h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah, yes. We covered mounting.

But I was surprised by a couple of things. Firstly, in my 'Computer' folder I have nice icons for my smaller HD, my CD and my card reader. I'd kind of expected it to pick up the larger HD for me. Secondly - trying to mount hda1, I got 'special device dev/hda1 does not exist.'

Under dev, almost everything has a big red X against it, except for hdc1. Will that be it, dja reckon?

Cancel last... missed out a slash.

Comments so far...from the UI viewpoint I like the fact that it's both Win *and* Mac-like. Having more than one way of doing something is 'A Good Thing' (this is Gnome, btw)

As predicted, it's slow. And it doesn't like too many windows open at once. Time to go shopping for memory.

Nah. There's obviously something blindingly obvious that I haven't understood.

I have a .tar.gz file for gtkpod, sitting on my desktop as pretty as you please.

I have Synaptic Package Manager. This shows me a list of apps, none of which is gtkpod. It also lets me search for gtkpod, and shows up the word, but doesn't let me do anything with it.

There'a also an add/remove programmes app which doesn't do very much.

What am I missing here?

wanna niPod

Oh...and

sudo apt-get install gtkpod didn't do nowt neither. Except tell me 'application not found'

Ah...I see...

First of all I somehow have to get my installation to point at a repository which includes gtkpod.

Can someone talk me through it?

Sorry - I'm not familiar with how to set up the Debian package manager. It's something to do with your /etc/apt/sources.list file. You'll have to find help from the Ubuntu community if you can. Try this site: http://ubuntuguide.org/

Remember, if you use the apt-get command or the synaptic package manager, or the 'Add applications' program, you do not also need to download the gtkpod tar.gz file.

Try running 'apt-get update' from the command line as root before you apt-get install.

When you do get it working, you can try getting a lightweight window manager.
http://www.xwinman.org has a selection.

Stunning! Mindbogglingly amazingly stunning!

'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'. The problem was that I didn't realise what magic the Synaptic Package Manager was capable of. A couple of button clicks, then tell it to go off and get gtkpod for me!

See me? See bunny? See happy?

Yes, I'll have to try a lighter window manager, though. My machine keeps going into 'chunga chunga' mode (disk swapping). Plus I think my processor has known power management problems which make it slow to come back after power save. Mind you...in '98 I generally had to re-start.

Cor!

Also...I see there's a stream ripper available, and there's a White Stripes gig I want a copy of...

More memory is always a good thing for a computer.

I've been running WindowMaker for a long time as the window manager for my linux machine at home. Works well for a low spec machine (mines a pentium2, 266 equivalent) and is nice and configurable for what you may or may not want it to do. Others will no doubt disagree about what makes a good looking and useful window manager interface.

Mutter mutter.

Things still aren't going entirely well. gtkpod won't write to my iPod. It asks me permission to create some directories...but then tell me there's no iTune database. Of course there's no friggin' iTunes database! I was expecting gtkpod to generate one!

Someone's suggested YamiPod http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/home/ - which looks rather cool. Can't tell if it solves my problem, though, 'cause Synaptic won't get it for me. You're meant to go Preferences...Repositories...Add...then tick the 'Community' box so that it will search for apps outside of the Ubuntu releases. And it worked fine for gtkpod, but now 'Community' dosen't seem to want to stay ticked.

I can save YamiPod to my desktop. Can anyone talk me through how I'd install it from there?

Plus...I hadn't entirely appreciated that I wouldn't be able to make my larger HD permanently available - I have to mount it via a terminal every time (defeating the object of a GUI)...and it seems I can't write to it!

So...it seems to me that Linux has great potential - but I'm still some distance from first base.

And on top of that, my cold has become bronchitis, I also have conjunctivitis, an ear infection that is theatening to perforate an eardrum, I've been too ill to go and see King Kong...and I'm meant to fly down south to start work tomorrow night.

Ah. Seems it isn't in any Ubuntu repositories. And I can't quite figure out how to add a non-Ubuntu one which has it.

Traveller in Time automating mountings
"Write a line in /etc/fstab to automount your windoze partition.
man fstab
for further reference. (as cryptic as ususal) "

Oh, go on, you tease ...throw a lifeline to a sick man...decrypt for me!

You can make the big HD permanently available to you under linux.
There is a special file /etc/fstab which is a text file with a table detailing what filesystems and mount points your linux system automatically knows about. If you make an entry in this that points /dev/hda1 to /mount/windows and give it the default options it should get checked and mounted every time you boot up.

Each column in the file has the following structure
filesystem mountpoint filesystem-type options dump check

The line you'll need to add will be something like
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows auto defaults 1 2

A longer explanation of what the options are and about the dump and check see http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html
Of course I will add that you should make a backup copy of your /etc/fstab file before messing with it and you'll probably need to be root to edit this file.
The mountpoint can be any directory you want it to be. On my system I've my various windows drives mounting to /windows/c and /windows/d

Installation instructions for YamiPod appear to be on its website:
http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/docs/help/install_linux.php

The mounting instructions given above are what you need for auto-mounting your Windows partition. To backup your /etc/fstab file, use something like
# cp /etc/fstab ~

If you see '#' at the beginning of a command line, that means you should run it as root. The '~' character is shorthand for 'my home directory', which is likely to be /home/user

>>Of course there's no friggin' iTunes database! I was expecting gtkpod to generate one!

Have you used iTunes with Windows yet? If so, might you be able to copy over the library from there, or set it so that it uses the Windows iTunes library in /mnt/windows (or wherever you've mounted it)?

Sorry to hear you are not having very much like on the health side of the equation.

Ah! Thanks for that! YamiPod's docs are much better than gtkpod's...being at least a description of user tasks, rather than the functions. Two totally different perspectives, you see. 'The synchronising function is used for synchronising.' Oh yeah? And what does that do for me? (that's just an example, btw. I do know)

I suspect that if I were to borrow someone elses PC I could load some stuff in iTunes, then read it it gtkpod. and thenceforth gtkpod would work. At the moment it's telling me 'Warning! No iTunes database' - but not letting me make one.

Problem is...the whole reason for gtkpod...indeed, Linux...in the first place is that iTunes won't install in my '98.

So...where am I with The Penguin. Well...due to illness and time away from home, I *still* haven't got my iPod working. However...I believe that I can do it with v0.99 - as opposed to the 0.88 in the Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog repository. (Major disadvantage of Ubuntu: the 'cute' names of its releases). And here's where my problems start. I've found instructions to get it from an external repository...by command line. It also seems that it would be 'a good idea' to upgrade to Breezy Badger...and I also have the commands to do that. Plus...I've found an excellent guide to the Shell: http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/linuxcommand.org/learning_the_shell.php So..with all the bits and pieces I'm learning, I guess I'm making intellectual progress.

But this is where I have a problem. I don't *want* to know all this stuff! I just want to use my PC for managing my iPod, surfing the web, typing stuff...etc. etc. Now...I'm sure that Linux is a very powerful, flexible OS, and I know it's not specifically aimed at non-techie users...hold that last one a minute...is that what it says on the Ubuntu site? And I don't believe any of the other distros are any better.

Compare and contrast loading a new app in Windows and Ubuntu/Synaptic/Debian. Debian makes it easy, right? Well...when I wanted to load the latest iTunes on a friend's laptop I just clicked a couple of things. As I say...I still haven't managed the same process in Linux.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm very grateful. The idea's great. And it's probably the ony way I have of kickstarting my pre-Cambrian PC. But in terms of cost of ownership...it's proving to be a lot more expensive than Windows.

Comments? Would anyone like to remind me why Linux is 'A Good Thing'?