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I upgraded my iPhone 5s to iOS 10 and could no longer retrieve photos from it. This was unacceptable for me so I worked at achieving retrieving my photos. This document is my story (on Ubuntu 16.04).
The solution is to compile libimobiledevice and ifuse from source.
Who is this guide intended for?
Compiling software is what I would consider an advanced Linux skill. If you’re not interested in tinkering with your operating system then this guide may not be for you. There’s a lot of concepts I don’t explain or gloss over with brevity to keep these instructions brief (compared to explaining everything).
While I did my best to think of beginners when creating this guide; this guide is not for the faint of heart. If you’ve not compiled software before then I recommend you practicing inside of VirtualBox before attempting this on your real system. Follow this guide at your own risk because I can’t make any guarantees based on unknown individual skill level.
This solution works for (posted via comments):
- Archlinux
- Debian GNU/Linux 8 – 64 bits
- Debian GNU/Linux 9
- Kubuntu 18.04
- Linux Mint 18
- Linux Mint 18.1
- Linux Mint 18.2
- Linux Mint 18.3
- Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon
- openSUSE Leap 42.3
- Raspbian GNU/Linux 9.4 (stretch)
- Ubuntu 16.04
- Ubuntu 17.04
- XUbuntu 16.04
This solution does not work for the following:
- Ubuntu 14.04
On Ubuntu 16.04, I have personally used this method to connect to iOS 10. Other users report connecting (via comments):
- iOS 10
- iOS 10.1
- iOS 10.2
- iOS 10.3.1
- iOS 10.3.3
- iOS 11.2.2
- iOS 11.3.1
- iOS 11.4
- iOS 11.4.1
- iOS 12.0
- iOS 12.0.1 (16A404)
- iOS 12.1.4
Hardware: I have personally successfully used this method on an iPhone 5S. The following is a list of hardware successes from other users (via comments below).
- iPhone 5C
- iPhone 5S
- iPhone 6
- iPhone 6 Plus
- iPhone 7
- iPhone 8
- iPhone 8 Plus
- iPhone SE
- iPod Touch 6th Generation
If you get this working on a flavor that I don’t list, then please post a comment and I will update this support section.
Don’t forget to set up your environment before building. I typically build and install packages to my local user at $HOME/usr.
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential git
Here’s a peek at my .bashrc settings:
[ ! -d "$HOME/usr/src" ] && mkdir -p "$HOME/usr/src"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="${HOME}/usr/lib/pkgconfig:${PKG_CONFIG_PATH}"
export CPATH="${HOME}/usr/include:${CPATH}"
export MANPATH="${HOME}/usr/share/man:${MANPATH}"
export PATH="${HOME}/usr/bin:${PATH}"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${HOME}/usr/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}"
Notes:
- Important!
PATHandLD_LIBRARY_PATHis important because it is the runtime oflibimobiledeviceandifuseto fix mounting iOS 10 devices. MANPATHis only used when looking up man pages so it’s optional (I recommend it).PKG_CONFIG_PATHandCPATHis used at compile time to resolve dependencies.
- Debian 9 (stretch)
- Mint 18.2 – https://gist.github.com/samrocketman/70dff6ebb18004fc37dc5e33c259a0fc#gistcomment-2161041
- Mac OS X
- openSUSE Leap 42.3 – https://gist.github.com/samrocketman/70dff6ebb18004fc37dc5e33c259a0fc#gistcomment-2644212
- Raspbian GNU/Linux 9.4 (stretch) – https://gist.github.com/samrocketman/70dff6ebb18004fc37dc5e33c259a0fc#gistcomment-2632563
Jump to Clone and Build.
Install development packages discovered through trial and error.
sudo apt-get install automake libtool pkg-config libplist-dev libplist++-dev python-dev libssl-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libfuse-dev
Clone the sources.
cd ~/usr/src
for x in libusbmuxd usbmuxd libimobiledevice ifuse; do git clone https://github.com/libimobiledevice/${x}.git;done
Now build in order (the order matters):
- libplist (not required on Ubuntu 16.04)
- libusbmuxd
- libimobiledevice
- usbmuxd
- ifuse
Note: (Optional) If you have a system package installed which is in the above list, then I recommend uninstalling it. However, if you can’t uninstall it, then no big deal. It is mostly a precautionary measure. As long as you set the bash environment variables properly, then your compiled version should not reference your system packages. Uninstalling any system packages is by no means required.
Note 2: Removing usbmuxd was required on Debian Jessie 8.10 mentioned in comments.
cd ~/usr/src/libusbmuxd
./autogen.sh --prefix="$HOME/usr"
make && make install
cd ~/usr/src/libimobiledevice
./autogen.sh --prefix="$HOME/usr"
make && make install
Unfortunately, sudo make install is required because it needs to write to /lib/udev/rules.d and /lib/systemd/system.
cd ~/usr/src/usbmuxd
./autogen.sh --prefix="$HOME/usr"
make && sudo make install
cd ~/usr/src/ifuse
./autogen.sh --prefix="$HOME/usr"
make && make install
Create a mount point and verify the paths of the tools before executing.
$ mkdir -p ~/usr/mnt
$ type -P ifuse
/home/sam/usr/bin/ifuse
$ type -P idevicepair
/home/sam/usr/bin/idevicepair
Now attempt to mount using ifuse.
$ idevicepair pair
SUCCESS: Paired with device 37b633350ab83dc815a6a97dcd6d327b12c41968
$ ifuse ~/usr/mnt/
$ ls ~/usr/mnt/
AirFair Books CloudAssets DCIM Downloads FactoryLogs iTunes_Control MediaAnalysis PhotoData Photos PhotoStreamsData PublicStaging Purchases Radio Recordings Safari Vibrations
When you’re finished. Unmount ~/usr/mnt using fusermount. For example,
fusermount -u ~/usr/mnt
The mounted iPhone has an empty Photos folder. Strangely, this has no photos. Instead, look in the DCIM folder for photos.
I have only copied photos off of my iPhone as a backup. I have not tried copying photos to my iPhone.
It is a known issue music sync no longer works in later versions of iOS with libimobiledevice. Since Apple changed some things (outlined in linked issues), music sync hasn’t worked since as early as iOS 6 and still doesn’t work.
redi andri 