Ubuntu.. Virtual Box.. Windows 7.. iTunes..

Life is never simple. Days after cancelling my 'everything is covered' insurance (but is it?) on my laptop, the power supply gave up. This posed an interesting challenge, how to extract everything updated since the last backup in exactly 17 minutes - before the battery ran out. In reality 17 minutes was a little optimistic and it turned out to be closer to 7 minutes, but having signed-up for Dropbox the previous month I was covered, and dare I say a little smug too.

I have a desktop machine running Ubuntu 11.04 and to be honest I was looking for an excuse to ditch the laptop - the only thing I used it for was to sync my iPad via iTunes. Easy, install Windows 7 on VirtualBox, install iTunes and away we go.

Wrong. Looks like Ubuntu 11.04 comes with VirtualBox 4.0.6 OSE which doesn't seem to like Apple products connected via USB.

There was a surprisingly high volume of posts on forums with many recommendations and many replies saying "That worked", or indeed "That didn't work".

The only thing that worked for me was: -

• Uninstall VirtualBox through the Ubuntu Software Center tool


• Download and install the latest version of VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads)


• Download and install the VirtualBox Extension Pack (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads)


• Plug in your iPad/iPod, add it as a USB device on your VM


• Start your Windows VM and load iTunes

Incidentally, I did have to uninstall the old iPad/iPod driver from my Windows 7 VM. I think this is because of my unsuccessful fiddling whilst running on VirtualBox 4.0.6. Plug the iPad/iPod back in, Windows searches for a driver - say you know where a good one is and enter the path: -

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\Drivers

I am now running VirtualBox 4.1.6, Windows 7 Starter and iTunes 10.5 and it's all working - even the WiFi sync!

Labels: HOME, LINUX

 

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