The Ultimate Podzilla2 and MPD Tutorial (Playlists Included)

***Gung Ho Guns*** · 04-14-2006, 06:04 PM

This Is From IpodLinux.org
Tut By Osiris0290
Orginal Link:
http://ipodlinux.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9540

First of all, if you know absolutely nothing about iPodLinux, and this happens to be your first time installing Podzilla2, I highly reccommend to click the Back button. Also, if you are low on time, I reccommend not starting this now, because it will take a good amount of time, depending on how many songs and playlists you have. Also, be aware that I have a 4GB iPod nano, so please do not complain to me if this tutorial did not work on your 5G or 4G iPod.

Part 1

Ok, I'd like for you to have a fresh install of Podzilla2 before we get started. I am not going to bother recounting all of that, just follow the instructions of arab_freak's tutorial, until you get to the part where you would "COPY THESE FILES INTO YOUR IPOD AFTER INSTALLING."

Download the following files:
Modules - http://www.josh.sys-techs.com/svnbui...dules-1107.zip
Appearance - http://www.josh.sys-techs.com/svnbui...rance-1061.zip
Podzilla2 File - http://www.josh.sys-techs.com/svnbui...zilla2-1107.gz

These are the latest nightly Podzilla2 builds, I will update the links when the builds are updated.

Extract the contents of the Modules .zip file to a folder entitled "modules".
DO NOT DELETE THE "libstdcxx" MODULE FROM THE MODULES FOLDER. I know you think you will recieve the "Out of memory" error when MPD is installed, and you will, but you will simply have to ignore it, because without this module, MPD will freeze when trying to play songs.

Extract the contents of the Appearance .zip file to a folder entitled "appearance".

Expand the contents of the Podzilla2 file with any Expanding program. The one I use is StuffIt Expander 9.0 for Windows, there is a free trial download at the website.
Once you have the Podzilla2 file expanded rename the file to "podzilla".

Copy the following coding into a start file:

Code:

if [ -e /hp/podzilla ]; then
    mv /hp/podzilla /bin/podzilla
    chmod +x /bin/podzilla
fi

mkdir -p /usr/lib /usr/share

if [ -e /hp/modules/* ]; then
    mv /hp/modules/* /usr/lib/
    rm -r /hp/modules/*
fi

if [ -e /hp/appearance/* ]; then
    mv /hp/appearance/* /usr/share/
    rm -r /hp/appearance/*
fi

Place the two files, and two folders into your iPod's root.

Once you have done this, Safely Remove your iPod, and restart it.
If Podzilla2 fails to start, go back into Disk Mode, and delete the start file. Podzilla2 should now start. If you are one of the rare cases where Podzilla2 fails to load your modules, follow Delude's tutorial.

Part 2

Ok, now that we have a fresh installation of Podzilla2, we can get to the real point of the tutorial, MPD.

First we need to make some preperations before we get into the actual installation of MPD.
Open up iTunes, and go to Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Importing. Under Import Using:, choose MP3 Encoder.
Go into your iTunes library, and go to Edit > Select All, right click on the selected area, and choose Convert Selection to MP3.
I have found that MPD does not like AAC encoded files, as they would not show up under Music categories when I would run MPD.
I think it is a lot easier to just convert everything to MP3, rather then only convert the songs that are AAC encoded to MP3, because then you have to go through the hassle of manually deleting all of the songs from your library that are not MP3, and it can become a big mess, trust me.
Depending on how many songs you have, this may or may not take a long time. DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING IN YOUR ITUNES LIBRARY WHILE THE SONGS ARE CONVERTING. All of the songs that are NOT MP3 encoded will still be selected when you are done converting, so if you leave your iTunes Library alone, when all of the converting is done, you can right click on the selected area, and choose Clear. Be sure to choose Move to Recycle Bin, because we need to now add the music to your iPod manually, and you do not want two copies of every song hanging around wherever you keep your music.
Be aware that the MP3 files will be slightly bigger then AAC encoded files, so if you are on the bleeding edge of going over the limit, you may want to delete an album you do not listen to.

First, the music. If you have playlists, and want them to work, do the following:
Go to the root of your iPod, and navigate to iPod_Control/Music.
Now navigate to wherever you keep your music on your computer. Copy all of your music (including the folders they reside in) to the root of your iPod.
Be aware that you DO NOT need to copy playlists over to your iPod from iTunes.

If you do not have playlists, you can add music to your iPod through iTunes, as you normally would.

Finally, the playlists.
From my experiences, MPD only reads .m3u file playlists. Even if you know another way to get a .m3u playlist out of iTunes, do it THIS WAY, and please do not ask questions.

Right click on your playlists, select Export Song List..., and export them as a .xml file.
Next, go to this iTunes -> m3u converter. Browse for the newly made .xml files, and choose Convert. Save the newly converted file anywhere. Be aware that for some reason when you convert it, it gets rid of the extension and shortens the name, so you have to rename the newly converted file, with a .m3u extension.
Open these newly converted .m3u playlists with Wordpad, and for each song, replace this: Your Drive:\Documents and Settings\Profile Name\My Documents\My Music\ part of the location, with this: /iPod_Control/Music/. If you don't keep your music in the "My Music" folder, adjust the editing accordingly.
Repeat this process for each of your playlists.

Once you have done all of this, go to the root of your iPod, and place all of the playlists in the "modules" folder.
Then place the following coding into a start file:

Code:

mv /hp/modules/* /home/.mpd/playlists/
rm -r /hp/modules/*
rm /hp/start

Put the start file into the root of your iPod, Safely Remove your iPod, and let it start up.
Once it is loaded completely, reboot and go back into Disk Mode.

Part 3

Ok, we are done with the preperations, and we are finally ready to install MPD!
Please note: I used OldSpice's tutorial as a base for this part of my tutorial, and simply condensed it.

Download the following files:
MPD - http://ipodlinux.org/modules/mpd/mpd-0.2.zip
Extract the contents of the MPD .zip file anywhere.
mpd.conf - http://so2.sys-techs.com/ipod/mpdc/mpd.conf
Remember to right click on the mpd.conf and choose Save Link As... when downloading it.

Edit the music_directory line of your mpd.conf to say "/iPod_Control/Music".

Copy the following into a text document:

Code:

hostname ipod
mount -t proc proc /proc
cat /etc/motd
ln -s /dev/pty/m0 /dev/ptyp0
ln -s /dev/pty/m1 /dev/ptyp1
ln -s /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc /dev/hda
ln -s /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 /dev/hda1
ln -s /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part2 /dev/hda2
ln -s /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part3 /dev/hda3
ln -s /dev/tts/1 /dev/ttyS1
mknod /dev/ttyp0 c 3 0
mknod /dev/ttyp1 c 3 0
ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1
ifconfig eth0 192.168.222.2 mtu 170
hdparm -S 3 /dev/hda
mount -t vfat /dev/hda2 /hp
mkdir /hp/Recordings
sh /hp/start
/etc/mpd.conf
/bin/mpd --update-db
/bin/mpd
podzilla

Name this text document "rc".

Place the mpd file (inside the unzipped folder), the newly edited mpd.conf, and the rc file into the root of your iPod, and copy the following coding into a start file:

Code:

mv -f /hp/mpd /bin/mpd
chmod +x /bin/mpd 
cp -f /hp/mpd.conf /etc/mpd.conf 
rm /hp/mpd.conf
mkdir -p /home/.mpd
mkdir -p /home/.mpd/playlists 
cp -f /hp/rc /etc/rc 
rm /hp/rc
rm /hp/start

Put the start file into the root of your iPod, Safely Remove your iPod, and let it start up.
Once it is loaded completely, reboot and go back into Disk Mode.
The database will not update right away, so restart the iPod once more. The database should now update with your music.

You are done!

Congrats, if you followed the tutorial exactly, you should now have working MPD, with working playlists, and working music! You may recieve slight lag when listening to your music, but that is something you are just going to have to deal with, as it cannot be fixed.

Even though it is near impossible to brick an iPod, I am NOT responsible for any damage done to your iPod!

I reccommend NOT trying to install Triple Threat over this, as I have tried numerous times without success.

That's it, enjoy, and you're welcome!

Osiris

Update 04-11: I made the MPD installation process a whole lot easier (Part 3), and updated the section where you add music to your iPod, making it less confusing (Part 2).

Update 04-14: I noticed that when changing the font in Podzilla2, you get a crash when trying to access the Playlist menu. If you need to get back to the default font, it is Chicago.