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iRiver H10 on Ubuntu Linux Howto

I’m pleased to announce that after looking into it off and on for the last 6 months, I’ve got my iRiver H10 5GB fully working in Linux for the first time.

The H10 comes in MTP mode – Microsoft Transfer Protocol, insead of being a UMS – USB Media Storage device. MTP is needed for Plays for Sure compatibility, so it will work with Napster-To-Go or Yahoo, for example. A UMS device, when plugged in, just shows up as a drive letter on your PC, so you can drag and drop files on to it. Sacrificing Napster-to-go (which I haven’t used in 6 months) is a small price to pay to use this on Linux – especially as no modern online music store has a Linux client yet.

The steps needed update your firmware, convert your iRiver to UMS mode, and then you need to install EasyH10 to rebuild your music database. Do this at your own risk!

How I did it, and be prepared to lose any music on your H10:

  1. I updated my firmware from 2.03 to 2.51 MTP, [version 2.51 at iRiver.com][1].
  2. Go to the [Misticriver.net H10 Wiki][2]
  3. Follow the [instructions to convert your H10 from MTP to UMS][3].
  4. Download EasyH10: [Windows or Linux tarball][4] or [Debian / Ubuntu package][5]. (I used the [i386 Debian package][6] on Ubuntu 5.10 with no problems).

  5. If installing on Ubuntu or Debian, at a terminal, type: sudo dpkg -i easyh10_1.2.1-1_i386.deb

    • Plug in your H10 to your Ubuntu box. It should mount in /media/H10 (if it didn’t, for the purpose of this, I’m going to use that going forward).

    • At a command line type:

      cd /usr/share/easyh10/model (On Ubuntu, could be /usr/local/share/easyh10/model on other distributions) and then ls

      Find your model in the list, I have a H10UMS_5GB_FW2.04-2.51.model so we’ll use that in the next step.

    • From a terminal, type in the following: cp /usr/share/easyh10/model/H10UMS_5GB_FW2.04-2.51.model /media/H10/easyh10.model (Or whichever corresponding version you have, copy it over as easyh10.model in the root directory of the H10).

      • Unmount your H10 (right click and click unmount), unplug the USB cable, let it reboot and install, and then plug it back in to your PC.
      • Copy some music in to your H10/Media/Music directory. Not Music the directory!
      • From a terminal type easyh10 -Un -on /media/H10 to rebuild your database. That should be it! However, if you run in easyh10 and see this, like I did:

      `EasyH10 [CUI] 1.2.1 Copyright (c) 2005 by Nyaochi

H10 model template: /media/H10/easyh10.model
Path to database: /media/H10/System\DATA/
Path to music: /media/H10/Media\Music/
Path to playlist: /media/H10/Media\Playlist/
Playlist extension: .plp

Enumerating music files:
236 files found.

Reading H10 model template:
H10 (UMS) 5GB firmware 2.04 - 2.51

Obtaining media information from 236 files:
236 files obtained.

Updating database

Writing H10 media database:
Failed to write the H10 database (code = 8). (That smiley face should be an 8 )
ERROR: Database update.` Per [this thread on the EasyH10 forums][7], delete all your files in the H10/System/DATA folder. Run it again, and you should see: `silwenae@shaftoe:/usr/share/easyh10/model$ easyh10 -Un -on /media/H10
EasyH10 [CUI] 1.2.1 Copyright (c) 2005 by Nyaochi

H10 model template: /media/H10/easyh10.model
Path to database: /media/H10/System\DATA/
Path to music: /media/H10/Media\Music/

Enumerating music files:
236 files found.

Reading H10 model template:
H10 (UMS) 5GB firmware 2.04 - 2.51

Obtaining media information from 236 files:
236 files obtained.

Updating database

Writing H10 media database:
100%: (H10DB.hdr)
` It’s my understanding that after every time you add music files to your H10, you need to run EasyH10 to update your database to let your H10 know that the music is there. You could choose to play songs through the Browser on the H10, but it’s easiest in Music. Unfortunately, the H10 isn’t recognized in [Banshee][8], but with how the database needs to be updated each time, I doubt it will ever work. Though this is a great start for using in Linux, as this was the last thing that required me to have a Windows box. [1]: http://iriver.com/html/support/download/sudw_view.asp?searchProductIdx=&searchCategoryIdx=&searchString=&page=1&idx=739&tmpSearchProductIdx=&tmpSearchCategoryIdx=&tmpSearchString= [2]: http://www.misticriver.net/wiki/index.php/H10 [3]: http://www.misticriver.net/wiki/index.php/H10_Firmware_Conversion:_MTP/UMS [4]: http://easyh10.sourceforge.net/download.html [5]: http://webb.ens-cachan.fr/debian/pool/main/e/easyh10/ [6]: http://webb.ens-cachan.fr/debian/pool/main/e/easyh10/easyh10_1.2.1-1_i386.deb [7]: http://easyh10.sourceforge.net/forum/index.php?topic=39.0 [8]: http://www.banshee-project.org

New Lost Theory

One of my favorite discussions is with a friend of mine about the TV show, Lost. We each take our guesses of what’s going on or who is next to die, or throw out a theory of why they’re on the island. (His is related to The Tempest, mine is about redemption).

However, this site offers a new theory, and fairly well thought out. I know I would have never thought of it.

It’s interesting, but I don’t know if I buy it.

More blogging

Turns out my wife has a blog. Who knew? She rarely posts, but her post today on Jack’s birth is fairly accurate.

Of course she didn’t tell me some of that until a day or two later. Well, probably for the best that way.

Happy Birthday Current!

Today marks the one year anniversary of 89.3, The Current, a Minnesota Public Radio station.

By far the best radio station to hit the Twin Cities in a long time, The Current offers an eclectic playlist you’d be pressed to find anywhere else, other than KCRW or KEXP. With a focus on Minnesota local music, and DJ’s who get to play their own songs of their choosing, where else can you hear music from Elvis to Aimee Mann to Thunderbirds Are Now!

Check out their real time playlist – it’s as diverse as it comes. You can even listen online if you choose.

I’ve volunteered for a couple different things for 89.3, and the first event I went to was a volunteer meet & greet. Towards the end of the session, and their current Vice President at the time summed it up best. I don’t remember the exact quote, but it went something like this: “We want The Current to be the radio station that helps connect music for our listeners, so they hear the evolution of music through the years, from Muddy Waters to G. Love.” Not only do they play artists you don’t hear on mainstream radio, but they introduce new artists like the Hold Steady, and help connect the dots and teach you about music.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune ran an article this past Sunday on the front page of the Lifestyle section about The Current. The article was only about 50% good – they took a number of shots at The Current in the back half of the article, but it gives you a good overview of the last year for 89.3.

Here’s to many more years listening to a great radio station!

Dell 2405 Modelines

As I mentioned in my last post, I needed to use different modeline setting on my Nvidia xorg.conf file than when I had my ATI card installed.

I have no idea why, but it worked. For posterity’s sake, I thought I’d just document ’em here in case I ever needed again.

For my Nvidia card, in the Monitor section of my xorg.conf:

Section "Monitor"<br /> Identifier "DELL 2405FPW"<br /> HorizSync 30-82<br /> VertRefresh 60-60<br /> Option "DPMS"<br /> Modeline "1920x1200" 92.473920 1920 1992 2192 2464 1200 1209 1217 1251 -HSync +VSync interlace<br /> EndSection

And from my ATI x800 xorg.conf:

Section "Monitor"<br /> Identifier "Monitor0"<br /> HorizSync 30-82<br /> VertRefresh 60-60<br /> Option "DPMS"<br /> Modeline "1920x1200" 193.16 1920 2048 2256 2592 1200 1201 1204 1242 -Hsync +Vsync

EndSection

They both worked for 1920×1200, the monitor’s native resolution, flawlessly. There’s a big difference in going from 1920×1200 to any other resolution, especially 1600×1200 or below. This monitor is definitely most crisp and bright when running in 1920×1200 like it should be.

OS Installation Headaches

I thought I was done with installing my operating system, but I ran into another glitch today. I installed, or more appropriately, tried to install Quake IV and Doom 3. Quake IV I had working previously before the reformat, and I kept meaning to get around to installing Doom 3 on Linux to try out some of the mods.

Fixing my Doom 3 problem was easy – for whatever reason, my DVD-rom drive wouldn’t read the first disc, so I couldn’t transfer the .pak file over I needed. Put it on the NAS, and fixed it.

Quake IV is driving me nuts. All of the menu’s have the wrong text, such as #str_000000 or different numbers. Searching on Google turned up one hit on the SUSE mailing lists – and the guy reinstalled and it was fine. I’ve re-installed 3 times with no luck, including trying the 1.05 installer instead of 1.06.

I even thought the above problems were a video card driver problem, that my ATI card wasn’t working right. So I swapped it out for a Nvidia 6800 and spent a good hour reconfiguring my X server (that was fun). Turns out I needed different mode lines for my Dell 2405 (more on that later).

The net result is I’m running a Nvidia 6800 instead of my ATI x800, so the net result is about equal. It took a while to get my 1920×1200 resolution back, but it’s working. Doom3 is working, but no Quake IV yet (and I even backed up my save games!).

OS Installation Master

I am the OS Installation Master. I must have installed or booted LiveCDs of Ubuntu at least 10 times today.

When I re-installed 5.10 last week, I got a weird error on my first bootup that no OS wasn’t found. I re-installed, and deleted all the partitions on both hard drives, and no problems.

Well, similar situation after installing Edubuntu and Dapper Drake Flight 3. Same error. After installing and reinstalling OS’s to no avail, including wiping the main hard drive, and spending a couple hours tweaking GRUB by hand, it turns out that the boot order in my BIOS was out of order, looking at the 2nd hard drive first, instead of the 1st hard drive. I have no idea how the BIOS was changed (sure wasn’t by me!), as the MBR is on the first hard drive. Changed the BIOS option, and booting in to (a fresh version) of Ubuntu. Now the test will be installing Edubuntu again on the 2nd hard drive.

But I can say I have installing Ubuntu down cold. The bad news is, was that I installed Quake IV and Doom 3 this morning, patched ’em, and downloaded a few mods. It was time consuming, but not that big a loss. The good news is was that re-installing wasn’t that big of a deal, as I had everything backed up from my fresh install last week.

Reformat Complete

I’m up and running on a clean install of Ubuntu 5.10. Everything went smooth, swapped the hard drives out, re-installed from scratch, wiping my hard drives clean.

One of the cooler things I found during the re-install, was Automatix and Easy Ubuntu. Both are illegal in the United States, specifically for the codec support they install (DVD, MP3, etc).

Basically, they do the same thing, though Automatix is more complete. They provide a script to install everything a default Ubuntu installation didn’t – support for MP3, DVD, plugins like Flash and Java for Firefox, missing applications like dvd::rip, windows codecs, multimedia players such as mplayer, etc. All automagically by updating your sources.list file for you and just runnign the script. Automatix lets you pick and choose, and then just installs the stuff. Very cool that the user community have started these projects.

I’m going to wait on installing Dapper Drake Flight 3 on the second hard drive. Instead, I downloaded Edubuntu, and am going to install that first. With three kids under the age of 10, I’ve always wanted to start them on Linux. My 10 year old son no longer really plays games – he plays a ton of flash games on the net from Lego, Yahooligans, etc. Edubuntu may be a great alternative, but I will need to find a new wireless card. So we’ll install that and take a look-see.