ipod touch doesn't show tracks after transfer in Rhythmbox

[vinnn]

Binary package hint: rhythmbox

I was made up to hear about the ipod touch/iphone support in Ubuntu 10.04 as my girlfriend has a 3rd gen iPod Touch and has to use a WinXP VM in Virtualbox running iTunes in order to get tracks on it, however despite the new support for the iPod's/iPhone's USB protocol I'm unable to transfer tracks to it using Rhythmbox .
My desktop is running Ubuntu 10.04 amd64 and at this point is fully up to date.

Plugging in a 3rd gen iPod Touch works OK, it is automounted, shows up in Rhythmbox 0.12.8 and the iPod's tracks can be browsed and played from Rhythbox's interface.
However when transferring tracks to it the tracks transfer to the iPod sucessfully but the iPod doesn't show the tracks in the library.

Browsing the iPod's filesystem in Nautilus I can see the files in the /iTunes_Control/Music/F** but their filenames are in a DOS style short name format (shortened with a "~", possibly due to the iPod's filesystem) and are different to those transferred using iTunes (e.g. IZGP.mp3). I've attached a screenshot of Nautilus showing two directories on the iPod with two of these files.

Looking in the /iTunes_Control/iTunes/iTunes Library.itlp directory I can see that the Library.itdb file (I'm assuming this is the iPod's database) was updated at the same time as the timestamp on the most recent mp3 file (the Weedeater track), so I'm assuming that the database is being updated by Rhythmbox. I've attached a screenshot of Nautilus showing the iTunes library files and their timestamps.

Therefore is it possible that the iPod's database is being updated 'correctly' but the MP3 file is not being named correctly by Rhythmbox?

Happy to provide more detail if required.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, did you eject the ipod from the rhythmbox interface? how long did you wait before disconnecting it? rhythmbox needs some 15 seconds at least to sync the database on eject to have the songs listed

[vinnn (vpooleyspam)]

Yes I've tested leaving it for over an hour to charge afterwards each time before unmounting it from Rhythmbox, from the desktop and from the desktop using the "Safely remove" option. No difference in each attempt.

Every time the file has been transferred fully and the db files' timestamps updated as shown in the attached screenshots.

Chz

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Ok, it would be much simpler if you could get in touch with the people writting the software rather than with the distributor for the issue, let we know if you open a GNOME bug there, otherwise we can do it and forward comments between trackers but that will be slow and inefficient for everybody

[vinnn (vpooleyspam)]

OK, I've reported it to the Gnome project, bug 616508.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=616508

I would consider this feature quite important for the 10.04 release though, especially with the launch of the Ubuntu One music store, I can image that there are a lot of iPod Touch/iPhone owners out there who would be an ideal target market for the Ubuntu music store.

Till next time,

Vin

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

thanks for sent it upstream, if it's fixed upstream it could be fixed on Ubuntu with an SRU, but this is not a release blocker issue.

[Jen (strangeseraph)]

I'm having the trouble, and its only a recent trouble, before it was working fine but recently its stopped. I wonder if an update caused this.