First off, I just got a replacement hard drive for the second time. A Hitachi Travelstar 1.8″ (C4K20) compatible with the Karma is very hard to get, but Hitachi just started a new production, so if you need one, you should try to call Hitachi and ask, who’s stocking them currently.
Now, just to let you know, what you’re in for:
The features are pretty simple, but effective:
- USB Transfer (much faster than LAN-interfacing with RMMLite)
- Automatic plug’n'play detection with HAL
- Automatic transcoding of file-types that the Karma doesn’t play (see the screen shot)
- Synchonisation with media library
- All the new cool features of Banshee 0.12 (or whatever later version of Banshee that might currently be out)
- The version I got from SVN was stable! No crashes after hours of running.
This is what you need to do:
All of this takes less than an hour. We’re gonna install some stuff from 3rd party repositories, get Banshee from SVN, patch it and install it, and then last – but not least – install a kernel module that enables Ubuntu to detect the Karma and mount it.
- Run all this stuff in superuser mode by doing a sudo bash
- Get the newest Mono-framework libs by adding a source to apt, updating and then upgrading:
# echo “deb http://directhex.mfgames.com/ ./update” >> /etc/apt/sources.list
# apt-get update
# apt-get dist-upgrade
- Remove Banshee and add the requirements for compiling it from SVN
# apt-get remove banshee
# apt-get build-dep banshee
# sudo apt-get install libmono-sqlite2.0-cil \
libmono-cairo2.0-cil libglib2.0-dev libtool \
subversion autoconf automake1.9 gnome-common \
libavahi1.0-cil
- Ensure that automake is set up properly and the new libraries are loaded in runtime cache:
# update-alternatives –set automake /usr/bin/automake-1.9
#ldconfig
- Get the newest packages of libkarma, libkarma-dev and libkarma-cil from this source. Install them (from command line simply do dpkg -i package.deb).
- Checkout Banshee – SVN will create a new directory for it. But before executing make, ensure that the the last lines of autogen said “Karma: Yes” – otherwise you’re missing the Karma Libs.
# svn co http://svn.gnome.org/svn/banshee/trunk/banshee
# cd banshee
# wget “http://bobcopeland.com/karma/banshee/fix-transcode.patch”
# patch -p1 < fix-transcode.patch
# ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --disable-docs
# make
# make install
- Now you have Banshee installed and ready, but you still need to make Ubuntu and HAL capable of detecting and mounting the Karma. To do this, you need to compile a module that enables OMFS, which is the filesystem the Karma uses. First get the Kernel sources and link them correctly:
# apt-get install linux-source
# cd /usr/src
# tar xvfj linux-source-*.tar.bz2
# ln -s linux-source*/ /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build
- Now go here and get the latest version of the OMFS kernel module. Untar it somewhere and do this:
# make modules modules_install
# depmod -a
# modprobe usb-storage
# mkdir /media/karma
- To have the Karma automatically detected please refer to the “HAL” and “fstab” chapters on this page.
- Now plugin your Karma. Something should happen (maybe Rythmbox starts… of so, kill it). Now start Banshee and notice that nice Karma icon.
Troubleshooting
Double-check that you have followed all these steps. To ensure that you have the kernel module installed properly, do this:
# blockdev –report
# mount -t omfs (name of partition… /dev/sda2 or something) /media/karma
If this command says “unknow filesystem type”, the module isn’t installed correctly. You should check that it is located in /lib/modules/your-current-kernel/extra/omfs.ko. If it is, then try to do a “depmod -a” again and then “modprobe usb-storage” and then re-connect the Karma. The command “dmesg” will tell you if the kernel detected your drive at all.
Other resources
