The gPodder User Manual

Note: jottit wiki fonts seem to be misconfigured in some way: the regular font is much bigger than the fixed-width font. Is this the "Verdana problem"?

1. About This Manual

1.1 Copyright Information

1.2 Disclaimer

1.3 Credits

2. Installing gPodder

Under major RPM-based Linux distributions, gpodder is easily installed using yum: yum install gpodder

On Debian-based Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Debian, etc..) you can use the following command: aptitude install gpodder

You might have to be "root" (or use "sudo") to install packages onto your system.

3. Using gPodder

3.1 Introduction

We need a consistent vocabulary. Currently the user manual loosely uses terms like "podcast", "episode", "track", etc. Here we should define those terms.

3.2 Configuration (needs updating)

FIXME: The layout of the configuration dialog has been changed in SVN trunk and the 0.11.2 release branch. Please update this section so that the correct menu structure is reflected.

Configuration options are found under Podcast -> Preferences. Then you choose the appropriate tab to view and change your options. Alternatively, by selecting the "Advanced" button at the bottom you can directly manipulate the variables that store the settings.

  1. General:
    • the directory where downloaded podcasts will be stored
    • the programs that will be used to play back audio and video media on your computer.
  2. Downloads:
    • specify the number of days after which an episode will be considered "old" [need to explain how this matters]
    • how many simultaneous connections will be used to download podcasts, and possible limits on their speed ("throttling")
    • proxy settings for gpodder to use when it connects to the internet.
  3. Player: Options relating to playing podcasts using a portable player (iPod or other).
    • what type of player it is and where it is mounted
    • which tracks will be synchronized
    • how tracks that have been transferred to the player will be flagged
    • whether the ftkpod extended database will be updated after synchronization [what does this mean?].
  4. Bluetooth:
  5. BitTorrent:
  6. Tray Icon:
  7. Extras:
    • when to automatically check channels for new content, automatically download episodes, or delete old episodes
    • whether to update the "tag" field on each downloaded audio file with the channel name and episode name [what are the pros and cons of doing this?]
    • Website for import from web [what does this mean?]

3.3 Adding a Podcast

3.4 Podcast Types

3.5 Listening / Watching a Podcast

3.6 Podcast Housekeeping

3.7 Synchronising Podcasts

Here is how it works for an iPod. Do generic MP3 players work the same way?

  1. Plug your iPod in to a USB port on your computer. The flashing "no entry" sign and the message "Do not disconnect" will appear.
  2. The iPod may be auto-mounted to some mount point, typically in /mnt or /media. If not, you will need to mount it yourself: messages in the system log (/var/log/messages or similar file) will tell you what device it was detected as, for example /dev/sdb2. You can then mount it as root by typing 
    mount -t vfat -o umask=0000 /dev/sdb2 /media/ipod
    where /media/ipod is a mount point (empty directory) that you have created. To allow it to be mounted by users, you can add a line to /etc/fstab: 
    LABEL=IPODNAME  /media/ipod     vfat    users,umask=0000  0 0
    where IPODNAME is the volume label for the iPod hard drive.
  3. Check it is mounted: you should be able to list the content of the mount point directory, and it will contain subdirectories 
    Calendars/  Contacts/  iPod_Control/  Notes/
  4. Start gpodder, and tell it the mount point: PodCasts -> Preferences -> Player
  5. Synchronize the gPodder podcast database with your player: Podcasts -> iPod -> Synchronize.
  6. Unmount the iPod. At the command line type 
    eject /media/ipod
    (assuming your player was mounted on /media/ipod). This which will unmount the iPod and close the connection so that the "Do not disconnect" message disappears and the iPod changes into USB charging mode (you can use the iPod's menus in this mode).
    On older versions of Linux the eject command may not be available: you can type 
    umount /media/ipod
    and then unplug your iPod. It is safe to do so, even though the "Do not disconnect" message is still present.

Feed list

gPodder episode list icons and their meanings http://khan.thpinfo.com/~thp/tmp/gpodder-icon-meanings/

FAQs

Please see the FAQs Wiki page for an up-to-date list of frequently asked questions and answers.

6. Glossary

changed April 29, 2008