Thanks again! I found out how to manually mount the IPod. That will get gtkPod to recognize the device. I use dmesg at the command line and read what the IPods boot sector is — it’s like sdb1 or sdc1 (different each time). Then I go mount /dev/sdb1 /media/IPOD and — viola! — gtkPod sees the device.
However, neither Amarok nor Banshee will see the device unless I reboot the computer with the IPod connected. That sucks because only with Amarok or Banshee could I add or delete files to the IPod; gtkPod gave me errors when I tried to do this.
But that got me thinking, since I needed to mount the IPod as root (using su), maybe it was a permissions problem. Sure enough, I logged in to the desktop as root and was able to save and delete files on the IPod using gtkPod. But I know its not a good idea to be messing with things while logged in as root, so now I need to find out how to grant my username write permissions for the device when I mount it under su. So I’m almost there....
There are ways to automate all of that. It’s a bit complex and lengthy, but you’ll only have to do it once. Maybe someone in your forum will post it, and you can copy/paste through the terminal. Then create a symlink to it.