Using ipods with linux

Most ipods should "just work" with Ubuntu. After pluggin in your ipod, the system will prompt you to open it in your media player of choice (usually rhythmbox by default). From here you can add and remove songs, and do most other functions as you would in iTunes on a windows or Mac computer.

Trouble shooting

 * The ipod shows up and can play songs already loaded, but will not let you add songs:
 * The ipod is likely in Macintosh (HFS+) format. This type of filesystem is READ-ONLY on linux (and doesnt work at all on windows). Currently the only way to fix this is to reformat the ipod music parition to vfat.


 * Reformatting the ipod to fat on linux:
 * To reformat an ipod on linux you will need to use mkfs.vfat and convert the second partion of the ipod (the first one is for the operating system and shouldnt be messed with). The command would be similar to: mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb2 (replace sdb2 with the correct drive).
 * Rhythmbox should automatically ask you to initialize the ipod. Select the model (should be autodetected), and give it a name.


 * Ripped songs dont play or load on the ipod
 * By default most linux music rippers use (OGG) Vorbis format to extract music. This is not compatible with the ipod so songs need to be converted first. Both Rhythmbox and Banshee should be able to convert music from ogg to MP3, but if one doesnt work try the other. Also consider changing your music ripping program to use MP3 instead of OGG.