VMWare Woes
I'm currently trialing VMWare 5.5 on my laptop, to run Windows XP so that Vicky can use iTunes to manager her iPod (no, gtkpod isn't an option, and neither is SharpMusique). However, it's not working. :(
I've installed iTunes, but when I plug in the iPod XP detects first an iPod and then a USB Mass Storage device. It appears that the Mass Storage device is overriding the iPod drivers so iTunes doesn't notice the iPod. And so I ask the Lazyweb: has anyone else seen this, and is there a way around it?
Update: looks like the problem is caused by VMWare exposing my USB 2 controller as a USB 1.1 controller, which iTunes refuses to support as it would be too slow. Dammit! Any known workarounds?
Update 2: there are suggestions that this may be fixed by using an older version of iTunes, so does anyone have a Windows iTunes 5 installer to hand? Apple are only providing the latest release on their site.
NP: Laika Come Home, Space Monkeyz vs. Gorillaz
Posted by Douglas McMorris at Mon Dec 5 16:45:51 2005:
I worked at a help desk at my Uni for a while... ran into this once, i reinstalled itunes and it seemed to fix the problem.
You might also be able to remove the ipod driver from the device manager (in system properties). Theres also something in windows that sets priority for drivers, so you might search for that, but it escapes me at the moment.
Posted by Anonymous at Mon Dec 5 16:50:43 2005:
You might also be able to remove the ipod driver from the device manager (in system properties). Theres also something in windows that sets priority for drivers, so you might search for that, but it escapes me at the moment.
Have you tried Rhythmbox? It has specific support for the iPod, and allows you to simply drag music from your music library onto the iPod and vice versa.
Posted by Colin at Mon Dec 5 16:57:46 2005:
Posted by Ross at Mon Dec 5 17:02:51 2005:
Sigh.
Does Rhythmbox support encrypted MPEG 4 files? Does it let Vicky access the iTunes Music Store?
gtkpod is out simply as it's very very ugly, and very very broken. I'm a hacker and refuse to use it, I'm not even going to suggest showing it to Vicky. It also failed the ITMS test.
Using SharpMusique isn't allowed as 1) it's not integrated into Rhythmbox and 2) not as nice to use as iTunes.
Of course this means that Banshee is out for the above reasons.
Accept that fact that I need iTunes running, and considering I have a Windows XP license, iTunes, and VMWare, it should be possible.
Posted by Sean at Mon Dec 5 17:11:03 2005:
Does Rhythmbox support encrypted MPEG 4 files? Does it let Vicky access the iTunes Music Store?
gtkpod is out simply as it's very very ugly, and very very broken. I'm a hacker and refuse to use it, I'm not even going to suggest showing it to Vicky. It also failed the ITMS test.
Using SharpMusique isn't allowed as 1) it's not integrated into Rhythmbox and 2) not as nice to use as iTunes.
Of course this means that Banshee is out for the above reasons.
Accept that fact that I need iTunes running, and considering I have a Windows XP license, iTunes, and VMWare, it should be possible.
This happened to my sister's computer a month or two ago. Completely uninstalling iTunes and then reinstalling it fixed the problem.
Posted by Anon at Mon Dec 5 17:22:49 2005:
Are the IPod presented as a USB 2 device in VMWare? Pre 5.5 (or 5.0?) versions did present the USB devices plugged into the system as USB 1 devices (even tough their USB 2 devices). ITunes requires USB2.
Posted by Ross at Mon Dec 5 17:30:49 2005:
Posted by Daniel at Mon Dec 5 17:32:13 2005:
Winamp + http://mlipod.com/ solved all my problems. iTunes under Windows compared to OS X is imho very broken. The iPod drivers are better left uninstalled as they remove the capability to dump files on the iPod (like to bring movies to friends and such). But it does lack iTMS access.. so if one can live with a working iPod manager without iTMS and it must work under Windows, this is a good choise.
gtkpod is pretty damn ugly ;) maybe some funky app based on sharpmusique+ipodsharp would be nice.
Posted by Alex Valentine at Mon Dec 5 18:01:21 2005:
gtkpod is pretty damn ugly ;) maybe some funky app based on sharpmusique+ipodsharp would be nice.
Why not use banshee?
<A href="http://banshee-project.org/Main_Page">Banshee website</a>
The ipod integration for banshee is excellent.
Posted by simplisticton at Mon Dec 5 18:05:12 2005:
<A href="http://banshee-project.org/Main_Page">Banshee website</a>
The ipod integration for banshee is excellent.
Best to get rid of the DRM on the protected music files while you're at it. JHymn (http://hymn-project.org/) is a tool for doing such, and it works quite well.
Posted by RIchard Eldred at Mon Dec 5 20:06:25 2005:
Well, the more expensive sollution would be to pickup a mini-mac and use that. I'm going to be doing that myself, if I can ever scrounge up the money.
Posted by John Troyer at Mon Dec 5 20:07:19 2005:
Some people have had luck connecting the iPod through a physical USB1.1 hub.
http://www.vmware.com/community/search.jspa?q=ipod
Posted by Derrick Hudson at Mon Dec 5 20:21:15 2005:
http://www.vmware.com/community/search.jspa?q=ipod
I have an iPod shuffle, VMWare 5.0 on Debian, and WinXP. I found that when I plug the iPod in, first debian (hotplug, udev) notices and gives me a mass-storage device. I remove the mass-storage module, and then VMWare can grab the device. Then it "just works". At least I can demonstrate that what you are trying to do has worked in practice.
Hardware details: I plugged the iPod into the hub on the LCD display. I'm pretty sure it is USB 2.0. The display is a Dell, 19". That plugs into one of the USB connectors on the back of the tower (also a Dell). I think it shows up as USB 2.0 in XP, but I'm not positive and don't have the iPod with me to double-check.
At home I found that gtkpod was able to put music on the iPod (fwiw). (vmware is at work, and my personal machine doesn't have the resources to run windows on top of debian)
Posted by Colin at Mon Dec 5 20:50:03 2005:
Hardware details: I plugged the iPod into the hub on the LCD display. I'm pretty sure it is USB 2.0. The display is a Dell, 19". That plugs into one of the USB connectors on the back of the tower (also a Dell). I think it shows up as USB 2.0 in XP, but I'm not positive and don't have the iPod with me to double-check.
At home I found that gtkpod was able to put music on the iPod (fwiw). (vmware is at work, and my personal machine doesn't have the resources to run windows on top of debian)
I find it really sad that you, a really good Gnome/Linux hacker, resorts to using three proprietary crap software when existing free solutions already exist and would only require a bit of love.
It is not with this kind of workarounds that free software progresses.
Sigh too...
Posted by Ross at Mon Dec 5 21:05:57 2005:
It is not with this kind of workarounds that free software progresses.
Sigh too...
Colin: personally I'm about to switch to Dopi, a C#/gtk-sharp iPod application. The VMWare/WinXP/iTunes is a quick and easy solution for my wife, whilst she using Linux 99% of the time at home, wants the integration and ease of use that iTunes has.
One day I may buy a Mac Mini, but that is way out of our budget at the moment.
Posted by Jen at Mon Dec 5 21:21:52 2005:
One day I may buy a Mac Mini, but that is way out of our budget at the moment.
Ross: You should consider running iTunes under Crossover Office as well. Cheaper than VMWare, and more tightly integrated into your current desktop environment. Plus, you don't need an entire XP install to run it ...
Posted by Koby at Mon Dec 5 22:22:09 2005:
You can run Windows 2000 with the latest service packs. This will allow iTunes to see the iPod. But it will be at USB 1.1 speeds. This worked for me last year when I was doing a similar thing.
Posted by Jakub Steiner at Mon Dec 5 22:36:32 2005:
Posted by Ricky at Tue Dec 6 02:00:37 2005:
VMware's usage of USB is limited to 1.1, at best, and even then it's unlikely you'll hit those speeds without a performance hit elsewhere.
Posted by Deus at Tue Dec 6 04:52:03 2005:
Since when did iTunes require USB 2.0? Is this new to iTunes 6? I dual boot for Games and I use my iPod with iTunes on a usb 1.1 connection, but I also havn't upgraded to iTunes 6 yet. If none of the other suggestions work, and she doesn't need the new features from iTunes 6, try to install an older version.
Posted by Ross at Tue Dec 6 08:13:42 2005:
Jen: re CrossOver Office, I just went to download a trial and read the known issues of iTunes:
* CD Burning / Ripping Doesn't Work
* Accessing the iPod
Getting the iPod to work with iTunes still requires the modification of vital Hotplug configuration files... For this reason, we do not provide official support for using the iPod with iTunes.
So that's a no then.
Posted by Mike Hearn at Tue Dec 6 13:48:20 2005:
* CD Burning / Ripping Doesn't Work
* Accessing the iPod
Getting the iPod to work with iTunes still requires the modification of vital Hotplug configuration files... For this reason, we do not provide official support for using the iPod with iTunes.
So that's a no then.
Ross, CXO downloads iTunes from the akamai mirrors directly as it doesn't support the newest version. You can get an old version of it here:
http://crossover.codeweavers.com/redirect/itunes490
Posted by daveg at Tue Dec 6 23:09:40 2005:
http://crossover.codeweavers.com/redirect/itunes490
Ross,
All previous versions of iTunes can be found here:
http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/apple/iTunes/
Posted by Philip Langdale at Wed Dec 7 20:36:27 2005:
All previous versions of iTunes can be found here:
http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/apple/iTunes/
If you are running the ga release of Workstation 5.5, then you shouldn't have any problems related to it being a usb2 device. One standard trick with the older versions is to plug the device into a usb 1.1 hub and then plug that hub into your machine.
With respect to performance, the protocol version does not constrain the performance. If you have a usb2 device plugged into a usb2 port on your host, and then pass it through to a VM, you will still get performance greater than usb 1.1 'allows'. Of course it won't be as fast as usb2 on the host, but that's just your inevitable virtualisation overhead.
Posted by Sitsofe at Thu Dec 8 15:37:48 2005:
With respect to performance, the protocol version does not constrain the performance. If you have a usb2 device plugged into a usb2 port on your host, and then pass it through to a VM, you will still get performance greater than usb 1.1 'allows'. Of course it won't be as fast as usb2 on the host, but that's just your inevitable virtualisation overhead.
Ross,
My housemate has a creaky old 2001 era PC and uses iTunes6 (or whatever the latest iTunes is) via (real) USB 1.1. I know it's USB 1.1 because it took forever to transfer his collection of music AND he had to do it twice because the cable came unplugged 80% of the way through (iTunes doesn't seem to checkpoint unless you do a software eject or it finishes). I don't know what sort of iPod my housemate has but he bought it in the last month and it plays movies, music and pictures with a colour screen and is not overly narrow. The only catch is that very occassionally iTunes seems to fail to spot the iPod is plugged in even though Windows succeeded. He also upgraded through several versions of iTunes and even installed the version of iTunes that was on the CD (which may have extra drivers).
Just to reiterate - iTunes 6 worked using USB 1.1 on his Windows XP PC.
Posted by Simon at Sun Feb 5 16:26:44 2006:
My housemate has a creaky old 2001 era PC and uses iTunes6 (or whatever the latest iTunes is) via (real) USB 1.1. I know it's USB 1.1 because it took forever to transfer his collection of music AND he had to do it twice because the cable came unplugged 80% of the way through (iTunes doesn't seem to checkpoint unless you do a software eject or it finishes). I don't know what sort of iPod my housemate has but he bought it in the last month and it plays movies, music and pictures with a colour screen and is not overly narrow. The only catch is that very occassionally iTunes seems to fail to spot the iPod is plugged in even though Windows succeeded. He also upgraded through several versions of iTunes and even installed the version of iTunes that was on the CD (which may have extra drivers).
Just to reiterate - iTunes 6 worked using USB 1.1 on his Windows XP PC.
Did this ever get solved? I am working on the same thing. I have been searching forums for the past several weeks and I have been unsuccessful in finding a solution. If this has, could someone post the solution?
Posted by Ross at Sun Feb 5 16:57:24 2006:
Simon, yes I did get it fixed. Plug the iPod into a real USB 1.0 hub, and it will work fine. iTunes appears to get confused by a USB 2 device appearing on a USB 1 bus (which VMWare exposes USB as), and refuses to work. Plugging the iPod into my Apple keyboard (with internal hub) works fine.
Posted by steve at Tue May 16 22:07:27 2006:
