Quick Hack To Get iPods Working With Banshee In Karmic

By , Published November 2, 2009

One annoyance in Karmic is the fact some iPod’s won’t work in Banshee “out of the box”. This is due to Ubuntu moving from HAL to devicekit for managing and notifying the system when hardware is add or removed. Sucky, but necessary.

There are a few options users can take for managing their iPods: -

  • iPods still work fine in Rhythmbox.
  • You can use a dedicated iPod management application such as YAMiPOD, Floola or GTKpod.

Or you can use the following “hack” to get iPods working with Banshee.

1. Issue the following in a terminal: -

  • killall -9 nautilus

2. Plug iPod in

3. Restart nautilus using ALT+F2 and issuing: -

  • nautilus

4. Start Banshee.

It may take a minute or so but your iPod will mount and show in Banshee. Everyone’s happy!

Thanks to tmtan on the UbuntuForums!
Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. Banshee 1.5.1 Released
Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
  • Anonymous

    any idea on getting an ipod to work in songbird with karmic? that would be lovely!

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      I’ve heard that plugging your iPod in, logging out, logging in again and then starting songbird works. (?!) I’ll have a proper dig for something a bit more plausible sounding – but try it anyway!

  • Rico

    any quick hack to get iPhone/iPod touch to work with Rhythmbox or banshee?

  • mraz

    Thank you!! I was going crazy wondering why my ipod wasn’t being recognized!

  • http://opennfo.wordpress.com Keith

    Thanks for the tip! That’s been bugging me. Any idea what the “-9″ switch is for? I didn’t see that listed in killall -help.

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      I believe it’s to kill a non-responding application… Doesn’t really need to be there i guess.

  • http://twitter.com/jonrogersuk Jon Rogers

    I use songbird for my ipod (and all my music playing when not on spotify) and instead of doing this I manually mount the ipod to a non-default mount-point, then songbird gets it. This would work the same as logging out and in with the device connected.

  • Anonymous

    As an Ubuntu fanatic, I gotta say that this really sucks. Don’t get me wrong, I love Ubuntu, but it’s purpose is being a main-stream operating system. Tell any casual computer user to “killall nautilus” then plug something in then “start nautilus” again is crazy. Things like using an iPod with Linux, you know, things normal people do, need to “just work.” It’s not unrealistic to expect to plug in your iPod and have a notification pop up asking if you want to sync it with a media player.

    Just my $0.02. I don’t even use an iPod (proprietary piece of crap), but imagine a non-tech-savvy person trying to do this. One mention of the terminal and they run crying/screaming to Windows/Mac. I wish it weren’t that way. I wish people would actually use their brains and overcome their fear of the terminal, but it isn’t that way yet.

    I can understand having to do something like this in Debian, because Debian isn’t targeting the average user. However, Ubuntu IS targeting the average user, so this is where the problem arises. Are there going to be bugs that need to be ironed out? OF COURSE. But we really need to focus on making everything idiot-proof. So, as a developer, I really hope that Ubuntu will keep moving toward an operating system that simply and reliably works.

    • MLC

      I hope it works, too. I get your point, and so does everyone else who uses/develops Linux. They’re all for compatibility. I think the Banshee developers could’ve taken a closer look at this, or whoever’s in charge of maintaining the package. But you also should realize that, were it not for the open source community, a lot of the alternate iPod management programs even in Windows would exist at all- only iTunes. We’re doing our best with something that could easily be solved if Apple acknowledged how many Linux users there definitely are, not to say how many there might be.

      But personally, I’m glad we take this approach. It gives us more freedom. I’m sure that, very soon, we won’t have these issues at all. This is just one release, after all. They have iPod Touch and iPhone syncing ready now, just needs to work out the kinks and be packaged with distros. So I think this will be a very minimal issue, in the long run. I still think it’s stupid that a working program should suddenly not be as functional, though. If someone’s iPod is the main thing they love, and they don’t wanna’ use gtkpod, qtpod, rhythmbox, or amarok, they should be able to use Banshee as they have in the past.

    • MLC

      I hope it works, too. I get your point, and so does everyone else who uses/develops Linux. They’re all for compatibility. I think the Banshee developers could’ve taken a closer look at this, or whoever’s in charge of maintaining the package. But you also should realize that, were it not for the open source community, a lot of the alternate iPod management programs even in Windows would exist at all- only iTunes. We’re doing our best with something that could easily be solved if Apple acknowledged how many Linux users there definitely are, not to say how many there might be.

      But personally, I’m glad we take this approach. It gives us more freedom. I’m sure that, very soon, we won’t have these issues at all. This is just one release, after all. They have iPod Touch and iPhone syncing ready now, just needs to work out the kinks and be packaged with distros. So I think this will be a very minimal issue, in the long run. I still think it’s stupid that a working program should suddenly not be as functional, though. If someone’s iPod is the main thing they love, and they don’t wanna’ use gtkpod, qtpod, rhythmbox, or amarok, they should be able to use Banshee as they have in the past.

  • Anonymous

    As an Ubuntu fanatic, I gotta say that this really sucks. Don’t get me wrong, I love Ubuntu, but it’s purpose is being a main-stream operating system. Tell any casual computer user to “killall nautilus” then plug something in then “start nautilus” again is crazy. Things like using an iPod with Linux, you know, things normal people do, need to “just work.” It’s not unrealistic to expect to plug in your iPod and have a notification pop up asking if you want to sync it with a media player.

    Just my $0.02. I don’t even use an iPod (proprietary piece of crap), but imagine a non-tech-savvy person trying to do this. One mention of the terminal and they run crying/screaming to Windows/Mac. I wish it weren’t that way. I wish people would actually use their brains and overcome their fear of the terminal, but it isn’t that way yet.

    I can understand having to do something like this in Debian, because Debian isn’t targeting the average user. However, Ubuntu IS targeting the average user, so this is where the problem arises. Are there going to be bugs that need to be ironed out? OF COURSE. But we really need to focus on making everything idiot-proof. So, as a developer, I really hope that Ubuntu will keep moving toward an operating system that simply and reliably works.

  • Anonymous

    As an Ubuntu fanatic, I gotta say that this really sucks. Don’t get me wrong, I love Ubuntu, but it’s purpose is being a main-stream operating system. Tell any casual computer user to “killall nautilus” then plug something in then “start nautilus” again is crazy. Things like using an iPod with Linux, you know, things normal people do, need to “just work.” It’s not unrealistic to expect to plug in your iPod and have a notification pop up asking if you want to sync it with a media player.

    Just my $0.02. I don’t even use an iPod (proprietary piece of crap), but imagine a non-tech-savvy person trying to do this. One mention of the terminal and they run crying/screaming to Windows/Mac. I wish it weren’t that way. I wish people would actually use their brains and overcome their fear of the terminal, but it isn’t that way yet.

    I can understand having to do something like this in Debian, because Debian isn’t targeting the average user. However, Ubuntu IS targeting the average user, so this is where the problem arises. Are there going to be bugs that need to be ironed out? OF COURSE. But we really need to focus on making everything idiot-proof. So, as a developer, I really hope that Ubuntu will keep moving toward an operating system that simply and reliably works.

  • Anonymous

    As an Ubuntu fanatic, I gotta say that this really sucks. Don’t get me wrong, I love Ubuntu, but it’s purpose is being a main-stream operating system. Tell any casual computer user to “killall nautilus” then plug something in then “start nautilus” again is crazy. Things like using an iPod with Linux, you know, things normal people do, need to “just work.” It’s not unrealistic to expect to plug in your iPod and have a notification pop up asking if you want to sync it with a media player.

    Just my $0.02. I don’t even use an iPod (proprietary piece of crap), but imagine a non-tech-savvy person trying to do this. One mention of the terminal and they run crying/screaming to Windows/Mac. I wish it weren’t that way. I wish people would actually use their brains and overcome their fear of the terminal, but it isn’t that way yet.

    I can understand having to do something like this in Debian, because Debian isn’t targeting the average user. However, Ubuntu IS targeting the average user, so this is where the problem arises. Are there going to be bugs that need to be ironed out? OF COURSE. But we really need to focus on making everything idiot-proof. So, as a developer, I really hope that Ubuntu will keep moving toward an operating system that simply and reliably works.

  • http://www.myfacehasapunchinit.com/ fknrat

    holy jesus, it worked. Thank you so much, I was searching for the fix for about an hour until I happened across your post. For all the overly complicated “fixes” everyone else prescribed, your simple one actualyl did the trick.

  • Anonymous

    This worked for me, thanks. I’m not too familiar with shell scripts, but I’m sure there’s a way to write one that will do this. Like:

    #!/bin/sh
    killall -9 nautilus
    [some command to wait until ipod is plugged in]
    nautilus
    banshee

    Am I on the right path here?

  • Matt

    Wow! Thanks so much for this! I bought my daughter a Nano for Christmas figuring it would work fine with Ubuntu and Banshee. After 2 hours of trying and failing to get it to work, I stumbled across this post. Dude, you pretty much saved Christmas!

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Glad it helped! It’s not the most ideal of solutions, but it does the trick!

      Rhythmbox works fine with most iPods out of the box if you ever get desperate, though you have to manually “drag n’ drop” / manage.

  • Eduardo

    Thank you!, it worked well with me!!

  • Tarek Sobh

    People!! You won’t believe how stupid is the solution to this problem!!
    To solve this issue, open Rhythmbox and you’ll find that the iPod is connected, right? Now, there is a button above in the menu that says “Eject”… Just click on that, close Rhythmbox and run the other application normally!! I tried it with Listen and it worked…

    • http://twitter.com/platinumlolita Chris Lorieag

      Oh gosh. It’s you from the forum thread. It doesn’t work for me. The iPod ejects fully and you need to plug it in again.