Once and Still a Techie Weblog

Getting my Creative Zen Stone Plus mounted on the Eee PC February 11, 2008

Posted by Rey in EEE PC, Personal Computing.
Tags: amarok, Asus EEE, creative zen stone plus, EEE PC, Linux, mount, xandros
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Thanks to this source, I was able to figure out how to get my Creative Zen Stone Plus to work with Xandros on my Eee PC.

When you connect the ZEN it will be detected as “ZEN Stone Plus”. In order to get Amarok (1.4.3 in my case) to detect it you will need to mount it first.

UPDATE: If your ‘usbstorageapplet’ has been upgraded (mine is currently version 1.1.69-1), Xandros will automatically assign a drive letter for any USB device or SD card you connect to the system and automatically mount it. If this is the case please proceed here for updated instructions.

Here’s how to do it in Advanced Desktop mode:

1. After connecting the ZEN, determine the device name for it:

a.) open a console (CTRL+ALT+T)

b.) type “sudo fdisk -l”

c.) Here’s what I see:

Disk /dev/sda: 4001 MB, 4001292288 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 486 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sda1 1 300 2409718+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 301 484 1477980 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 485 485 8032+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda4 486 486 8032+ ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)

Disk /dev/sdb: 2007 MB, 2007498752 bytes 29 heads, 28 sectors/track, 4828 cylinders Units = cylinders of 812 * 512 = 415744 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sdb1 1 4829 1960320+ 6 FAT16 Note: sector size is 2048 (not 512)

Disk /dev/sdc: 1974 MB, 1974730752 bytes 243 heads, 62 sectors/track, 64 cylinders Units = cylinders of 15066 * 2048 = 30855168 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sdc1 * 1 64 1928324 b W95 FAT32 Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(0, 0, 62) logical=(0, 1, 1)

Based on the above output my ZEN is detected as /dev/sdc1. sdb1 would be the 2GB SD card in my card reader. Of course sda would be the main SSD.

2. open /etc/fstab using a text editor like kwrite:

at the prompt type “sudo kwrite /etc/fstab &”. Replace kwrite with any text editor you’re comfortable with.

3. Add the following line to fstab and save the file:

/dev/sdc1 /media/ZENStonePlus vfat noatime,auto,users,uid=1000,gid=100,umask=007 0 0

4. Open the Admistrator File Manager at Applications->System->Administrator Tools

5. Navigate to All File Systems and open “/”:

6. Then open the folder “media”:

7. That’s where you should find the folder “ZEN Stone Plus”.

8. Rename “ZEN Stone Plus” to “ZENStonePlus” by clicking the folder then pressing Function key F2.:

9. Return to the console and mount sdc1:

type ’sudo mount /dev/sdc1′ or ’sudo mount -a’ (to mount all partitions in fstab which works too)

10. Open amarok and go to “Settings->Configure Music Manager”

11. Scroll down the left pane and select “Media Devices”:

12.) To the right of the detected Media Device “sdc1″ change the plugin to “Generic Audio Player”:

13.) Click Ok. On the main amarok screen click the Media Device tab and Connect to the Generic Audio Player at /dev/sdc1:

To start transferring files, simply select a song or set of songs and drag it into the transfer queue. Take note that if you were to remove the ZEN Stone Plus and reconnect it without rebooting the Eee the ZEN may no longer be detected as sdc1. It might change to sdd1.

To make sure there aren’t any problems what I usually do is reboot the Eee before connecting the ZEN to make sure it is always /dev/sdc1. The next time you connect the ZEN there will be no need to reedit fstab or rename ZEN Stone Plus. Simply mount the ZEN in a console using “sudo mount /dev/sdc1″or “sudo mount -a”.

Hope this helps stop some head scratching out there.