Install Help for Qnap Nas

[alaska_av8r]

I apologize in advance but I have been searching and reading for over 2 hours and cannot figure out how to install, then run the exiftool on my QNAP NAS.

I appreciate any help at all but the problem you may want to read my background first.

Background
I am very tech savvy.. so I can grasp concepts....BUT....I am not a savvy Linux user...  I am a windows user from a long time ago and just transitioned to Mac about 2 yrs ago. 

If I could find detailed written instructions that would be a blessing,  I also will need some help on "how to execute the exif commands" from my MacBook.  I have never connected to my NAS via SSH etc, I just log in to it via its homepage interface that I have saved in my browser.  Other than that I have some of the folders on the NAS saved as a "finder location" and they mount when I boot up.

I know so little, I don't know what information I need to provide for you to help me......arrrgggghhh

Here is my problem:  I use Lightroom to edit and catalog my images and more recently videos.  However Lightroom lists my videos as "Unknown Camera".  So today I discovered exiftool and have managed to get video on my MacBook to have the correct exif camera data and it displays properly in Lightroom......Yayyyyy!  So I can use exiftool on my MacBook.

So now I have thousands of images and video stored on my QNAP NAS.  So to avoid having to copy those items back to my MacBook, tag them correctly using exif then moving them back over to my NAS, I need to figure out how to install and use EXIF on my NAS.

Not sure if this makes a difference but I'll provide the information anyway, when I import images into Lightroom they go straight to a folder on my NAS.  I do have a location saved in Finder to that folder, and I do know how to access that folder via file manager on the NAS.

I have had my QNAP NAS about 3 years now and stumble through using it, basically I don't use it to its potential, all I use it for is to store and backup my photography work.

I don't mind reading, watching videos, learning as long as it isn't too technical and doesn't lose me on the terminology, in other words i don't mind putting forth the effort, but I don't have the time to become a unix or Linux guru.

If anyone is willing to help, I would certainly appreciate it.

Tim

[StarGeek]

If nobody can give you an answer here, you might want to ask at the QNAP forum, as they would have more experience with this situation. 

It seems most likely that you would have to telnet into the NAS in order to install and run exiftool.

[alaska_av8r]

Thanks StarGeek, I will do that. 

At this point I have (I think) installed perl on the Qnap via their app interface, and managed to connect to the nas via ssh, and even find the directory where i put exiftool....but that's as far as i have gotten

[StarGeek]

If the NAS supports Dockers, then I believe that there are a couple of Exiftool Docker setups on Docker Hub.

[Alan Clifford]

After searching for "snap nas ssh mac" and reading https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?p=57149 I'd suggest ssh to ip address of the server, install exiftool on the server and work from the command line.

[alaska_av8r]

Alan thanks, I have figured out how to connect to the NAS via SSH and can navigate around okay.  I was born a windows user and recently moved to mac, now on this NAS its a learning curve again.

After over 12 hours of working on this I was unsuccessful in getting Perl installed on my NAS, QNAP has a Perl App so I called tech support.  It took him almost an hour to get Pearl installed that way, but it doesn't work properly since it was a QNAP app it goes in a .qpkg folder somewhere and therefore does not lie in the normal path.  He did a symbolic link to it and placed that in /usr/bin.  So I can at least from any command prompt type perl -v and it show version 5.1

Basically the end result is I cannot get ExifTool installed on the NAS where it will run properly (and this is due to my lack of knowledge I'm sure).  I'm not sure it is due to the weird place that QNAP app installs, or what. 

In a nutshell everything I do yields an error, similar to this:  [/share/ExifTool/Image-ExifTool-12.18] # perl Makefile.PL
Can't locate ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm in @INC (you may need to install the ExtUtils::MakeMaker module) (@INC contains: /opt/lib/perl5/5.20 .) at Makefile.PL line 1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at Makefile.PL line 1.

I tried installing a later version of Perl on the QNAP, the problem is that every single website that talks about installing perl assumes more than a novice level of Linux, so I need the install Perl for dum dummies....lol

I installed Perl on my Windows machine several years ago, getting ExifTool to run on my Mac was no problem, but this NAS....

I guess I will just hire someone from the local college to come over and let me watch them install this and get it working.

Tim

[StarGeek]

See if you can find the Perl lib directory.  If you can, just extract the contents of the lib directory in the exiftool archive into the Perl lib location.  That should create a File and an Image directory that contains most of exiftool.  Hopefully then you can extract the rest of exiftool into someplace on your path.

[alaska_av8r]

I've spent over a week now trying to install Perl on a QNAP NAS, since Perl is an app on QNAP I was able to get their tech support to figure out why it wasn't installing but they were finally successful in getting I believe version 5.1 installed.

So I attempted to install ExifTool and it complained about not finding MakeMaker.pm, I tried to figure out how to install that....no luck

I would love to have Pearl installed on the NAS in such a way the any NAS updates etc wouldn't bother it and be able to run ExifTool on the thousands of images on there, but I can' t figure it out.

Is there another way to use ExifTool to do what I want on the NAS?  I was able to get it to work on my MacBook and take care of the images that were on it, and I can SSH into the NAS as well.

thank you
Tim

[StarGeek]

Did you try my suggestion of just extracting the lib directories and placing the exiftool file in your path?

[Phil Harvey]

Yes.  You don't need to install ExifTool to be able to run it.

- Phil

[alaska_av8r]

StarGeek, no i did not see your suggestion.  I will try it now.

tim

[alaska_av8r]

okay this is what I have on the Qnap Nas as a path to my executable file for perl

[/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/Perl/Optware/bin]

There is no library under Perl or under bin but there is a lib in Optware, so I will try putting the files there.

tim

[alaska_av8r]

okay i was able to copy those lib folders over to /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/Perl/Optware/lib

I also created a directory share, named it ExifTool and copied everything including those libs over to that directory.

I ran these commands to make sure these directories are in the path:
export PATH=/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/Perl/Optware/bin:$PATH
export PATH=/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/Perl/Optware/lib:$PATH
export PATH=/share/ExifTool:$PATH

I changed to the directory where one of my test images is located and ran this command:

[/share/ExifTool] # cd /share/Pictures02/'Professional Images'/2021/2021-01-16/test/
<s/2021/2021-01-16/test] # exiftool -m -make="iPhone" -model="iPhone11ProVideo" *.NEF           
Can't locate File/Glob.pm in @INC (you may need to install the File::Glob module) (@INC contains: /share/ExifTool/lib /opt/lib/perl5/5.20 .) at /share/ExifTool/exiftool line 965.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /share/ExifTool/exiftool line 965.
Undefined subroutine &main::SetWindowTitle called at /share/ExifTool/exiftool line 347.
END failed--call queue aborted at /share/ExifTool/exiftool line 965.

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Tim,

Can't locate File/Glob.pm in @INC (you may need to install the File::Glob module) (@INC contains: /share/ExifTool/lib /opt/lib/perl5/5.20 .) at /share/ExifTool/exiftool line 965.

I don't understand how you are getting this error because this line should never be executed if File::Glob doesn't exist.  Just comment out this line by adding a "#" at the start and see if that gets you around the problem.  If you get more errors like this, then comment out those lines too.  Let me know how it goes.

Also, what is the output of "perl -ver" ?

- Phil

[alaska_av8r]

Thank you Phil, I will give that a try.

Code Select Expand

[~] # perl -v

This is perl 5, version 20, subversion 2 (v5.20.2) built for arm-linux-gnu

Copyright 1987-2015, Larry Wall

Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or the
GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source kit.

Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found on
this system using "man perl" or "perldoc perl".  If you have access to the
Internet, point your browser at http://www.perl.org/, the Perl Home Page.

[~] #

I am pretty sure these errors may be related to the convoluted way QNAP installs perl as a qpkg.  I tried for over a week to install perl but could not get it to work at all, mostly due to my ignorance of perl, linux and qnap