Help File Library: Getting Your Diamond Rio to Work in Linux
Written By: salmon@bluemarble.net

I bought a Diamond Rio about a year ago during a rebate promotion. For those of you who don't know, you can take mp3's that you have stored on your hard drive and upload them onto this nifty little device, which is about half the size of a walkman or smaller. Of course, the software that comes with it to moderate this process doesn't run on Linux.

That brings us to the point of this Help File. Believe it or not, getting the Rio to work in Linux is easier then the same process in Windows. I'm serious. If you don't believe me then just follow along. Before I start with though, let me relay some information. According to the software's homepage, you need to be root to compile and run this thing. My own experience tells me that if you compile it as root, then you can run it as a normal user. Also, you might think that you'll need to do something with your kernel. This is not the case. Finally, when I refer to "rio," then I'm refering to the software. When I refer to "Rio," then I'm talking about actual device.

Now then, let's get started. Of course, the first thing you'll need is the software. Click here to download it. You can also check out the homepage at http://www.world.co.uk/sba/rio.htm.

Now that you have the source, you'll need to unpack and compile it.

tar -xvf rio007.tar
cd rio107
su (and enter the root password when prompted)
make

That should create a file named "rio" that we want to copy to a more suitable directory. I recommend putting it in /usr/local/bin/, but really anywhere in your path is fine.

cp rio /usr/local/bin/
exit (to exit suid)

That entire process, including the download, will take you less than five minutes. Once you're done, the software should be installed. After you've finished, make sure that your Rio is connected to your Linux box, because now we're going to get the two to talk to each other. . .

My guess is that you already have some music in your Rio. To list those songs, issue this command (if your Rio is empty, then you will just get some information about its memory):

rio -d
Note: You might have to specify a port address. If rio doesn't recognize your device, run it with the -p option followed by one of the following addresses: 0x378, 0x3BC, or 0x278 (eg. rio -p 03xBC -d). One of those should work.

If you would like to delete one of the files on your Rio, issue:

rio -z track_name.mp3
Where track_name.mp3 is the name (not the number) of the track you want to delete.

If you would like to delete all of the files on your Rio, issue:

rio -za

Of course, the whole thing is worthless if you can't acutally put any songs on it. To do that, issue

rio -v -u file_name_1.mp3 file_name_2.mp3
Where file_name_1.mp3 and file_name_2.mp3 are the files that you want to put on the Rio.

There are a myriad of other options for running rio, and you can check them out for yourself by running it without any command line switches. If your vertical screen space is limited, then you might want to pipe the command through more.

rio | more

So there you have it. Now that you can operate your Rio using Linux, that's one less poor excuse to use Windows. If you would like to find out more information about finding, playing, and sharing mp3's, then I recommend you check out the Help File on mp3's.