Ubuntu Breezy and clamav

Clam Antivirus is a popular virus package that's in the Ubuntu repositories. I recently tried installing clamav and clamav-freshclam and ran into configuration errors on the part of freshclam.

A simple:

sudo dpkg --configure clamav-base
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

fixed the problem.

The iRiver H10 Rant/Review

Take a beautiful product, severly cripple it, throw in a few cheap nuggets as a 'bonus,' and you have the iRiver H10. The H10 has a beautiful full colour LCD screen, can record conversations and radio, which it also plays. You can also store images and text data on the H10. So far, so good. Well, good goes out the window at about this point. Normally I try to see the positive in a product, as much as possible, but the iRiver H10 is crippled in so many ways that it's really hard to say good things about something which frustrates you so much!

My first rant is about the H10's total incompatibility with just about every 'other' operating system on the planet. Unless you're running Windows XP with at least service pack one, forget about the H10. This means users of Mac OS, Linux, Windows 95/95/98/ME will be extremely frustrated with this player. Hacks exist to use the H10 with these OS's, but iRiver's bone-headed decision to cripple the North American version of the H10 by using some non-standard Microsoft-based format makes the H10 useless for a good part of their target market. According to the Linux-incompatibility list this problem doesn't exist with International versions of the H10.

The second and third rants I have about the H10 involve the placement of the power button, and the cheapish rubber casing. Sliding the H10 into the rubber casing with one hand is quite a chore, and I almost always inveritably hit the power button trying to get the H10 back into its case. I did this 30 minutes into a 50 minute podcast – talk about frustrating! I'm also not fond of the case rubber, it feels the kind of rubber toy you'd give your dog to knaw on, and the cloudy clear-look makes it look like something that would get this review censored if I mentioned it. Okay, it looks like a thick version of a condom. The H10 is a nice looking player, and I'm sure the intention was to show off how nice it looks, but this case doesn't do that job. I also have an issue with the belt clip on the case. The clip itself is really good, so good that it's really too good for the flimsy rubber that surrounds it. It's difficult to attach the clip to a belt, I feel as if I stretch the clip anymore the rubber from the case is going to break apart.

Which brings me to my last rant, non-standard connectors. The H10 uses USB 2.0, but to interface it with your computer you need iRiver's special cable (included). This is a minor issue I have with companies that attempt to jail people into buying their expansion products by making something slightly different than what's standard.

Overall, the player itself is quite nice. It's everything else about the player, its incompatibility, its non-functional casing, and the proprietary connection, that make it a poor choice in a world where lots of alternatives exist.

If I could send a message to iRiver it would be: shame on you for selling out to Microsoft for a few extra bucks! You probably lost a good portion of your market doing so. Perhaps you might think you'll gain more of your target market siding with Microsoft, but the fact is, even with Windows XP, SP2, your product can be difficult to get properly synchronizing. You've taken something that could be great and turned it into something that's garbage.

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.