Linux on Sony Vaio - Connecting an iPod

roger's picture
Submitted by roger on Tue, 2003-02-04 15:10

Note: This is a preliminary version of this document. I've not fully verified that the stuff in here works.

The Sony SRX87 has a 4-pin Firewire (IEEE1394 or Sony i.Link) port on the side. Next to it is the power connector for the DVD-ROM drive. However, the connector can be used by itself for connecting other firewire devices.

I decided to connect my iPod to it. I don't currently have any software for transferring to or from the iPod, but getting it to appear as a SCSI block device would be a good start.

You'll need to configure your kernel with the following options: 

CONFIG_IEEE1394_RAWIO=m (IEEE 1394 ---> Raw IEEE1394 I/O support)
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD=m (SCSI Support ---> SCSI disk support)
CONFIG_SD_EXTRA_DEVS=40 (automatic)
CONFIG_CHR_DEV_SG=m (SCSI Support ---> SCSI generic support)
CONFIG_PARTITION_ADVANCED=y (File systems ---> Partition Types ---> Advanced partition selection)
CONFIG_MAC_PARTITION=y (File systems ---> Partition Types ---> Macintosh partition map support)
I don't know if it'll be needed, but I also turned on SCSI generic support.

Once you've compiled (and rebooted with) your new kernel, you should be able to, as root: 

# modprobe ohci1394
# modprobe sbp2
These are the same modules commands used for the firewire DVD-ROM drive.

To check that your iPod was recognised, you can: 

$ cat /proc/scsi/scsi
Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
  Vendor: Apple    Model: iPod             Rev: 1.21
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 02

$ cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name

   8     0    9765630 scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc
   8     1         31 scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1
   8     2      32768 scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part2
   8     3    9732828 scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part3
   3     0   19535040 ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc
   3     1   12289693 ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1
   3     2    7028437 ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part2
   3     3     216877 ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part3
The parts in bold are what you're looking for.

You should also be able to (as root): 

# dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null
This can take a while, so press Ctrl+C after a short time.

Note that fdisk doesn't recognise Mac partitions, so the cat /proc/partitions is to confirm that the disk has been recognised. You should be able to repeat the dd command from above for each partition.

Other Resources

  • tex9 -- iPod software (formerly xtunes) for Linux.