Last major hurdle? Does not recognize/see Creative mp3 player.

[wartooth]

After a bumpy ride with samba and klibido and freaking X out more than a few times over the last 24 hours, the last big thing I can think of is getting my Creative Zen Microphoto 8GB MP3 player to be seen by this machine.

Last night, at one point, while in System Settings, it said something like Unknown Drive or something of that nature. Today, it says absolutely nothing. That's the closest I've gotten to having this machine see the mp3 player, and that wasn't anything I can take credit for.

I never had it working on a previous Ubuntu installation. Had tried Gnomad2 and such with no success. So, with as nifty as Hardy is treating me already, I'm hoping to see if I can't get this to work.

The most I know about mounting is that I should probably use /media so I can have a nice little desktop icon when it's in use. I think. Beyond that, I am a total lost fool.

I've done a LOT of searching on this topic today and haven't found anything that 1. made sense, or 2. worked. Mostly I've been clicking randomly and hoping. Hey, sometimes that works and I learn something. Often times, it does not.

So, how can I force it to see the mp3 player? I've downloaded kZenExplorer, but since the mp3 player isn't even detected, that's really done no good.

I'll continue searching and poking around in the meantime, but any help or guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[Snowhog]

Re: Last major hurdle? Does not recognize/see Creative mp3 player.

I have a SanDisk Sansa e280 mp3 player. It has two settings, available from it's preferences menu setting. One is used for normal playback of the stored music, the other for firmware upgrading, and so that it is seen as a storage device when connected to your PC. I have to assume that your Creative mp3 player has a similar setting.

[wartooth]

Re: Last major hurdle? Does not recognize/see Creative mp3 player.

Hi there, thank you for your reply.

I've no idea why I said 4GB, it's an 8, I'll edit to reflect that.

Unfortunately, I don't believe it has that sort of a setting or function. I know that I've never used it in that manner while connected to my XP machine.

There's a main menu with the following options:

Music Library
Now Playing
Play Mode
Photos
FM Radio
Extras
System

Under Extras, there is the option to make it look like a big thumb drive, for lack of a better description. It basically makes a partition and whatever is in that partition isn't playable by the mp3 player, if it is an mp3.

Under System, I have the following options:

Information
Audio Settings
Player Settings
Photo Settings
Clock Settings
Language: English
Reset Settings

Player Settings is just things like screen contrast and themes and stuff. The option Configure Menu appears there, but that's just for ticking boxes that will change which menus are seen on the main menu.

[wartooth]

Re: Last major hurdle? Does not recognize/see Creative mp3 player.

A friend and I were scouring the Internet for solutions, and he sent me a link to something about mtpfs helping with Creative issues. I installed it, and then, for the heck of it, created a mounting point just to see what would happen.

In Disk & Filesystems - System Settings, I made the mount point /media/zen, called it /dev/sda6/media/zen and it comes up listed under my 500 GB drive as the #2 Partition?? And when trying to enable it, it tells me that it doesn't exist.

So, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, but I'm trying random things in hopes that I'll come up with something. No go so far.

Interestingly, it looks like System Settings has locked up. Hm.

[wartooth]

Re: Last major hurdle? Does not recognize/see Creative mp3 player.

More experimentation today:

Tried manually adding in Amarok, nothing happened. Tried Auto Detect again, no devices detected. It also said to check to see if HAL and DBUS were running (If I'm remembering that right) by running dcop kded mediamanager fullList in Konsole. So, I did.

Here's the output:

/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_388707c2_d7cf_4c95_a257_f84bedb0f1fa
sdb1
38G Media

true
/dev/sdb1

ext3
false

media/hdd_unmounted

false

---
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_4a3fdd64_eb4a_4351_95ec_f5e16e80c88f
sda1
495G Media

true
/dev/sda1
/
ext3
true

media/hdd_mounted

false

[wartooth]

Re: Last major hurdle? Does not recognize/see Creative mp3 player.

Well, now, I'm able to see what's in the MP3 player, so some success has been reached.

However, I can only see it while using the MTP plugin. Using any of the others, it seems, doesn't work. So, when looking around, all I get for options are:

Copy files to collection
Make media device playlist
Refresh cover images
Delete from device.

I assume this is part of the MTP function/plugin purpose/something? Selecting Creative Nomad Jukebox from the plugin list doesn't work, and the kZenExplorer sees nothing as well.

[klerfayt]

Re: Last major hurdle? Does not recognize/see Creative mp3 player.

More experimentation today:
Tried manually adding in Amarok, nothing happened. ...

Settings -> Media Devices -> Add device ?

[wartooth]

Re: Last major hurdle? Does not recognize/see Creative mp3 player.

Yep, got that.

Now I'm working on trying to play media from the mp3 player, but I might have to settle for transferring and such, I think.