Matejunkie

Update: After reading this article, consider using the enhanced version of this script described in this article!

As a Linux addicted nerd you often face new challenges. One challenge could be migrating an existing iTunes database to a gnupod database, just to see that the database is completely broken in the end. And if it doesn’t work even after a gnupod_INIT.pl -restore, you definitely want to know how to recover the 14.000 mp3′s you’ve had on your iPod.

So here we go:

On a fat32 formatted iPod all the mp3 files still remain in the following directory even after the experience of a corrupted database.

user@host /mnt/ipod/iPod_Control/Music $ pwd
/mnt/ipod/iPod_Control/Music

When you take a look into the directory you’ll see different subdirectories with the following naming convention and your actual mp3 files inside these directories.

user@host /mnt/ipod/iPod_Control/Music $ ls
f00  f02  f04  f06  f08  f10  f12  f14  f16  f18  f20  f22  f24  f26  f28  f30  f32  f34  f36  f38  f40  f42  f44  f46  f48
f01  f03  f05  f07  f09  f11  f13  f15  f17  f19  f21  f23  f25  f27  f29  f31  f33  f35  f37  f39  f41  f43  f45  f47  f49
user@host /mnt/ipod/iPod_Control/Music $ ls f00/kpod0006400.mp3f00
/kpod0006400.mp3

To recover your files in a proper naming convention like “ARTIST/ALBUM/TRACK_NO.-TITLE.mp3″ you may want to grab the following shell script I’ve “quick’n'dirty-written” for this purpose. It’ll read files recursive from an input directory, get’s the id3v1 information from your mp3 files and copies them to an output directory. The input and output directory has to be defined by yourself in line 4 and 5. All files without an id3v1 tag will be copied to a subdirectory called no-id3v1 and therefore need manual care to refit them into your music library.

#!/bin/sh
 
# define input/output directories
input=/mnt/ipod/iPod_Control/Music/f*
output=/opt/music/output
 
# create no-id3v1 directory
mkdir $output/no-id3v1/
 
# Let's do this...
files=`find $input -type f`
for i in $files
do
    title=`id3tool $i | grep '^Song Title:' | sed 's/Song Title:\t//' | sed 's/[ \t]*$//'`
    artist=`id3tool $i | grep '^Artist:' | sed 's/Artist:\t\t//' | sed 's/[ \t]*$//'`
    album=`id3tool $i | grep '^Album:' | sed 's/Album:\t\t//' | sed 's/[ \t]*$//'`
    tno=`id3tool $i | grep '^Track:' | sed 's/Track:\t\t//' | sed 's/[ \t]*$//'`
 
    if [ -z "$title" ]
    then
        echo "!!! $i !!! --> $output/no-id3v1/$i"
        install -D $i "$output/no-id3v1/"
    else
        echo "$i --> $output/$artist/$album$tno-$title.mp3"
        install -D $i "$output/$artist/$album/$tno-$title.mp3"
    fi
done
 
exit

As always this small code snippet is ment to be sh-compliant and released under the terms of the GPL Version 2. Please be aware of the fact, that you’ll have to install the id3tool via your prefered package management software before running this script.
I’ll probably enhance the script so that it can be configured via an option parser, working with id3v2 information and different output formats as well. I’ll let you know when it’s finished.