Home / ubuntu / Questions / 17113
In Process
msw
Asked: 2010-12-13 09:53:28 +0800 CST

No application to launch when plugging in ipod

  • 772

I am running Banshee 1.8.0 on a more-or-less vanilla Meerkat installation. I was most pleased when I plugged in an old iPod Nano and it Just Worked.

However, when plugging in the iPod, Nautilus/Gnome asks for an application to handle the newly inserted iPod. The dialog presents no applications that can handle the device and allows no manual choice.

inserted audio player dialog

I have reinstalled banshee with apt-get purge and also install --reinstall but neither added an association. As before, when manually opened, banshee happily talks to the iPod, it just won't launch on plug.

I suspect there is a missing association in gconf or something similar but I'm not sure where this information lives.

nautilus banshee ipod launcher

3 Answers

  1. First try to set your preferred application for the media player in System->Preferences->Preferred applications:

    alt text

    If you don't have banshee in your list, select custom and add command /usr/bin/banshee. And if that doesn't work you can try also with File manager preferences:

    alt text

    Where I have set "Ask what to do", try to set as banshee

    old: THIS might help as this happend before.

    • 1

  2. It sounds like the MIME type database may be incomplete. Normally, the following should list about a dozen lines corresponding to types of media that can be assigned auto-run preferences:

    grep x-content /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache

    If they don't show up, first verify that the following returns a line containing audio-player:

    grep x-content /usr/share/applications/banshee*.desktop

    Then try regenerating the database by running:

    sudo update-desktop-database --verbose

    If that doesn't help, setting the following in ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list should function as a lazy workaround:

    [Added Associations]
x-content/audio-player=banshee-1-media-player.desktop;
    • 1

  3. This may be a stab in the dark, but:

    1. Create a file ~/.local/share/mime/x-content/audio-player.xml (creating folders along the way if necessary)

    2. Put the following in it:

      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mime-type xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info" type="x-content/audio-player">
  <!--Created automatically by update-mime-database. DO NOT EDIT!-->
  <comment>portable audio player</comment>
</mime-type>

    3. Now try to set the default audio player for inserting an audio device.

    Also, you could try:

    update-mime-database ~/.local/share/mime

    but I've never tried that... I have no idea if it will do what you want. From the man page:

    update-mime-database is an program which is responsible for updating the shared mime-info cache according to the system described in the Shared MIME-Info Database specification from the X Desktop Group.

    • 0