Music player question(s) (SOLVED!)

[guns90]

Hello everyone. I've just thrown my M$ disks in the trash. I've had Helena installed for about a week now and I'm sold. I'm still not understanding a lot about Linux yet, so I have a few questions.

First of all, music player. I've been trying to read the forum on music players, but right now I'm just going cross-eyed and getting more confused. I'm not an editor, mixer, or anything else with music. I just want to have an mp3 library (on a 320 Gb sdb ext4) of all my cd's so that I can listen to music while on my computer and copy play lists from there to my iPhone; nothing fancy. Which music player would you recommend? Thanks. Gary

Biostar TA790GX 128M
AMD Athlon 64 x 2 6400+
4 Gb Kingston RAM
EGVA 8800 GTS

[bobcollard]

While there are several Good ones, my personal favorite is Songbird, it is in the repos for Linux Mint.

[Katzedecimal]

Hi there, welcome to Mint! Are you using the Main edition or one of the community editions? I ask because each edition comes with a slightly different music player that has slightly different capabilities.

An iPhone, you say? Although the major music players (Rhythmbox, Amarok, Banshee) are syncing iPods satisfactorily, iPhones are currently a bit more problematic. Searching around the web, I found this possible solution for Rhythmbox (which comes with the Main edition of Mint): http://maketecheasier.com/sync-iphone-with-rhythmbox/2010/02/13 I don't have an iPhone so I can't test this; try it at your own risk.

HOWEVER! If you can hold out just another month or two, Ubuntu Lucid Lynx is said to support iPhone syncing out of the box (which means Mint 9 will, as well.) http://www.webupd8.org/2010/02/confirmed-ubuntu-1004-supports-iphone.html

The default music player will handle your other music needs just fine (Rhythmbox, Amarok, Banshee and Exaile all work very similarly) They can import your existing music library, rip CDs to a variety of formats, burn CDs, compose playlists, sync with LastFM, stream internet radio (many come pre-loaded, and you can add others) and sync with online music stores like Magnatunes.

Hope this helps

[guns90]

Katzedecimal, I am using the Main edition. I have looked at all the music players that you listed and found only Rhythmbox to work 'out of the box' as you say. I have not figured out yet how to set up my music on my second hdd. I partitioned it as one 320 Gb ext4, but have yet to figure out how to get Rhythmbox to use it for my library. I think my problem is I am not correctly setting up the path in the 'preferences>music' window.

[RedWagon]

You'll probably need to add the partition to your fstab so it will automatically mount when you boot. What I do is I have my data hard drive mounted to /media/files/ and then just create symbolic links to my home directory for convenience. That way you can just use the Music folder already in your home directory, but instead of storing the data on your main hard drive it'd write everything in the Music folder to the secondary.

Post the output of

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sudo fdisk -l

and I can write you some more precise instructions.

[guns90]

sk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000001

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 37689 302736861 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 37690 38913 9831780 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 37690 38913 9831748+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e6b00

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 38913 312568641 83 Linux
gary@gary-desktop ~ $

[RedWagon]

Run

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sudo mkdir /media/files
gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

and add the following line at the bottom of the file:

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/dev/sdb1 /media/files/ ext4 defaults 0 0

save and exit gedit. Reboot your computer to see if it automatically mounts correctly. To check it run

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cd /media/files
ls

and you should see a list of your files. Also run (replace user with your username)

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sudo chown -R user /media/files

to change ownership so you don't have to be root to access the files.

The next part is for creating symbolic links, I'm going to write it for your Music directory but you can repeat it for Documents, Pictures or anything else you want.
First delete the Music directory in your home folder; I'd just use the GUI for this so that if you mess up it's still in your trash.
Make sure you have a music folder in /media/files/, if not create one and drag all your music to it.
Finally run (replace user wiht your username)

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ln -s /media/files/Music /home/user/Music

Now open your home directory and you should see a Music folder. Open it and if everything went well you'll see all your music.
Lastly, configure RhythmBox to watch that folder. In RhythmBox go to Edit -> Preferences -> Music, click Browse, select your Music folder, click Open then check Watch This Folder For Changes.
After that, you should be good to go. Post back if you hit any snags.

[guns90]

I have no idea where this came from...

gary@gary-desktop ~ $ cd /media/files
gary@gary-desktop /media/files $ ls
lost+found
gary@gary-desktop /media/files $

[BrianD]

I have no idea where this came from...

gary@gary-desktop ~ $ cd /media/files
gary@gary-desktop /media/files $ ls
lost+found
gary@gary-desktop /media/files $

...assuming you followed the steps outlined above (and didn't run into any problems), that means that /dev/sdb1 contains only a lost+found directory.

[guns90]

Like I said, I have no idea where it came from, because I started with an unallocated disk and used gparted only to partition it as an ext4. I didn't assign, create, or do anything else. Can I simply rename this directory?

[RedWagon]

I misread your first post, I thought you already had Music on the drive. lost+found is created most of the time when you make a new file system. Just run

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cd /media/files
sudo rm -r lost+found

to get rid of it. Also, before you create the symbolic link (the ln -s ... command) run

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mkdir /media/files/Music

to make a folder to store your music.

Everything should be fine, but just for sh**s and giggles run

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mount -l

and paste back the output so I can verify that the disk is mounted.

[guns90]

gary@gary-desktop ~ $ cd /media/files
gary@gary-desktop /media/files $ sudo rm -r lost+found
gary@gary-desktop /media/files $ mkdir /media/files/Music
mkdir: cannot create directory `/media/files/Music': Permission denied
gary@gary-desktop /media/files $ sudo mkdir /media/files/Music
gary@gary-desktop /media/files $ mount -l
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
/dev/sdb1 on /media/files type ext4 (rw)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/gary/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=gary)
gary@gary-desktop /media/files $

[RedWagon]

looks like /media/files is still owned by root, try running this again:

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sudo chown -R gary /media/files

then see if you can create the Music directory

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cd /media/files/
mkdir Music

EDIT EDIT: I just noticed you already created a Music directory. Try something else instead, like Videos.

If you still can't then paste back the output from:

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ls -al /media/

EDIT: My original instructions had user instead of gary, if you ran that line with user it would cause this problem also. Now that I know your username you can just copy/paste the first code block in this post and it'll fix it.

[guns90]

RedWagon, I have NOT done anything per your last post. I do not do videos, so I'd probably just screw up any attempt to do that.

After my last post, I went and added five cd's to the library using Rhythmbox's 'Copy all tracks to the library' button. The cd's were copied into the library, they work just fine; however, I'm still confused as to where they are stored. Using Computer>Filesystem>home>gary>Music (this Music icon has an arrow symbol sweeping into it from the bottom) they appear to be there, But if I go Computer>320 Gb Hard Disk: 320 Gb Filesystem>Music (there is no arrow symbol on this icon), they show up there also. I just don't know enough about Linux to figure out how to determine which drive the files are actually on other than what I just described. Sorry.

[RedWagon]

The sweeping arrow means this is a symbolic link and when you open it, it's actually taking you somewhere else. The files are actually being stored in /media/files/Music/ on your 320 GB hard drive. /home/gary/Music isn't actually a folder, it's just a special file that redirects anything accessing it to /media/files/Music/. This way if you want to access your Music, you don't have to go to /media/files/Music, you only have to go to /home/gary/Music and it will automatically take you there. It's a very convenient way to store a lot of data on other hard drives.

[guns90]

Well then, I guess that you have successfully helped me to achieve exactly what I wanted. Thank you very much for all you did. Maybe someday, I'll get a better understanding of how Linux operates. I'll attempt to place a 'solved' in the subject. Again, thank you.