{"id":3189,"date":"2016-03-13T15:52:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-13T07:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/?p=3189"},"modified":"2016-03-13T15:52:38","modified_gmt":"2016-03-13T07:52:38","slug":"backing-up-or-taking-out-your-data-from-flickr-with-flickrdownloadr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2016\/03\/13\/backing-up-or-taking-out-your-data-from-flickr-with-flickrdownloadr","title":{"rendered":"Backing up or taking out your data from Flickr with flickrdownloadr"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been a Flickr Pro subscriber<\/a> since 2005. I consume 75.36GB of storage, spread across 25,765 photos. I spent a lot of time on it since 2005, creating albums, joining groups, etc. I love the product and I’m paid up till 2018 and do not intend to stop subscribing to Flickr Pro. But I’m worried about Yahoo! and their future. <\/p>\n

I read the Wired piece on how to get your photos off Flickr<\/a> and thought it might be nice to have a backup of photos using their new Camera Roll<\/a> feature. Simply put, I can get my data out but it involves me clicking “Select all” quite a lot. This is not a good solution naturally. <\/p>\n

I found flickrdownloadr<\/a>, a Mono app. It installed quickly on the Mac, it pulled in a whole bunch of Mono libraries, but after an initial login with Flickr, I would get an unhandled exception (you can’t tell from the GUI, it just crashes silently; I manually ran the app from \/Applications\/flickrdownloadr).<\/p>\n

\n

Unhandled Exception:
\nSystem.Net.WebException: Error: SendFailure (Error writing headers) ---> System.Net.WebException: Error writing headers ---> System.IO.IOException: The authentication or decryption has failed. ---> Mono.Security.Protocol.Tls.TlsException: The authentication or decryption has failed.
\n at Mono.Security.Protocol.Tls.RecordProtocol.ProcessAlert (AlertLevel alertLevel, AlertDescription alertDesc) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
\n at Mono.Security.Protocol.Tls.RecordProtocol.InternalReceiveRecordCallback (IAsyncResult asyncResult) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
\n --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
\n at Mono.Security.Protocol.Tls.SslClientStream.EndNegotiateHandshake (IAsyncResult result) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
\n at Mono.Security.Protocol.Tls.SslStreamBase.AsyncHandshakeCallback (IAsyncResult asyncResult) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
\n --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
\n --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
\n at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.EndGetResponse (IAsyncResult asyncResult) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
\n at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
\n at FloydPink.Flickr.Downloadr.Logic.UpdateCheckLogic.UpdateAvailable (FloydPink.Flickr.Downloadr.Model.Preferences preferences) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
\n at FloydPink.Flickr.Downloadr.Presentation.LoginPresenter.ApplyUser (FloydPink.Flickr.Downloadr.Model.User user) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
\n at FloydPink.Flickr.Downloadr.Logic.LoginLogic+<CallApplyUser>c__async0.MoveNext () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0<\/code><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It looked like the fix might have been related to this github issue<\/a> and the best way to fix it was: mozroots --import --ask-remove<\/code>. I did that. I tried mozroots --import --sync<\/code>, especially after reading the Mono Security FAQ<\/a>, but to no avail.<\/p>\n

Turns out, the fix was cleaning out Flickr’s Sharing & Extending<\/a> — there were accounts that had access for companies that had closed down (remember Qoop anyone?). But weirdly, there were two varying “flickr downloadr” authorisations (one had a version string attached to it). <\/p>\n

Glad that was fixed but it seems like an app that would take a long time to actually get going. My next plan is to install this on a Linux box and sync it to an always on box. Presumably all this will “just work”, since Mono\/GTK looks the same everywhere.<\/p>\n

Its a shame that Flickr doesn’t provide an easy exit path. I mean I cancelled my Basecamp account not long ago<\/a>, and it was not the refund bit that impressed me the most — it was the fact that I could take all my data out, and it would be a generated ZIP file that I could unzip and consume in my browser. Things just worked. <\/p>\n

Here’s to Flickr’s long future. And I guess, Yahoo!’s…<\/p>\n

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