iRiver plays files in order they were saved

[Steve Grace]

On Mon, 2008-01-28 at 05:33 -0500, Craig Puchta wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 2008-01-27 at 17:47 -0800, Steve Grace wrote: 
> > On Mon, 2008-01-28 at 10:14 +0900, Thomas Zander wrote:
> > 
> > > On 28/01/2008, chombee <chombee at nerdshack.com> wrote:
> > > > Is this a nautilus 'issue'? (nautilus is doing something random to the
> > > > mtimes when it finalises the transfer). Is there some way around this?
> > > > Perhaps other file browsers would behave differently.
> > > 
> > > No, it's not nautlius. I used to have almost the same crap iriver
> > > player you do and it always suffered from that issue, no matter if I
> > > transferred files from linux/BSD/Mac with/without nautilus/finder.
> > > Imho the only way to get around this is using the "manager" firmware
> > > and their "Manager" software on Windaz or using ifp-line on unix.
> > 
> > I have a player that does that same thing. The solution I'm using is
> > based on a tip that was posted a few months ago for an iRiver T60. You
> > can use the "rsync" command to sync the player to a disk image of the
> > music files. It mostly keeps things in alphanumeric sequence.
> > 
> > I can provide details if you like.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> I would like the details. I have the T60 and several audio books that
> I stopped listening to because the chapters are played out of order,
> how annoying. 
> Feel free to email me direct if you don't want to post to list. Either
> way works for me. :)

Here's what I do to keep things in sequence on my player. This method
is based on a post by David Fletcher on the kubuntu-users list last
November.

I created a shell script with the following contents:

rsync --verbose --recursive --times --whole-file \
--delay-updates --modify-window=1 --delete-before \
/extra/MUSIC/ /media/usbdisk/MUSIC/

NOTE: I have a directory on my hard disk named /extra/MUSIC/ that
contains the contents of the music directory on my player. The directory
on my player is also named MUSIC and is at the top level. My player
mounts as /media/usbdisk/. These paths are hard-coded into the script,
so change them to be appropriate for your system.

I then set the permissions to make the script executable.

I can now do the following:

* If I delete files/directories from the hard disk image and run the
script, the associated files/directories will be deleted from the
player.

* If I add files/directories to the hard disk image and run the script,
the associated files/directories will be added to the player. Everything
that's copied in a given batch will be processed in alphanumeric
sequence.

This is not a perfect solution. Let's say I have an album directory on
the player and in the disk image that contains tracks 1, 2 and 4. If I
now add track 3 to the disk image and run the script, the track order on
the player will be 1, 2, 4, 3. The workaround is to first delete the
enclosing directory from the player and to then run the script. The
entire directory will then be re-copied to the player, with the tracks
in sequence. The same concept can also be used at higher directory
levels, if desired. Hopefully you won't have to reload the entire player
each time, though. :-)

Steve