Linux and Open Source Blog

Manish Rai Jain developed an interesting tool for Linux based upone the FUSE kernel module that allows you to mount your Flickr account and manage you photos and tag.

“Flickrfs makes uploading to, downloading from, and organizing a Flickr account just like handling files in a mounted file system. After installing and setting up the link to your account, you can see all your photos separated into tag folders, edit and back up the pics and their metadata, and crop and resize photos on the fly, all reflected in realtime in your online account.”

Flickrfs is a virtual filesystem which mounts on your linux machine like any other partition. Once mounted, it retrieves information about your photos hosted on your flickr account, and shows them as files. You can now easily copy photos from your local machine to this mount, and it will automatically upload them to your flickr account. Similary, you can copy the files from your mount to your local machine, and it will download your images from flickr.

All the files in the mount have a meta file attached to them, which provides access to title, description, tags, and license information. Modifying any of these fields and saving the meta file, will update them on the server as well.

You can easily specify what is the default resolution of photos that you wish to upload, and the fs will automatically resize (read downsize) the photo, and upload it.

That’s not all, the latest verion of flickrfs, provides a syncing mechanism. This mechanism automatically syncs any changes done online directly to flickr account (using flickr’s web interface or any other third party apps), to your mount. Thus, any addition/deletion/changes of sets/images is reflected back to your mount. No stale information! You just to mount it once, and it can be used forever!

Check out Mann’s blog for news and Sourceforge to download it.