iRiver H10 and Linux

iRiver H10 & Ubuntu Breezy Linux HOWTO
by Charles McColm, charm@porchlight.ca
Thursday, September 22, 2005



A copy of this HOWTO is available in a number of formats:

• Open Office 2.0 .odt [18k]
  
• Microsoft Word .doc [23k]
  
• Palm Document .pdb [3k]
  
• Adobe Acrobat .pdf [296k]
  
• Text .txt [3.3k]
  

Table of Contents
* iRiver H10 & Ubuntu Breezy Linux HOWTO
* The good, the bad, the plain ugly
* Know thy iRiver H10
* My iRiver H10
* Getting the H10 to connect (overview)
* What's the problem?
* Model File
* Copy files to your H10
* Running easyh10

The good, the bad, the plain ugly
If you google for iRiver and Linux chances are you'll find positive reviews of most iRiver devices. Unfortunately the iRiver H10 is a NIGHTMARE when it comes to Linux. I don't recommend buying an iRiver H10 since it is really designed for Windows.

What follows is a hack I used to get my H10 working with Ubuntu Breezy. I cannot guarantee that it will work on your system or that it won't destroy everything. If you follow the advice here there are no guarantees.

Furthermore, I assume you know how to compile and install software. If you don't know gcc then you really should try returning your H10 for something else.

Know thy iRiver H10
It's important you know what version of the H10 you have, North American or International. This information is important.

My iRiver H10

• iRiver H10 North American edition
  
• updated to latest 2.10 firmware (I used a Windows box to update the firmware)
  

Getting the H10 to connect (overview)

1. With player off remove the battery for 30 seconds.
   
2. Put battery back on.
   
3. Connect USB cable to your computer.
   
4. Hold the 'O' key while turning the player on
   
   
   
   • you should see an “Emergency...” white text at the top
     
   
   
5. Now copy what you need to the /media/usbdisk that appears (Breezy) – see below for copying easyh10.model, an important step.
   
6. Run the appropriate easyh10 command.
   

What's the problem?
The non-geek response to this is that the H10 uses geek formatting which Linux usb doesn't understand. You'll need to copy a special “model” file to the root directory of your player in order to run some Linux indexing software. If you try to just copy files to the music directory on your H10 they won't show up in your player, they need to be indexed. You'll need to download and compile the easyh10 indexing software for the H10 from:


http://easyh10.sourceforge.net/


Model File
Once you've untarred and installed the easyh10 software, you need to copy one of the “model” files from the untarred easyh10 directory to the root directory of your H10. Note that you need to rename it easyh10.model. My 'model' file is the NA, North American file. Yours may be the North American or International. In the current version of easyH10 I found the appropriate model file under the ~/easyh10-1.0b7/model directory. You'll need to copy the appropriate file, don't just randomly choose one:


cp H10NA_5GB_FW2.03-2.10.model /media/usbdisk/easyh10.model


Copy files to your H10
I only tried copying mp3 files to /media/usbdisk (using cp and drag and drop). After I copied the files I reindexed it using the easyh10 command below.

Running easyh10
I found that running easyh10 -U /media/usbdisk gave me database errors. After copying the appropriate model to /media/usbdisk as easyh10.model the following command reindexed the new mp3 files:


easyh10 -Un -on /media/usbdisk


Unmount the player
Don't forget to umount /media/usbdisk so all media is written. If you don't unmount the player you could frag the hard drive.

Report on the September TechTV Meetup in Toronto

Last night I rode the bus up to Toronto for the September Tech TV meetup. It was nothing like I expected. A friend who had been at the last meeting told me that there was hundreds of people, cameras and podcasts everywhere, and lots of celebs.

The bus down ran 45 minutes late. As soon as the bus hit Mississauga, traffic slowed to an ant crawl. The driver didn't seem much in a hurry either, there were lots of opportunities for him to make a break for a large opening.

When I arrived at Union station it was a short walk to the subway and in a matter of minutes I was at Fiddler's Green. One problem, I must have got the 'new girl at the bar,' because she didn't have a clue about the meetup.

I dialed up Kevin Norwood, but the only information he could find was something about a September 11th meeting. At this point I was stressed, I'd made it all the way from Kitchener, and no meeting? I was sure there was a meetup on the 14th, so I pulled out my notebook, right there on Wellesley street.

I thought things were pretty bad, until my notebook started doing a file systems check and then produced a prompt telling me to do a manual fsck...argh, 20 minutes later and I was still waiting for the check to finish.

Finally, good old pen and paper saved my fanny. I'd written down the telephone number for Fiddler's Green. Whomever I talked to knew there was a meeting on the third floor - at last, things were looking up.

As soon as I stepped into the room I regretted being late, Howard Carson of Kickstartnews.com was giving a presentation on podcasting. I really regret missing the beginning!

I had a good discussion with Paul Rochford and met quite a few other truly cool geeks.

What made the night for me was the HP-UX book I snapped up for a very cheap donation to the club. Most of the auctioned books went for next to nothing, brand new books that should have fetched at least a $20 bid. Anyway, a big thank you to Howard Carson for bringing the books.

I appologize to readers for lack of Linux-related content, but there is a point to all of this. My notebook sprang back to life after the file systems check I did inside, and I managed to hook into Fiddler's wireless (thank you Paul for wiring the place) and check out the kickstart podcasts.

The HP-UX book comes at an interresting point in my life, a point of incredible learning. In the past few weeks I've been tackling a lot of both hands on and book learning. On the bus ride down I was reading the Idiots Guide to Solaris 9. The HP-UX book will come in really handy because I'm starting to compare all the UNIX-like OS's.

I'm also starting to pick up some pretty unusual hardware. I bid on and won 3 SCSI hot swappable drives for a Compaq Proliant 1600 server which will eventually either become the backup samba server for Computer Recycling, or the new database server.

It will be another week before the drives arrive, but when they do I might consider one of the DEC Alphas the same auctioneer was offering... mmmn...64 bit Linux!

Hardware Hacking

I've been checking out eBay a bit lately and it looks like there may be some good deals close to home.

Work has been great. I have actually managed to get a lot done, but side projects and my blogs have suffered a bit as a result. This will likely change this weekend. I'm a bit ahead on quite a bit of work, but I also have quite a bit of reading to do.

I spent about an hour this evening dictating Solaris 9 stuff into audacity to I can learn Solaris 9 better (I know 10 is out). I have 9 on CD's and I'll probably install it on a box or two for testing sake - it does scale well, or so the author of the book I'm reading claims -- and the evidence on the web I've read also seems to indicate this.

Linux is still my favourite OS.

New Linux User Show Audcast

I'm still working out the finer details of the technology, but I've finished the first audio show of the New Linux User Show. At the moment the show is ONLY is Ogg Vorbis format, but I do plan on adding MP3 if space permits -- and at the moment it looks like it does not because the first show is a whopping 17.3 MB! I could probably cut the show size down by reducing the Hz the show is recorded at. Right now the show is recorded at 22000Hz, if I reduced the show to 8000Hz it should cut the size down...I think.

Anyway, without further delay enjoy the show: NLUS-audcast-1.ogg [17.3MB]