[gentoo-amd64] Re: Sansa Clip+

[Duncan]

sean posted on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:28:30 -0500 as excerpted:

> My son just purchased a Sansa Clip+ and from what I read it is supposed
> to be accessible in Linux, it would look like a USB drive for drag and
> drop.
>
> Anyway, I updated the firmware to the latest, and set the USB mode on
> the Clip+ to MSC.
>
> I am wondering if I need to setup support in the kernel, or something
> else?

What are the other modes available on the clip+?  If I'm not mistaken, you 
want mass storage mode.

In mass storage mode, provided your kernel and udev is configured 
correctly, it should be detected (check the kernel logs, aka dmesg, just 
after plugging it in), activating the mass storage driver, which will 
detect the partitioning.  That will in turn activate udev to make 
available the device as a /dev/sdX device, with all the partitions, if 
any, available as /dev/sdXY, where X is a letter and Y is a number (like 
any other scsi system based block device, 
pata/sata/scsi/usb-mass-storage/whatever, only the old deprecated ide 
drivers use /dev/hdXY any more).  What happens after that (automounting, 
or simply available for you to mount manually) will depend on your fstab 
and hal config, etc.

Mass storage is by far the simplest mode to work with and troubleshoot.  
The other mode, media device or whatever, uses much lower level kernel 
drivers, usb and bit-banging or some such, with the higher level interface 
being userspace.  Generally, only specific media apps (such as amarok, 
with the appropriate USE flags, I assume there's a gtk/gnome media app 
that supports that too) with the userspace support built-in will be able 
to deal with devices in that mode.  In media mode, the device will not 
normally be available in a file manager, etc, as it isn't exposed as a 
block device, except in mass storage mode.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman