That’s some good suggestions and a few things I hadn’t considered. A VPN is also possible, although setting up the port forwarding might be a bit more complicated

It’s for a home network, I managed to get it working using port forwarding through SSH thanks to suggestions. I’m not sure what the difference is with using the pi as an entry/exit node, that is what I was trying to do with the SSH forwarding. VPN is also possible but it it would also need to be set up to go through the pi

That worked thanks, I didn’t know you could put an address like that in the -L command, and the -N is correct here too

Ok there is a TV and a pi on network 1 and a server on network 2, the pi can connect to the server through SSH or VPN or whatever is needed. The TV would like to connect to the server, however it can’t run a VPN or anything like that so exposing the server would be a risk.

The SSH command on the pi is SSH -L 1234:localhost1234 remote_server

The ufw command was run on the pi, with the intention to allow the TV to access the forwarded port on the pi

Do you need to remember to open it regularly? Or is it sending you notifications? You mention that you open it and then it does a sync, how often do you need to do this?

Do you need to interact with it regularly for it to work in the background?

The more I have to deal with them the less interesting they become… they work best for people who want to just do what apple tell them

Interesting, is that through a particular app, or from cable-based syncing?

… Interesting idea. But immich doesn’t work as a drop in, the default images collection includes a lot of rubbish so for it to be useful you have to manually tag photos to include with immich

It’s kind of necessary for family members who still need it to be backing up and may take a bit of time to get used to using it. If it’s not backing up pics then it won’t be useful when they do open it

Yep the unreliable background tasks are a major hurdle here

Yes thanks. Immich would be fine as well based on the description of what these apps do, but the problem seems to be having it run in background.

All these solutions need regular manual intervention, while a backup system needs to be automatic and reliable. From an iPhone the only backup option I can see is through their cloud unfortunately (or potentially through regularly plugging into a cable)

Yes I was trying to find out about time machine related approaches, which could work from my NAS as well (ok it’s actually a rpi). From what I can tell auto backup from a laptop is possible, however the only way apple lets you backup from your phone is if you plug a cable into a computer so iTunes does the backup (and then afterwards goes to the NAS). Direct from phone seems to be blocked

Are you opening it manually? Unfortunately I need to get it working set and forget if possible. And I’m trying to avoid icloud

That is very much the problem here, I would like to set up a set-and-forget system for family members so we can collect photos together easily. But that goes against how apple systems work

Have you tried it yourself? Does it work hands-off in a set and forget way, or do you have to open it for the background tasks to run?

Have you tried using it yourself? One of the troubles I’ve found is apps saying they will do something but it doesn’t happen because the OS has obscure ways of controlling background tasks. And it prioritises apps that get opened manually, which doesn’t work for a backup that is meant to be set and forget

Yes I’ve tried following the FAQ, I’m trying to help family members to use it so we can collect photos together, and these hands-on tricks are a bit harder to convince people to do. An automatic background backup would be much easier