Running flickrfs on your Raspberry Pi 02 Mar 2014

This is a quick and dirty guide to get you started with flickrfs on your Raspberry Pi. flickrfs allows you to synchronize the photos on your Flickr account with your hard drive, so you can quickly upload and edit your photos without having to go through their web interface and in a much faster way (if you’re comfortable with using a terminal). If you’re not the type of person who uses CLIs, you can still take advantage of all the syncing or just have a very convenient way of downloading all your photos to your hard drive.

This guide assumes you’re familiar with using your terminal to open an SSH connection to your raspberry pi. =) Once in your RPi, just do the following steps:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y flickrfs
sudo vim /etc/group
    # Add your user (defaults to pi) to the fuse group
    fuse:x:108:pi
sudo grpconv

# If you don't already have a text-base browser, you also want to
# install one:
sudo apt-get install lynx

Save and group file, quit vim, log out, log back in so that the group changes take effect, and run flickrfs for the first time by typing flickrfs /path/to/your/favorite/location. If you SSH’ed into your RPi, this will fail. Don’t worry, it just tried to open your browser and crashed since you’re not in an X environment. Once you’re back in your shell prompt again, edit flickrfs configuration file:

vim ~/.flickrfs/config.txt
    # change the browser line to look like this:
    browser:/usr/bin/lynx
    # if you use another browser, use its path here

You’re now ready to run flickrfs again. This time you’ll have to authorize it to access your Flickr account and your CLI browser will be opened for you to do this. If you’re using lynx, here’s what you need to know:

Use the UP and DOWN arrow keys to move around the page
Hit ENTER to "click" a link or submit a form
When prompted for cookies, type Y or A to accept them
Type Q to quit

And you’re done! \o/