Backup iCloud Photo Library to Unraid

[@jonathandoe7490]

How was i not aware of this channel having used unraid for several years.

[@genedoc730]

Great video, and glad to have found your channel. One suggestion for an easier way to create the ".mounted" file is with the unix command "Touch". If you open a terminal window and go to the directory where you want the file, then type "touch .mounted", it should create the empty file for you in one step. Looking forward to seeing more of your videos! One more point...You said you left the default sync at 24 hours. However, the value on your screen (259200 seconds) is actually every 3 days. 24 hours would be 86400 seconds.

[@TheDadNerd]

Appreciate the comments, both great. I definitely should have showed the touch method. I typically try and avoid the terminal in these tutorials incase it scares some new users. But you are correct that method is much easier. Also appreciate the catch on the sync time.

[@genedoc730]

Glad to help a fellow dad nerd, and a fellow ham...73's!

[@XtronchO]

Me salvaste ! Thanks

[@stevenmay4563]

Just wanted to say, your videos are awesome, very nice approach to them and how it is all presented. If you haven't already I'd love to see one regarding remote access with a focus on things like Jellyfin. Thank you for the vids and keep up the good work!

[@bluedevil678]

I cant thank you enough for this video - I've been looking for a solution like this for years! Thank you for showing the people how to do this!

[@BigFourHead]

could you do a update, on the settings you have config for this and immich? one issue i found i need to download photos into one dir for immich to pick up and import.

[@StephenBolen]

Great video -- excited to get this up and running for my family. I got the container up and config'd, but hit a snag trying to initialize. "ERROR Group id, 100, already in use by the group: group - exiting. If you must to add your user to this pre-existing system group, please set the force_gid variable to True" I'm not sure where to find the force_gid variable? Any ideas?

[@jonathandoe7490]

did you find it because i also get the same

[@jonathandoe7490]

So i figured it out, in your appdata folder in unraid inside rhe icloudpd folder. There will be a file called icloudpd.conf, if you edit that with something like notepad++ add the line force_gid=true and save the file. Once that is done restart the container all should be working

[@emphasize-ek]

@@jonathandoe7490 this worked for me, thank you. I subsequently got the "this keyring file does not exist" error.

[@jdrizzo]

@@jonathandoe7490 i did this in notepad++, and after restarting plugin, server, and even reinstalling icloudpd and trying this again, i am still getting the same error code :(

[@michaelwallner1970]

i geht the same Error , any news to fix it ?

[@BenGifford]

Any tutorials for SYNOLOGY? I'd love to get this setup on my NAS through docker but I would need a step-by-step tutorial because I don't completely understand containers and their detailed setup.

[@ryanthompson7332]

Just dropping a comment to say I recently discovered your channel. Love the vibe of your content! I have been a long time Unraid user and always seek out others who are deploying cool applications. I am eagerly awaiting the immich video as I think that is a solution I’ve been looking for for a long while now. Keep up the great work! Subbed and notified 😊

[@TheDadNerd]

Really appreciate that! Immich video coming this week! Was about a two year break from making videos but back at it now 👌

[@marcinborucki81]

hello. everything works great, files are synchronized, I only have one problem, synchronization works when the library is personal and not shared, then it shows missing files, what should I change?

[@juanhaber4538]

Great video, thanks, because if you I got this running :). Question: if I delete an old picture from my phone, will it also delete it from my server when it performs a sync? Vice versa if I delete something from my server, will it delete it in my iCloud when it performs a sync?

[@RicRock67]

Perfect! Just what I was looking for

[@bosse1478]

Hi It's a great video. It have been working for a time now but.. I hade to cjange my password to Icloud and now the icloudpd will not function. How do set my new password in Icloudpd

[@tezcatlipoca13]

Great video! Just leaving here that Advanced Data Protection (ADP) needs to be turned off for icloudpd to function.

[@TheDadNerd]

That is a great callout, I should have mentioned that in the video.

[@BigFourHead]

i had to also enable web based access for icloudpd to work.

[@rajshanmugm]

Thanks for your video. Though i use truenas, this video helped me. Especially creating .mounted file. i was not aware and now i have 2 accounts like you did and its syncing without any issues

[@herrwillen2630]

Good evening, thank you for the video! It works well, but the photos I share with my wife are not downloading. Do you know what I have to set so that all the photos are downloaded?

[@maidstone53]

Great video tutorial! Thanks for sharing. I’m fairly new to Unraid and love it. One question off topic, around 6:25 you are uploading the .mount file, you have a lot of great buttons on the bottom the the window, done on the left is all that I have, how did you get the others, copy, move, create, delete upload etc.? These would be a real help to add to my set up. Thanks again

[@stephenlindner3463]

Hi - not sure if it's exact same, but Dynamix File Manager Plugin from the App/Community Store. Should also grab Dyanmix System Buttons while you're there for a convenient extra button near the notification bell.

[@maidstone53]

Found it. Thanks!@@stephenlindner3463

[@followmytracers7222]

@@stephenlindner3463 Thank you! This makes it so much easier

[@ryannelson4229]

Does anyone else have trouble after the intialize with an incorrect username or password error and no Keyring file? Not sure what I'm doing wrong???

[@jeffthomson9612]

I am going through the exact same issue. I just logged-in to my son's Apple account and confirmed that his Apple ID username and password are correct/active... I have tried this twice, in two separate containers (spouse, and son). Install factors: Yes, I added the .mounted file to each of the data folders. Advanced Data Protection is off on my son's iCloud account. In the respective icloudpd.conf files, I added "force_gid=true", to clear the following error: "ERROR Group id, 100, already in use by the group: group - exiting. If you must to add your user to this pre-existing system group, please set the force_gid variable to True". I also changed the respective Group id and User id to numbers to be over 1000 (it wanted a number between 1000 and 6000, if my memory serves me correctly. They were previously set to 99 and 100.) If anyone has some ideas / tips on how to resolve these initialization issues, they would be greatly appreciated!

[@robertbailey1477]

Can I ask how you edited this as I have the same group 100merror ?

[@Mrjosifal]

Hi! great and informative video. I used it to set up my icloud backup and it worked great! Until it was time for a reauthentication, been searching around for help but no matter what i do i cant get it to reauthenticate. Anyway thats not actually why I am commenting. I just saw that you could backup photos from you iphone to immich via the immich app. This seems alot easier, are there any cons of doing that compared to using icloudpd?

[@cmo_kky]

What do you recommend for a robust (free or paid) photo/video/file deduplicator within unraid? I have few various photo stores in use (amazon/google/apple/onedrive, & personal pc backups), however, some of these may have duplicated cloud syncs, if I use unraid, is there a good unraid container/app that can compile all my media and deduplicate? Thanks

[@leanderzoet]

Thanks for the tutorial, any got this working on the Qnap Container Station ? I can't find the config page shown at 4:14 or get to the /config/icloudpd.conf file.

[@portagos]

Did you manage to get it work?

[@SteveHartmanVideos]

I’m an Immich user, love it, but… THIS is the missing piece! I can’t wait to try this… one thing i would like to mention, this might solve the issue of keeping track of deletes and edits… if you delete or edit from iCloud, does this app have knowledge of that? I’ve been thinking about how to somehow sync deletes accross all devices. …. If you delete from the file system on a shared library in Immich, then it will flag it offline and remove it but only if the delete or edit is synced. I’m going to look into this more because i feel the missing piece to all of these backup programs is that when you purge or remove photos, they remain in the other systems. (Like google photos, Immich, etc.)

[@OlivierRAMES]

Same, I need to find the parameter to delete a photo in the immich library if I delete it on icloud. Best of all would be to sync only the recent pictures (when you sort your pictures and delete the bad ones) but backup the old ones (to keep an archive in case of accidental deletion on icloud

[@speedofheat]

Thanks for the great video. I am running into an error that states "private db access disabled for this account" whenever the container tries to generate the list of files in my icloud photos. I don't know how to get past this. Edit: figured it out. It won't work if Advanced Data Protection" is enabled on your icloud account. You can disable it from the settings menu on your apple device.

[@alfonindatube]

So if you delete a photo after icloudpd has synced it from iCloud, and thus the photo gets removed from the next iCloud backup, will icloudpd remove it also? Idea being here is that we are constantly removing photos to save of cloud space, but we don't obviously want to lose them once backed up in unraid

[@Rickr522]

Using the Immich iOS app, is there a way to tell which Unraid share to use when using the backup option?

[@coasterfest]

Doesn't seem to work if you're using hardware keys to secure your accounts. :( Asks for a 2FA code, but none comes.

[@fredwalton4554]

JFYI! 259200 sync seconds is 3 days not 24hr as stated in your video

[@ilanshemes1562]

Nice video. Thank you for taking the time to share!

[@OliversCinema]

When I click on shares to do the .mounted file I do not have Upload or any other option. Only button option is done.

[@tcghunter9196]

And how do tell, do those photos get from your phone.....to icloud? It's still an app uploading them from your phone, its just integrated caz apple

[@tezbriz]

On the shares page I don’t have an upload button. In fact I don’t have any other buttons other than create. Do you know why please or how I can get them.

[@SteveHartmanVideos]

if you update / edit or delete a photo in icloud, will this app sync that update to your local library?

[@SambitBiswas]

Video on Immich please

[@TheDadNerd]

Working on one to come out later this week.

[@xreyuk]

No idea why but this doesn't work for me and I get errors when trying to load it. Something about privatedb access is disabled for this account. Any ideas? EDIT turns out if you have advanced data protection on, this docker won't work.

[@reeljasonevans]

Does this container delete pics from my server if I remove them from my iCloud? Is it a true sync? Or is it just downloading my pics daily?

[@Peytoncook314]

I love the video man! Any advice on what to do for icloudpd not finding the .mounted file? I have put the file in the data directory (and basically everywhere else I can think of for testing) and I still get an error in the logs saying that the failsafe file is not present

[@BigFourHead]

did you remove the .txt?

[@Peytoncook314]

@@BigFourHead I did, I also made sure I had file extensions visible and it changed file to to a mounted file, seems like iCloudpd just can't find it, maybe I have something configured incorrectly?

[@Yiveytube]

@@Peytoncook314check that the file has the proper credentials. That’s a big downside of creating the file like he shows in the video. Read the other comment here on how to create it in the terminal instead using “touch”.

[@Peytoncook314]

So thank you to all who responded trying to help, I'm not sure what happened but I just uninstalled and reinstalled the program with all the exact same settings and the same mounted file and it decided to just start working randomly

[@LacayoDe]

Does it export icloud folders?

[@upsangelhk]

It will be great if include how to do re-auth every 30 days by telegram etc. i.e. no need to go to your pc to re-auth every 30 days.

[@ryjacrafts4797]

does this work for android too?

[@maullah001]

Thank you for the video. Does it just sync or can you also move the files from icloud? Also, would you please consider making a video on how to install and setup immich?

[@TheDadNerd]

It just copies down from iCloud, not sync. Which I think is a benefit so you don’t have to worry about accidentally deleting items in iCloud. Although it does require you to delete in two systems. Definitely going to make a video on Immich soon. Probably this week.

[@TheTrendykendy]

How does this handle Live Photos? Does it save it as a seperate image and video file or is it able to integrate them properly?

[@TheDadNerd]

It creates a thumbnail for easy viewing in the app or web and then when you view the photo there is a play button to view the Live Photo. Works great.

[@Leo-qc004]

I cannot upload any file to the share, don't really know how to use unraid, anyone knows how to fix it?

[@theodorehuxtable]

icloudpd only synced years 2023 and 2024 but i have like 20 more years of photos to sync. Any idea how to force it to sync the entire library?

[@theodorehuxtable]

i figured it out. in the logs there was some timeout error. I restarted the docker and it eventually started syncing again. I came back 5 hours later and my entire library had synced.

[@pierrecastanets1974]

Thanks for sharing this!

[@dkerlee]

Thanks for the video! There are several spot in there where you left personal info btw: your name, wife’s name, personal email. Just a heads up. Oh and “bedrock level” playing some Minecraft?!? 😊 I do have an iPhone but have spent the last decade getting my family using Google photos. Do you know of a way to get those Google photos over, WITH metadata? The Google takeout json metadata is a real shit show. I’m right there with ya with Immich! I signed up to give that guy monthly money. I’d love to see that continued development. Ah finally, I wish we could have seen the text steps for connecting the iCloud account. Subbed, looking forward to more.

[@TheDadNerd]

Appreciate the heads up! Funny enough one of my videos coming up is going to be on password security and two factor. I self host Bitwarden and use a unique random generated password for every online account and two factor if they support it. Good eye on the bedrock file, ya I was self hosting a Minecraft world for my kids and me a while ago. I don’t have a solution for Google yet but if I find one I’ll definitely do a video on it. On the connecting the account portion, after entering that command it just prompts you for your password and two factor which has my phone number so I left that portion out. Appreciate the sub!

[@UCAVids111]

+1 on the google photos. I had some solution but it was a real hack and this seems so easy for iPhone users.@@TheDadNerd

[@FlyingSucuk]

is it only the photos or also the videos?

[@TheDadNerd]

Videos as well

[@balkeep]

This is ofcource more convinient from the point that you don't need to setup apps on phones of all the family members, though the big elephant in the room is that you still need big enough iCloud subscription which you are paying constantly for...

[@TheDadNerd]

That’s a great point. I am in the process of testing out Immich’s built in auto upload feature which may eliminate the need for iCloudPD all together. I need to give it another month or so on my wife and I’d phones before I completely switch over.

[@antoniosvlachodimos8450]

If i do that and then delete the photos off icloud will it also delete them from unraid on next sync?

[@dkerlee]

Ooo and one more thing! Unraid is NOT a backup. Family pics need an additional storage place. I have external usb drive Unassigned Devices, mounted it, and am doing additional backup with luckybackup, which is a front end for rsync. This is important. I’ve lost some unknown amount of pics to unraid file corruption (bad ram I think! Replaced) where loads of good files end up stripped of metadata names and extensions and end up in lost and found folder.

[@TheDadNerd]

Great point and totally agree. With this method the photos stay in iCloud and then I also backup the photos share with Duplicacy to Backblaze. The one final step I should probably take is putting that share on a ZFS disk and doing a replication to a separate ZFS pool on a different server. I do this ZFS setup with things like appdata for docker and my VM vdisks. It also allows me to do snapshots.

[@danpennington9903]

Awesome video! I hadn't heard of this Docker, but it sounds like a perfect fit! On the first run, I did get multiple errors. Do you have any insight into this? 2023-11-27 14:18:40 DEBUG Downloading /home/user/iCloud/0007/12/27/IMG_0049.mov... 2023-11-27 14:18:40 ERROR Could not create folder /home/user/iCloud/0007/12/27

[@TheDadNerd]

Appreciate it! I have not seen that particular error. Did you create the .mounted file where you are storing photos?

[@DanPennington]

@@TheDadNerd Thanks! I think I might have solved it - testing now! I hadn’t created the destination folder before spinning up the Docker. The Docker created it, but I am thinking it didn’t give it the right permissions. I started from scratch and created the folder BEFORE the Docker, and things appear to be moving in the right direction!

[@danpennington9903]

@TheDadNerd Oh - sorry, I never answered that: YES - I created the empty .mounted file, and it is in the destination folder. Looks like just over 200G came down overnight - yay!

[@jerrt]

Had to post because this was my problem and your question helped me solve it. The docker will create a directory if it doesn't exist, and at least in both our cases didn't give it the proper permissions. Attach to a folder with the correct permissions and it should be good. Now to you Nerd Dad, thank you for introducing me to this container. I've needed something to fix a problem with 3rd party archiving my wife's camera roll. Neither Apple hardware nor Windows machine would sync with Icloud and actually download everything. This might actually finally save me from Apple. END OF LINE