Best way to backup an iphone to icloud on Linux (that works)

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Wed, 9 Mar 2016 21:35:44 -0500, Dave Woyciesjes wrote:
>I'm fairly certain (haven't tested though) that VirtualBox should pass
>the USB phone connection through to the Windows guest fine.

Hi,

is there a good reason for this assumption?

What makes you think that the OP won't get 'unknown errors', if the OP
backup/sync the iOS device by USB with a virtualbox Linux host?

Assumed the OP wants to update iOS by USB, how could it be solved that
the OP doesn't need to reconnect manually (Virtualbox > Devises > USB)
each time the iOS device interrupts the connection, which is done 3 or 4
times, e.g. one time when the iOS device automatically turns off and on
during the iOS update?

You can't compare the sync with an iOS device with virtualbox's
ability to work without issues, with other connected USB devices.

1. Other devices do not automatically disconnect and reconnect e.g.
   caused by a restart during an iOS update.

2. I don't know why 'unknown errors' happen more often, then
   backups/sync are successfully on my machine, but I could imagine it's
   related to an Apple protocol and perhaps the slow performance of
   iTunes running on the Windows guest on newer Virtualbox versions.
   Everything worked better with old Virtualbox versions, so I
   stayed with an outdated Virtualbox for a while for my Ubuntu and
   Arch install, but I stopped maintaining the old version a while back.

It could be that iOS updates by USB become completely impossible. I
don't do it anymore, since I now have got a router. But when doing
this, I was forced to maintain an outdated version of Virtualbox.

Note, I don't experience USB issues with Virtualbox, excepted for
syncing an iPad. In addition iTunes doesn't perform as well as other
apps do on the guest system.

Any hints to get rid of the USB issue are welcome.

To share individual files between Linux and an iPad Virtualbox works
quite good and this requires less effort. Transmitting a script or MIDI
file from a sequencer etc. by USB is not an issue and the advantage of
Virtualbox is that it provides shared read/write folders between host
and guest. To get this, it's much effort when using another host. Since
I share music production data and scripts, I'm using Virtualbox, but
again, USB is a PITA when making backups.

FWIW I don't encrypt the backup.

Regards,
Ralf