Terminal Tips: How to Get Tunes Off of Your iPod

Great tip. thx. but, when i do as described i do see all files but names read like: PABP.mp3, PTBZ.m4a, etc. i use itunes 4.9 and the latest iPod update on a iPod 3rd generation. any comments? anything i do wrong?

Thank you for this tip. I got iPodRip to do the copy without thinking too much about it. Of course the data would be in the Volumes folder, duh. By the way, just to be complete (OS 9 and Windows users may like to know) you can open these invisible folders from the Finder by going to the "Go to Folder..." menu item under the Go menu, typing: /Volumes/YOURIPODSNAME/iPod_Control/Music/ and clicking on the "Go" button.

Small Paul said: "The following comman copies all files from your iPod's music folders to a folder called 'iPodMusicFiles' on your desktop. cp /Volumes/YOURIPODSNAME/iPod_Control/Music/F*/* ~/Desktop/iPodMusicFiles/" In a traditional UNIX system I'd agree, but this is Mac OS X (which IMHO is better). So I recommend using 'ditto -rsrcFork' instead of cp. It preserves resource and HFS meta-data. Use it just as you would the cp command. Check out the ditto man page for more info.

Graydon....internal index. However, you could simply redefine the "Home computer" each time you plug the shuffle in, since it asks "This iPod is associated with another computer. Would you like to associate it with this one instead? Doing so will erase all songs on the shuffle." or something very close to that...

One of the things that bothers me about the Shuffle is that it can have only one "home" computer. Could you use the Terminal to manually move files onto the Shuffle from a different computer and then be able to play them? Or is there an internal index that needs to be updated as well? It would be nice to be able to populate the shuffle from work and home.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Brian: It should be noted that if you add the -R (or -r) option, then the entire directory tree will be copied (you probably already know this, but just in case some people don't). Thus you will end up with the F00 etc folders still there. - -- Andy -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.1 iQA/AwUBQjsnpyzm9970+YPOEQKDoQCgrU0joWDRhS6fl3WpwsdeDPsHndwAoMrg vqjhnu2ySn9YfIFWotj/IH+N =xt1l -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Here's an AppleScript that will "reveal" the files of selected iPod tracks: http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=showipodsongfiles And another that will import the files of selected iPod tracks to your Music folder: http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=importipodaudiofiles Both use "do shell script" UNIX commands.

'cp' will copy them. 'mv' is 'move' and will delete the originals. But 'cp' copies them so the originals are unharmed. Easiest possible way: cd to the directory with all the numbered F folders. Then: cp -rv ./* ~/Desktop/temp/ The 'r' stands for 'recursive,' i.e. 'get all folders, subfolders, and contained files.' The 'v' means 'be verbose,' i.e. 'show me the names of all the files you're copying as you're copying them.' That way you get some feedback. UNIX's default quietness can be unsettling to new users. If you're copying a few gigs of music, these commands can take quite a while, and by default, cp will just sit there, silently doing its thing, and drop you back to a prompt when done, which could be quite a while. Seeing the names fly by lets you know something's actually happening and it won't slow the process down any. (OK, maybe 0.0001%, but not enough that you'd notice.)

Hey Andy, Thanks for the added info. One question though: Does cp simply move the files or does it copy them and then erase the originals from the iPod? I ask this as I tried it a while back with some other copy commands and one of them had that unwanted result.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Two quick things to note. Firstly, you also need to escape characters such as an apostrophe ('). The other thing to note is that you don't need to do $ open F** As the asterisk wildcards for any character repeated from zero to an infinite number of times. Thus, only $ open F* is necessary. Oh, and one other thing - if you want to copy them all into one big directory, try this: $ cp ./F*/*.mp3 ~/Desktop/temp To copy them to a directory called temp on your Desktop. You might have to be careful because if two files are named the same, then the second will overwrite the first. Thus, $ cp -i ./F*/*.mp3 ~/Desktop/temp might be more appropriate as it will prompt for overwriting. - -- Andy -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.1 iQA/AwUBQjrkHizm9970+YPOEQLT8QCgvuSf70qPUfJHOcRNLJgh8UdPuEMAoKyL Mf0mywTId+WNrr+IP4/zPagp =oJgn -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----