My iCloud photos library finally synced sucessfully - no thanks to Apple!

In my previous post I mentioned how iCloud photos sync killed my MacBook. It was stuck on 90 Gb of my 180 Gb for 3 months, and when I fixed the issue it did the remaining 90 Gigs in about 10 days (on optus cable 1.5 Mbs upload speed).

Basically, my problem was that a couple of photos and videos in my library were corrupted, and iCloud photo sync is rubbish and keeps getting stuck on the corrupted files, instead of just skipping them (like rsync would). But you would never know this as it doesn't give any meaningful feedback on how the sync is progressing.

I first observed the issue using the system activity montor and seeing what files and handles the cloudd process had open. I could see it repeatedly looping over the same set of photos, over and over again. When I tried opening each of these photos in the finder, one of them caused preview to crash. I deleted this file and the sync got as little bit further before gettign stuck again.

I then tried repairing my Photos libaray by holding command + option while launching Photos.

http://osxdaily.com/2015/05/21/repair-photos-library-photos-app-mac-os-x/

This obviously did something as it managed to upload a few more gigs after that before getting stuck again.

Then my macbook died due to the stress of running icloud photo sync for 3 ½ months, so I took out the HDD and plugged it into my spare windows box and installed mac os 10.10 in VMWare to continue the sync, but after a while I would get a file IO eror and VM ware would crash.

I thought it might have been a problem with the physical disk, so I ran Disk Utility, and lo and behold it found a few errors and repaired them, but VM ware would still crash after a while when accessing my photos library. I then decided to copy my photos library to a virtual disk file and see if I had any more luck.

When using the finder to drag and drop the photos library to the virtual disk file, it would copy 90 Gigs (suspiciously close to the size of the library it has managed to upload before getting stuckl) and then crash.

I then began to suspect it was a problem with my photos library, so I went to the terminal and used cp -R -v to copy my photos library. After copying 90 gigs, it failed again, but this time I could see which file inside my library caused it to fail. I tried opening the photo in the finder, but it just caused the finder to hang, so I deleted the photo, which happened to be from the same event as the corrupt photo I deleted previously, and tried to copy it again, this time using rsync -v -a instead.

rsync is much more robust, and instead of failing it skips the files then tells you at the end which files failed- the iCloud developers could learn a thing or two from rsync! In this case, it was a photo and a video, both from the same event as the previous photos I had deleted. I deleted these files and ran rsync again, and it finished super quickly as it had managed to sync all of the files in the previous run.

I set . my newly copied photos library as my system photos library, and then tuned iCloud sync back on which continued to upload with no further dramas. It may have helped that the VM was running on a quad core Q6600 processor, and not a core 2 Duo laptop becuase the icloud photo sync uses your computers CPU to convert all your photos and videos to lower resolutions, which was the cause of the thermal stress which killed my trusty 2008 MacBook Pro.

TL;DR

If you are having trouble syncing your photos library to icloud, try repairing your photos library by holding down command + option when launching Photos. If that doesn't work, try copying your photos library using rysnc to see if there are any corrupt files which could be causing the problem and delete them. It also doesn't hurt to use a computer with a lot of grunt and Apple makes it work really hard converting all your photos and videos to lower resolutions.

Good luck!

Apple iCloud killed my trusty MacBook

Well, after a three and a half month valiant struggle to upload my 12000 photos and 1000 videos- (180 GB of data in total) to iCloud, my trusty 2008 MacBook Pro has finally died, succumbing to the video chip glitch that a lot of machines of this generation suffered from. Apparently this was due to the switch to lead free solder in the manufacturing process, and can often be fixed by reflowing the solder by heating the logic board in the oven at 200 degrees C for 10 minutes. But that will have to be for another blog post...

It nearly got there, it managed to upload about 100 GB of data, until it got stuck.... according to my calculations 180 GB at 1024 MB/sec should have only taken about 17 days to upload 24/7 - not over 3 1/2 months!

The main problem is that instead of uploading everything to the cloud, and doing the video and photo thumbnail generation in the cloud, apple uses YOUR CPU time to generate 2 versions of every photo and video in your collection at lower resolution so they can be viewed on other devices, which pegs your CPU at 100% and puts a lot of thermal strain on your computer, not to mention making it impossible to use for anything else.

When it actually gets around to uploading  the files to the cloud, it maxes out your upload which kills your ADSL download speed. It was so bad that 2 weeks in to this sorry saga I decided to upgrade to cable internet.

Then, if it encounters a corrupt photo and video in your collection, it will just stall without telling you it is stuck. But you would never know, because Apple don't give you any useful progress indicators as to how the iCloud sync is progressing- the only way really to tell is that the CPU and bandwidth usage isn't getting red-lined.

I  managed to figure this out by using the Activity monitor to see what files the cloudd process had open, and noticed that it kept looping over the same set of files. When I tried to open each of these files using finder, I found one photo that crashed preview every time. I deleted this file along with all the version on other devices and my upload progressed from being stuck at 94 GB until it got stuck again at 100 GB.

You can see all the temporary files that are used by cloudd when syncing by opening the Photos library file in the finder with "Show package contents". When icloud photo sync is enabled, there will be a subdirectory in there called private,  which contains some sqlite databases that are used to track the file sync and a whole lot of directories named AAA, AAB, AAC, AAD, etc which contain the files that cloudd seems to be uploading in batches to the cloud.

There are also 2 directories for the lower resolution videos and photos that are used by the VideoConversionService and PhotoConversionService whilst they abuse your CPU and turn your laptop into a nice little room heater. Again, you can identify which files are being converted by viewing the VideoConversionService and PhotoConversionService in the activity monitor and going to the open files and ports section.

Another top tip, which got my upload briefly unstuck for a while it to repair your photo library by launching Photos while holding down the alt option keys.

I thought I would be able to consolidate all my photos in the cloud from all my devices. I think I ended up deleting the same photo from my library about 20 times trying to clean up my camera roll, but whether I deleted it from my phone, my computer or the icloud web interface it would never get deleted from my other devices.

basically iCloud photo sync DOES NOT WORK. I'm convinced it is all a big scam to sell iCloud storage plans, that they will never have to worry about actually being used.



basically, iCloud photo sync sucks.