gnetmd - FAQ

Contents

1. Can I transfer music via USB from my PC to my device?
2. Can I transfer music via USB from my device to my PC?
3. Can you point me to any other software for NetMDs?
4. When building gnetmd, I get a 'cannot find -lgnetmd' error. What can I do?
5. gnetmd is not finding my device! What's wrong?
6. I get problems when running two gnetmd applications at the same time. What's the deal?
7. OK, I've got everything installed just fine. Now how do I use gnetmd?

Can I transfer music via USB from my PC to my device?

No, but this is being worked on. If you would like to help, please first read the libnetmd archive and if you still feel you can help or you have discovered something new, subscribe to the list and post your information. It will be appreciated.

Can I transfer music via USB from my device to my PC?

No, not even with Sony's software on MS Windows. It may be theoretically possible, but it is not a priority at this stage.

Can you point me to any other software for NetMDs?

There's a fairly comprehensive list on the NetMD FAQ at www.minidisc.org.

When building gnetmd, I get a 'cannot find -lgnetmd' error. What can I do?

Try doing a 'make install' then another 'make' followed by a final 'make install'. This is caused by the fact that the gnetmd library is in the parent directory and if '-L..' was specified to libtool, it would automatically include an rpath which is obviously wrong. This problem should be fixed in version 0.6.0 of gnetmd.

gnetmd is not finding my device! What's wrong?

Firstly, you need usb and usb-in-proc support either compiled into your kernel, or compiled as a kernel module. The kernel module to load is called 'usbcore.o' which can be loaded by running 'modprobe usbcore' as root. You can check to see if it is loaded by trying 'ls /proc/bus/usb' which will return a 'No such file or directory' error if this module is not loaded.

Once you have this module loaded and you plug in your device, a directory will appear within /proc/bus/usb/ which contains files that gnetmd uses to communicate with the device. The user running the gnetmd tools must have permissions to read from and write to these files. This can be achieved with a simple chmod after plugging in the device, however these permissions will not persist if you unplug the device then plug it in once more. To persist permissions, there are two usb permissions daemons you can use, one of which is called usb_perms and is quite easy to set up (please see its documentation for details). My /etc/usb.permissions file simply contains the line:

054c 0075 0666 0

However you may wish to set up a group for more fine-grained protection on a multi-user machine.

I get problems when running two gnetmd applications at the same time. What's the deal?

At the moment, gnetmd doesn't check to see if any other gnetmd program is talking to your device. As such, it's highly possible that they will both be trying to send and receive data via usb at the same time. This will probably put the device in an odd state that can only be fixed by physically resetting the usb connection.

There are plans to use a lock file to ensure only one program can talk to the device at a time.

OK, I've got everything installed just fine. Now how do I use gnetmd?

Currently, the best two parts of gnetmd are the nautilus view and the xmms plugin. If you start nautilus, you can type "netmd:" in the location field to access the nautilus view. When using xmms, you will need to load a playlist file similar to this one, which contains references to tracks on your device, of the form "netmd:///1" for track 1, for example. Note that these track numbers are in hexadecimal notation.