I am happy with the my “My Cloud OS5” web and Android app, including the possibility to generate Photo Albums: it is neat but I miss one key functionality.
Me and my girlfriend have a common Share where we keep the photos from our travels dumped from our cameras.
If I create an album, selecting the best among the shared shots, she doesn’t see it in her app! Of course I can share a link, but that of course doesn’t add it to her albums and give her the possibility to edit it.
I think it would be a great functionality which, if implemented, will allow me to finally leave Google Photos.
I tried to look around in my NAS, an EX2 Ultra, with SSH to check if there was a file that i can eventually tweak in order to replicate my albums in my girlfriend account.
I found this wdphotos.db, but it did not contain the album definition: I was hoping it contained something like (file, album, user) table.
Is the album definition saved in our Nas or in the cloud side of My Cloud OS5?
I made some progress in my investigation. I dumped the file /shares/Volume_1/restsdk-data/data/db/index.db
and there I found the interesting stuff:
in the table FilePerms, all the owners of the uploaded files are listed. In the column entityID, two occurrences are repeated, which I think are the user references for me and my girlfriend.
in the table FileGroups there is the definition of my photo albums: the reference is in the column id. The human readable album name is reported under name
in the table FileGroupsPerms there are the same photo albums: the previous photo reference is now in the column fileGroupId and my user reference is in the column entityID.
I think that adding a new line in FileGroupsPerms with the same data of the album I want to duplicate but changing entityID to my girlfriend’s one would do the trick, and permanently to that album!
However I am not sure if I can just add the line and replace back the file, without screwing everything up: can someone who already tried to modify such a file/someone from WD confirm?
I managed to inject the new row in the FileGroupsPerms in the SQLite database (I installed Entware from here) and using a random “id”. Magically, that worked! The album appeared in my girlfriend app and she is able to see, add and remove pictures from it!
This is what I would have expected, but there is more, and this is where it become interesting! In the OS5 MyCloud website and in the Android app there is a user management system. I am attaching a screenshot from the website where the two users are recognized and I, as album owner, can remove the access from my girlfriend, as you can see from the attached screenshot:
This was unexpected, since from the official menu I can only share the album with link (so no manipulation). This is however exactly what I needed so… Why is not available from the menu?
I have the same issue, I tried to follow your steps but I don´t have enought knoledge to do it. Could you provide a guide step by step, please?
I would appreciate it so much, thank you!
thank you @gabrielitos !!!
You don"t need Entware, you can use SQLiteStudio (free) on PC and edit the database. For down- and upload i am using WinCSP (free).
Database is the file “index.db” (SQLite 3), but the changes affect the files “index.db-shm” and “index.db-wal” too, you have to sync all 3 of them.
Don’t forget to make backups of this 3 files. They are in the db folder: /shares/Volume_1/restsdk-data/data/db/
Update 1: After someone is adding pictures in a album, the other members get a push notification on the mobile phones.
It’s working with more than 2 members.
Downside: after changing the database, i have to do a NAS-restart. The changes are not applying on the fly. I have to find how to restart the db service.
