I’ve been struggling with this for quite a while, but today I finally got it to work. Below is what I did, but keep in mind that this is a it-just-worked-for-me kind of post, and I’m definitely not an expert when it comes to iPods. If you try the method and still have problems listening to audio files on your iPod, it’s very unlikely that I have enough knowledge to help with your issue.
First I reseted the iPod. This is done by turning it off, waiting 10 seconds, and then switching either to shuffle or play in order (without turning the iPod on).
Then I formated with,
mkdosfs -F32 -n IPOD /dev/sdb
You will need to replace /dev/sdb with the correct device file for your iPod. This can be found by typing,
cat /proc/partitions
in a terminal.
Then I used rebuild_db, which can be download from here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/shuffle-db/files/
and simply followed the instructions on their web page:
http://shuffle-db.sourceforge.net/
I have Ubuntu 10.10, and a 3rd generation, 1 GB iPod Shuffle.
