flag with relative ease amongst tons of other things.

Let's install it first:

sudo apt-get install eyed3

To set the compilation flag for example.mp3:

eyeD3 --set-text-frame=TCMP:1 Compilation_Track.mp3

To remove the compilation flag remove the "1" so it looks like this:

eyeD3 --set-text-frame=TCMP: Compilation_Track.mp3

This tool is very powerful, check the eyeD3 man page for more info. For info on custom iTunes ID3 tags/frames you can apply with eyeD3, such as TCMP (iTunes Compilation), check the id3 Site: http://www.id3.org/iTunes

Set iTunes Compilation Flag using MP3 Diags

"MP3 Diags" is a native linux app for fixing MP3s but it also includes a tag editor. In the tag editor's preferences on the "Other" tab you can set checkmarks to > for iTunes and Windows Media. If you check "iTunes" then it will work.

Next, return to MP3 Diags. Select your files and then click on the icon with the two heads (the tooltip says "Toggle Various Artists". If it's already enabled, you will see a single head. Just click on the floppy disk to save and you're set. I have some issues with MP3 Diags' GUI where it seldomly does what I want it to, your mileage may vary. For me, "eyeD3" works best.

Credits for this article (and many thanks) go to StoneCut. Make sure you come back, as StoneCut still has a few iPhone / iPod Touch and Linux tips & tricks!

Reviews Of iPhone/iPod Synchronizing Applications For Linux

All of these require a working setup with ifuse, gvfs, libimobiledevice (aka libiphone) etc as per our previous article. In today's article, StoneCut reviews GTKpod, Rhythmbox, Banshee and Songbird and their current status regarding iPhone/iPod syncing.

1. GTKpod

This is the app that the developers who code the iPhone support use for debugging so it's most likely also the most stable. However, it's also extremely sluggish and can be a real pain to use. On the good side, though, it handles anything music and video related like a champ. Compilations work, Album covers work, Videos work and so on. If any other method fails then you can always fall back on GTKpod. Unfortunately, though, you would usually have to mount the iPhone an extra time under /mnt/iPod via "ifuse /mnt/iPod" or a similar directory for GTKpod to recognize it but GVFS mounts the iPhone elsewhere, so it doesn't work.

On my system I fixed that problem a symbolic link (your Phone needs to be plugged in to create the link):

sudo mkdir /mnt/iPhone && sudo chmod 777 /mnt/iPhone && ln -s /home/stonecut/.gvfs/StoneCut's iPhone/ /mnt/iPod

Next, you can set the /mnt/iPod folder to be used within GTKpod under Edit -> Repository/iPod Options. Set the iPhone mount point to "/mnt/iPhone". Make sure your iPhone is connected during the setup. From here on you can always just launch GTKpod and you won't have to issue another "ifuse /mnt/iPhone" command ever again. You just have to hit that "Read iPod" button (or whatever it's called in English, my GTKpod is localized).

2. Rhythmbox

Rhythmbox works really well for me the past few weeks. You need to import music to your library and then drag'n'drop it from the library to the device, if you drag'n'drop files straight from your file system onto the iPhone in Rhythmbox they won't be added. Next, you'll see a little progress bar stating "copying" in the status bar of Rhythmbox. Do not disconnect the iPhone when it's done. You'll need to wait for up to two minutes afterwards and make sure you actually see the "synchronising" screen on your iPhone. Once that's done wait another minute and make sure it doesn't start synchronising again (may happen if you copy multiple files). Multiple files will be copied with alternate bursts of "Copying" in Rhythmbox and "Synchronising" on your iPhone.

Once it's done synchronising you need to make absolutely sure you properly unmount it everywhere before disconnecting. Do a right-click on your iPhone in Rhythmbox and choose unmount/eject. Next, close Rhythmbox and make sure you umount/eject the iPhone's photo device that may still be connected. Once that's done fire up the iPod app and check if everything worked right.

Using Rhythmbox is much faster than GTKpod, but it's not always as stable. For some people the "Synchronising" screen simply never pops up on the screen. Sadly there's no way to force it in Rhythmbox as there is in GTKpod.

One drawback of Rhythmbox when compared to GTKpod is that it doesn't allow syncing of videos.

3. Banshee

Initially, Banshee worked for me but something must have gotten broken in the meantime. For now, Banshee (even from PPA) doesn't "see" the iPhone/iPod Touch at all. It would be great if they could fully implement iPhone/iPod Touch support since it would probably allow us to transfer Videos like we can with GTKpod. It may be related to a recent namechange of libiphone to libimobiledevice but I tried fixing it with some symlinks and it didn't work. Maybe it will work again in the future. I do remember some issues with songs from compilations showing up as individual albums, though, from my previous test and that drove me crazy since I create compilations with hundreds of songs and don't want to see thousands of albums but just the compilation albums themselves.

This problem doesn't exist with GTKpod and I haven't had any issues with Rhythmbox either regarding this detail yet.

4. Songbird

Songbird does not work for iPhone/iPod Touch sync at all. They apparently use their own libraries which are broken for now. It's a bit of a shame, it most closely resembles iTunes, which (I guess) people would be most familiar with.


So what does this all mean ?!

You should try to use Rhythmbox if it works properly for you. If you run into any issues then try GTKpod. GTKpod is currently also the only solution for copying to your device. Just drag'n'drop the files like you would with your music files.

Once again, a big thanks to StoneCut (and of course, credits for this article). Also, expect a lot more articles from StoneCut on iPhone/iPod and Ubuntu syncing (tips, tricks, etc.)!

Mount iPhone / iPod Touch in Ubuntu [How-to]

To mount an Apple iPhone / iPod Touch to your Ubuntu computer, connect the cable via an USB cable to your computer and follow the steps below:

1. Add the following repository

Open a terminal and paste this:

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jonabeck/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"

For any other version, simply replace the jaunty by the respective version name (hardy, intrepid or karmic).

Alternatively, Ubuntu Karmic users can run this instead of the command above:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonabeck

2. Add the PPA key using this command:

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com F0876AC9

3. Install ifuse:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ifuse

Once the installation is done, connect your iPhone to your computer via the USB cable.

Open up your Nautilus. You should see the iPhone/iPod entry at the side pane. This show that it is already mounted in your system.

Now you can: view/copy/download photos, create folders, upload/download files. Managing address book/calendar is on it's way (not yet available). Unfortunately, you won't be able to manage your music database because Apple uses a cryptographic signing algorithm to encrypt all the music files. While you can access the music folder, there is no way that you can transfer your music over and get it to work in your iPhone.

[via gnometips & T4n | n0 Ru | 3z]

Update: you may want to take a look at this also: Mount iPhone On A Fresh Ubuntu Karmic Koala Installation (The Complete Guide)

Steve Jobs Is Back And Announcing Apple Software and Application Updates

According to Mashable, who keeps us posted live from the Apple conference, Steve Jobs is back and also has announced a whole new bunch of interesting features for the Apple product lovers.

I'll just write here some of the main headlines:

- BREAKING: New iPod Nanos Get a Video Camera and More - a mic, integrated speaker, FM Radio, a larger display, VoiceOver and pedometer. All for 179$.

- ipod News (from ReadWriteWeb ) Cheaper & Bigger - new prices for the iPod touch - 199$ for 8Gb, 299$ for 32Gb, and 399$ for 65Gb. Also, the iPods are now "50% faster", according to Apple. The iPod classic now features a 160Gb hard drive for 250$. iPod shuffle will com in a 2Gb version for 59$.

- iTunes 9 - sure does look pretty, according to CrunchGear. LPc can now be picked up from the store that includes lyrics, notes, videos, photos and more. Now you can easier browse and navigate through it, preview any song, TV show, album or movie from the Apple Store. Also, iTunes 9 allows Genius Mixes, that is turning your playlists into something akin to a radio station (it knows what song just go together, according to Mashable). The new iTunes available here.

- a very nice selection of photos you can find on Engadget. Morover, we found there that the iPhone 3.1 update, free for iPhone users, now adds a much-requested feature - the Genius Mode for the App Store. The iPhone OS 3.1 update should be available for download later today via iTunes.