Ubuntu

sansa e260 and ubuntu 10.04

Asked by tombo

I have a sansa e260 music player. It was always recognised under ubuntu 8.04 but since ubuntu 9.10 I haven't had much luck getting it to work under ubuntu. It used to be real easy, just plug it in and it mounted on the desktop and I could add or remove music easily. But now since 9.10 to 10.04(present O.S) the only place the player even shows is rhythmbox. Why doesn't it just mount on the desktop? When I do get rhythmbox to find the player I can't do anything with the files on it . They won't even play, nor can a add music to it. Rhythmbox needs to be started before the player is plugged in or rhythmbox shuts down and the player freezes. I have the restricted extras package installed and every other package I could find related to mp3 files, vfat and ntfs file systems. where is the player supposed to mount to? I also plugged in the device and tried to locate it with disk uticelity and gparted no luck. I tried to switch the players mode and all that did is make the player appear empty. don't know what else to try.
                                      Thanks in advance tombo!

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delance (olivier-delance) said : 		#1

Is sansa e260 previously seen as a USB mass memory device or a "windows" device ?

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tombo (tombo465) said : 		#2

Hello delance, yes sansa e260 was previously seen as a mass storage device, It showed up under the places menu and was also seen by gparted and device manager. Now I can't find it listed anywhere, except for Rhythmbox. It wouldn't even matter to me if that remains the case as long as I could use the darn thing. Please let me know if you need more info. Thank you for your response!

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delance (olivier-delance) said : 		#3

My Sony NWZ-E445 is always seen as a USB stick by my new Ubuntu 10.04, and on desktop the icon appears.
So it seems Lucid works correctly on walkman.
The facts that Gparted fails is very bad news, because it works at very low level.

Can you open a terminal, plug the sansa e260, and type (after few seconds)
    lsusb > with_e260.txt
then remove the sansae260, and type
    lsusb > without_e260.txt
and have a look at difference.

I need the difference to:
   know if it is recognized on USB bus (which should be the case if Rhythmbox see it)
   make some research on the web

you can have difference with
    diff with_e260.txt without_e260.txt

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tombo (tombo465) said : 		#4

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 03f0:3b11 Hewlett-Packard PSC 1300 series
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 0781:7422 SanDisk Corp. Sansa E200 series v2 (mtp)
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Above is with e260 .txt below is without Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 03f0:3b11 Hewlett-Packard PSC 1300 series
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Revision history for this message
delance (olivier-delance) said : 		#5

I have no MTP device, so I only report data on the Web.

The sansa allow two modes of transfer:
   MSC : mass storage i.e. USB stick
   MTP : Windows protocol, used by RhymnBox and other software.
In the sansa, you can choose one of the mode. When mode changes, the second number of USB identifier change also. It means it is seen as another device.

To use mode MTP, you have to install packages. Open Synaptic and search packages who contains "mtp" (in 10.04, I see mtpfs, mtp-tools, libmtp8, qlix and thytmnboxplugins ).
Rhythmbox, Édition -> plugins. plugin to activate is "Removable player - MTP"
Banshee, Édition -> Préférences -> Extensions. plugin to activate is "MTP Media Player Support"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol

It seems switching of mode can lead to problem to see files transfered in other mode.

I have also found this link:
http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=view&thread.id=6696
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following link is for me, if you need more data (it's in french)
http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?id=146275&p=1

Revision history for this message
tombo (tombo465) said : 		#6

Hello delance, I looked in synaptic and all the packages you suggested are already installed. I really don't understand this problem. I installed ubuntu 8.04 to another drive and tried the mp3 player on there and it worked perfectly. I will try the links you provided. I will look for a player that has linux support next time. Thank you for your time and patience!

Revision history for this message
tombo (tombo465) said : 		#7

OK I tried Amarok and I can use the player with that. I don't know why ubuntu no longer recognizes the player as a hard drive, or why amarok works and rhythmbox doesn't. Thanks again for your help delance !