Schadenfreude

Intro

I wrote a HOWTO
on compiling the iPod Linux Installer. Once I got it compiled, I could not get it to recognize my iPod, so I decided to do it by hand, which was very easy. I started with my 20GB 4th Generation iPod, which was had dead batteries for quite a while. I created a giant FAT32 Partition on it and formatted it, then I downloaded the latest iPod update software in Windows. I used the software to Restore my iPod to a clean slate Apple OS WinPod configuration. Then, I rebooted, and used the iPodLinux wiki as a guide.

I found their wiki is a bit cumbersome to use since some of the information is outdated. So, I decided to log my experience here.

Firmware

First, I needed to back up the original firmware to disk for integration into the new Loader firmware, as well as just to back it up for restoration. First, I plugged in my iPod, and saw it was initialized to /dev/sda. I then followed these instructions, backing up and patching my firmware. Basically, you need to get make_fw first. I got the x86 Linux build, which worked fine. This is basically it:

# dd if=/dev/sda1 of=orig_firmware.bin
$ ./make_fw -o apple_os.bin -e 0 orig_firmware.bin
$ ./make_fw -g 4 -v -o my_sw.bin -i apple_os.bin loader.bin

I then needed to partition my iPod to accept the Linux partition, as well as to resize the wasteful firmware partition. I used the following configuration:

Then I disk-dumped the firmware I generated onto the firmware partition of the iPod

# dd if=my_sw.bin of=/dev/sda1

That done, I partitioned.

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