On Fri, 29 Sep 2006 21:54:38 +0200, Geert Hendrickx <ghen@NetBSD.org>
wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 29, 2006 at 01:26:32PM +1000, Paul (NCC/CS). wrote:
> > 
> > Hi all netbsd folks,
> > 
> > my new 5th gen ipod has reportedly arrived at the local apple shop
> > for me to march down and hand over the cash for.
> > 
> > Has anyone successfully mounted this with netbsd yet?
> > 
> > I have mounted a 4th gen with success but last i heard, the 5th Gen
> > was having problems with mounting.
> > 
> > any tips appreciated ,
> 
> Probably off-topic, but you could try to run Rockbox[1] on your iPod.
> Maybe it behaves as a standard  umass device then.  I've ran it on my
> iRiver H10,  and while it's still very new on that "platform", it was
> pretty good already.
> 
Fascinating; I hadn't even heard of the project.  That said, from a quick
glance at their web pages I doubt that Rockbox will help here.  The
problem is very low level -- NetBSD isn't picking up the proper device
geometry.  Since the Rockbox installation instructions talk about doing
things with the raw drive to install on an iPod, I don't see how to even
begin.  (OTOH -- it might yield useful diagnostic data if someone were to
install Rockbox on the device from, say, Linux, and then see how it
appeared to NetBSD.)  We just seem to be doing something wrong (but
possibly still in accordance with the spec, so "incompatible" might be a
better word) at the USB or SCSI layers.

The Rockbox page did mention something else that might be worth trying:
boot the device into "disk mode", via the instructions at
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93651 and see what
happens.  I don't know, frankly, what the difference should be for "disk
mode" versus regular mode on NetBSD. 

Btw, I checked my son's iPd against the chart at
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61688 -- his is the earlier
5th Generation iPod.

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb