Adding/removing tracks on iriver U10 player in UMS mode on Ubuntu

Unfortunately, simply copying the songs onto the player does not make them automatically available for playback. The iriver U10 player maintains an internal database with all the tracks it contains which may, or may not be correct. That’s why you need an application to rebuild the database each time you update your music collection on the U10.

iriver supplies an application named iriver plus 2 to do this but it’s for Windows only. Well, no problem, open source rushes to the rescue.

The PMPlib project aims to provide a management software/library for various portable media players, U10 being included. The Windows version of the management software is really straightforward because it has a simple and easy to use GUI, but for Linux the software comes in console mode only. Well, since you’re using Linux this should not be that much of a problem

Download the binaries
The project offers both source files and rpm binaries. I downloaded the pmplib-0.14-1.i386.rpm and pmplib-tools-0.14-1.i386.rpm binaries.

Install alien
Now, since I’m using Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) I cannot use the binaries in their original packaging because Ubuntu does not understand RPM files. No problem, there’s a tool named alien which converts RPM files to DEB files, which Ubuntu can happily get along with. If you already have alien installed, skip this step (as far as I know it does not come with vanilla Feisty).

Open a terminal and type
sudo apt-get install alien

Agree to everything it prompts. Good, now we’re ready for the next step.

Convert the binaries
For some obscure reason alien must be run under root privileges so we’ll use sudo again. First let’s convert pmplib:

sudo alien pmplib-0.14-1.i386.rpm

It’ll take a couple of seconds (no progress will be shown on screen) . Now we must convert pmplib-tools:

sudo alien pmplib-tools-0.14-1.i386.rpm

Now for the next step, installing pmplib and pmplib-tools.

Installing the binaries
To install the binaries we simply run

sudo dpkg -i pmplib_0.14-2_i386.deb

Notice that alien changed some of the dashes to underscores. I have no idea why, but that’s totally not important for us now. Let’s install pmplib-tools:

sudo dpkg -i pmplib-tools_0.14-2_i386.deb

Okay, everything should be up and running now.

Using pmplib/easypmp
After you connect your player and it gets mounted (or you mount in yourself) you should check that easypmp recognized it by typing in the terminal:

easypmp /media/U10

If the player gets mounted under a different mount point replace /media/U10 with that location. EasyPMP should output some info about the player, here’s what it says about mine:

$ easypmp /media/U10/
EasyPMP [CUI] 0.14 alpha Copyright (c) 2005-2007 PMPlib Project

Opening the portable media device


Device identifier: iriver_u10_ums_1.00-1.65
Manufacturer: iriver
Product name: U10
Firmware mode: UM
Firmware version: 1.64
Firmware range: 1.00 to 1.65
Default language: fre
Audio codec(s): MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, WAV
Audio extension(s): .mp3;.ogg;.wma;.wav
Root directory: /media/U10/
Music directory: Music
Playlist directory: Playlists


Closing the device


If it doesn’t show any info that might mean that you either mistyped the mount point, did not mount the player or, the worst, you player is not supported. If you can’t figure it out head over to the PMPlib forums.

Updating the internal database
Now you’re ready to add new media to your player and get it indexed. Simply copy your music files in the Music directory on the player using Nautilus or the tool of your choice. To update the database and have the songs show up in the Music menu type in a terminal:

easypmp -u /media/U10

That would be just about it. For more options that can be passed to easypmp you should check out the EasyPMP manual.