Question A tale of two backups - leading to a puzzling question. - Google Pixel 7 Pro

Strap on your seat belt boys and girls.
I was at a state where I successfully updated to December. Hours after, the goog play store demanded I update forty odd apps. Strange but okay. Everything seemed to be working fine. I spent an hour in sd maid pro freezing stuff. And then more time in nova launcher fixing stuff.
While I was stumbling around in setup. ( I constantly suffer from verigo ! ) I saw in setup's, system's, backup . . . that I had a hundred plus meg of storage in the cloud on goog drive. I did this cloud storage to help my sons. So the goog backup offered to save all my phone to the cloud. Well cool and it only took about five minutes. So I had two backups and was feeling dangerous...
I decided to test and experiment with the new kernels. Oh boy ! That meant I would 'have to' factory reset after doing some toggling with vbmeta in fastboot. So I did and checked the backups because I suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Then I copied all the stuff on the phone in the download directory to the old i5 pc. Then I factory reset. Ugg, hello bouncing graphic.
At the step where it asked me to restore from my old phone, I said no. Then it told me I could restore from the cloud after it got my goog login and pw. Great ! Cool beans . . . After finishing, I saw I had my nova desktop and all my odd-ball apps. Then I went puttering around from app to app. Wow, they're all there but acting like they needed root. Low and behold, up popped magisk informing me that I had to do an additional step there to finish its root setup. So I didn't need to do the normal root setup ? Has anyone seen this before ? Goog giving me back my root from its cloud ?

old_fart said:
Strap on your seat belt boys and girls.
I was at a state where I successfully updated to December. Hours after, the goog play store demanded I update forty odd apps. Strange but okay. Everything seemed to be working fine. I spent an hour in sd maid pro freezing stuff. And then more time in nova launcher fixing stuff.
While I was stumbling around in setup. ( I constantly suffer from verigo ! ) I saw in setup's, system's, backup . . . that I had a hundred plus meg of storage in the cloud on goog drive. I did this cloud storage to help my sons. So the goog backup offered to save all my phone to the cloud. Well cool and it only took about five minutes. So I had two backups and was feeling dangerous...
I decided to test and experiment with the new kernels. Oh boy ! That meant I would 'have to' factory reset after doing some toggling with vbmeta in fastboot. So I did and checked the backups because I suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Then I copied all the stuff on the phone in the download directory to the old i5 pc. Then I factory reset. Ugg, hello bouncing graphic.
At the step where it asked me to restore from my old phone, I said no. Then it told me I could restore from the cloud after it got my goog login and pw. Great ! Cool beans . . . After finishing, I saw I had my nova desktop and all my odd-ball apps. Then I went puttering around from app to app. Wow, they're all there but acting like they needed root. Low and behold, up popped magisk informing me that I had to do an additional step there to finish its root setup. So I didn't need to do the normal root setup ? Has anyone seen this before ? Goog giving me back my root from its cloud ?
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Click to collapse
Just factory resetting won't get rid of magisk.
I'm assuming you were running rooted before (you rooted by flashing the nagisk patched init_boot), then disabled the flags by flashing just the vbmeta.img followed by the factory reset.
As long as you don't reflash a stock unpatched init_boot (either flash that specifically or reflash entire firmware package which contains init_boot), magisk will always behave that way asking you for additional setup after "just" a factory reset.

Freak07 said:
Just factory resetting won't get rid of magisk.
I'm assuming you were running rooted before (you rooted by flashing the nagisk patched init_boot), then disabled the flags by flashing just the vbmeta.img followed by the factory reset.
As long as you don't reflash a stock unpatched init_boot (either flash that specifically or reflash entire firmware package which contains init_boot), magisk will always behave that way asking you for additional setup after "just" a factory reset.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, you are correct. It was just weird having all my stuff and doubly weird to see magisk popping up to say howdy doodee. It felt like my birthday.

old_fart said:
Yes, you are correct. It was just weird having all my stuff and doubly weird to see magisk popping up to say howdy doodee. It felt like my birthday.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, google cloud backup works quite nicely. It now backs up a lot of settings from most apps as well.
It surprised me the first time it did that too.
Not so long ago, I´d be happy if the remembered which apps I had installed and re-installed them, but now they´re usually also setup correctly when restoring a backup.

Related

[Q] Recovering data after root?

I'm about to root my new NS and every guide I see reminds me that the internal storage ("SD card") will be wiped - I'm cool with that. But since I'm unrooted I can't use Titanium yet to back up my apps.
So my question is - once I root, what's the best way to get everything back without manually doing everything all over again?
fchipm said:
I'm about to root my new NS and every guide I see reminds me that the internal storage ("SD card") will be wiped - I'm cool with that. But since I'm unrooted I can't use Titanium yet to back up my apps.
So my question is - once I root, what's the best way to get everything back without manually doing everything all over again?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see a lot of people say appbrain lets them easily reinstall all their apps after a wipe. Apps, but not app data.
Not sure how that works, i haven't tried it myself. edit: little google search revealed this on how to do it:
Without root, there's no way you're going to save your data that's on the internal storage space.
distortedloop said:
I see a lot of people say appbrain lets them easily reinstall all their apps after a wipe. Apps, but not app data.
Not sure how that works, i haven't tried it myself. edit: little google search revealed this on how to do it:
Without root, there's no way you're going to save your data that's on the internal storage space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I just read some more about it - apparently it's just not at all possible yet, or ever.
Oh well better get to rooting before I have TOO much to lose.
fchipm said:
Yeah I just read some more about it - apparently it's just not at all possible yet, or ever.
Oh well better get to rooting before I have TOO much to lose.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that's why I'm an early rooter on all my phones.
App developer's should be encouraged (or allowed by Google) to put their app data into someplace that the user can back up.
I wonder if the reason app data is put in a root-only read place of the device by default is part of the sand-boxing security.
Best backup before root
The only thing I really had to hunt for was to backup Angry Birds. Thankfully there's an app called Angry Cheaters that is both free and gives you save files for Angry Birds.
I just went through this process yesterday. Google actually saves most/all of your apps and will reinstall when you reenter you gmail address. It also restored my wifi passwords (in addition to obvious things like email/contacts). Just be careful if you have to wipe multiple times while exploring root that you let this process do its thing, it forgot a few apps that way. Thankfully appbrain had moved all of my previous apps to another list.
The only other thing I couldn't back up was some auto mileage data, so I just wrote that into notepad and called it a day.
Is there anything else you are specifically trying to get? I was really only focused on Angry Birds.
Hmmm here is a question/thought
If unlocking your bootloader whipes everything clean, would it be a possibility to run data harvesting apps on the device to get w.e data you lost back?
both on the "sd" and /data/data
I use an app called "rsync backup" ... it can generate a DSS key to install on your server of choice, and tell it to back up /mnt/sdcard/ ... the only thing it won't access on the USB Storage area is a folder called ".android_secure" ... but everything else copies just fine.
I routinely sync my phone with this app to my workstation at the office, and a system at home.
haha.. this is why i unlocked the bootloader/rooted my s right away, i didnt have any data to back up. makes it painless
simms22 said:
haha.. this is why i unlocked the bootloader/rooted my s right away, i didnt have any data to back up. makes it painless
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Kinda wish i did this, but oh well.
Still curious if my idea is even possible..anyone have any input?

[Q] Saving my data when trying different roms

I am new to Android but experienced with PC's C++ etc.
Anyway, a quick question. I bought a g-tab today. Immediately installed clockworkmod and TNT lite. All is good and I am having fun.
Is it easy to switch roms without losing my userdata (passwords, bookmarks etc).
I would like to try other roms and don't want to create more work than I need to.
Oh and the viewing angles are acceptable to me as the user
I have been using Titanium backup without any issue for doing it
Sent from my TnT G-Harmony using Tapatalk
Stuggy said:
I am new to Android but experienced with PC's C++ etc.
Anyway, a quick question. I bought a g-tab today. Immediately installed clockworkmod and TNT lite. All is good and I am having fun.
Is it easy to switch roms without losing my userdata (passwords, bookmarks etc).
I would like to try other roms and don't want to create more work than I need to.
Oh and the viewing angles are acceptable to me as the user
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, Titanium backup!!!
Yes, use Titanium Backup to do Batch backups of Apps and Data before you try other ROMs. I also do a full Backup in Clockwork before I try something new, in case I want to go right back to where I was.
ok thanks guys. New to Android so getting up to speed. I must say very smooth process getting it up and running and tweaking it so far.
I noticed the slower boot time with tnt-lite but last boot it seemed faster. I think it was mentioned in the docs.
It might be interesting if there was a poll for which roms people prefer.
Stuggy said:
ok thanks guys. New to Android so getting up to speed. I must say very smooth process getting it up and running and tweaking it so far.
I noticed the slower boot time with tnt-lite but last boot it seemed faster. I think it was mentioned in the docs.
It might be interesting if there was a poll for which roms people prefer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your First boot is always going to take some time as there is alot going on in the background that you can only see if you are watching Logcat via adb. After the first boot, boot times should drop unless a large number of apps have been installed.
Trist
Titanium Backup is awesome, but would be nice if there was a big "Back up All System/Data/Apps" button on the main menu. That's pretty much what everybody wants it for right?
nunjabusiness said:
Titanium Backup is awesome, but would be nice if there was a big "Back up All System/Data/Apps" button on the main menu. That's pretty much what everybody wants it for right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You wouldn't want to restore system data with Titanium anyway. This is not recommended especially when changing roms. Apps and their data are okay. I make full system backups with Clockwork and backup my apps and data everyday with Titanium. My titanium is linked to dropbox so returning from a repartition/reformat is easily done as well.
thebadfrog said:
You wouldn't want to restore system data with Titanium anyway. This is not recommended especially when changing roms. Apps and their data are okay. I make full system backups with Clockwork and backup my apps and data everyday with Titanium. My titanium is linked to dropbox so returning from a repartition/reformat is easily done as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since you have experience with this, is there a way to force TB to send the backups to my external SD card? Copying it there manually is not REAL difficult, but it is an extra step.
nunjabusiness said:
Since you have experience with this, is there a way to force TB to send the backups to my external SD card? Copying it there manually is not REAL difficult, but it is an extra step.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not that I know of. Its easier for me to setup the free dropbox account and link Titanium to that. I have the same account on my laptop so it automatically uploads from my tab to dropbox and then downloads to my laptop
thebadfrog said:
Not that I know of. Its easier for me to setup the free dropbox account and link Titanium to that. I have the same account on my laptop so it automatically uploads from my tab to dropbox and then downloads to my laptop
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just got a dropbox account since it looks stupid-easy to do it that way.

What happened after I deleted .apks in /system/app ?

Hello all,
I fell into a huge problem. I use a Nexus 5 16 GB variant with all sorts of games I can put inside of. Now I ran out of storage.
My smart ass told me search for culprits and I was ruthless on files as small as 50 MBs. . Now, then I saw a treasure trove of space which could be freed and that was in #/system/app. I deleted almost all of them and left behind some like Bluetooth.apk and NFC et al.
Now two things happened
1) I can no longer use the 'Explore Storage' in the Other category of Storage found i Settings app. It would say, Settings has Crashed.
2) I can no longer sync my contacts to Google as After asking to add account, it just asks again. Earlier I seamlessly used that feature.
I don't know what's broken more.
Please someone help.
Much thanks in advance.
Have you tried a full reset? Kinda of a risk... But worth it at times. My old phone I could delete all the system apps, then reset it and they'd all pop back up.
buffering.... said:
Have you tried a full reset? Kinda of a risk... But worth it at times. My old phone I could delete all the system apps, then reset it and they'd all pop back up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the ROM with me. Flashing that will ( or might) restore every functionality. But the point is why it did happen and unbreak the broken without flashing.
Why would you think that deleting anything from a system folder is a good idea...?
Just flash the system.img again. That should restore at least a working system, though I'd guess that you'll have to do some manual rework to restore lost apps. Your data should still be intact.
Just guessing, to be honest. I'm still astonished that you did this...
Have you considered an OTG USB stick? The attached photo shows an additional 128GB of storage on the tip of my little finger. I can post the links if anyone is interested.
dahawthorne said:
Why would you think that deleting anything from a system folder is a good idea...?
Just flash the system.img again. That should restore at least a working system, though I'd guess that you'll have to do some manual rework to restore lost apps. Your data should still be intact.
Just guessing, to be honest. I'm still astonished that you did this...
Have you considered an OTG USB stick? The attached photo shows an additional 128GB of storage on the tip of my little finger. I can post the links if anyone is interested.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know why I did that. Maybe because I saw those apks lying there and thought to myself, what are they doing here. I deleted all of them.
The next part is more important now. I installed the same ROM on the same phone using multirom and then copied the whole system/app folder to my other ROMs broken app folder. And this helped remove the broken Settings functionality. But the Contacts functionality is still broken. Lastly I will flash the system image if I could not find the reason behind this. Thanks sir for the help.

backup before unlocking bootloader

Is there a way to back up everything before a wipe that restores well? The ones i've tried miss system settings and all app settings have to be reset. Titanium Backup was awesome but requires root., but something like that is what I'm after
tomplatz said:
Is there a way to back up everything before a wipe that restores well? The ones i've tried miss system settings and all app settings have to be reset. Titanium Backup was awesome but requires root., but something like that is what I'm after
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is a biggest issue Google hasn't provided a solution for. You can't backup an android phone unless you root... [emoji1418]
Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk
Any decent apps anyone has found? I know TB level backup not possible
System settings and all app settings backup is hard. Usually, Samsung Kies, mobile data manager software, etc just help us back up data like contacts, text messages, photos, videos, music, apps, etc. Of course, there is no need to root Samsung phone before using them.
tomplatz said:
Is there a way to back up everything before a wipe that restores well? The ones i've tried miss system settings and all app settings have to be reset. Titanium Backup was awesome but requires root., but something like that is what I'm after
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Keep in mind once you unlock bootloader then KNOX will be permantly disabled and apps like samsung pay, samsung pass, encryption and some more will no longer work after this and even if you re-lock bootloader the KNOX will still be unavailable since it's so called safety thing in chip has ben cut so it becomes permanently hardware disabled.
So think before doing it, if you plan to use samsung pay and pass and such later on then avoid unlocking the bootloader.
Also warranty will be voided too.
Skickat från min SM-N986B via Tapatalk
tomplatz said:
Is there a way to back up everything before a wipe that restores well? The ones i've tried miss system settings and all app settings have to be reset. Titanium Backup was awesome but requires root., but something like that is what I'm after
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The best you can do is use the SD card as your data drive. All mission critical data goes on it.
Therefore no PC or internet connection is needed for a full restore. No wasted time transferring data from the PC or cloud.
All critical data, photos, vids, music, documents, settings backups for apks that let you, contacts and copies of all loaded apks and updates.
I use ApkExport to make copies of all my apks and system updates so after a reload I don't need Playstore and know exactly what to load, fast.
Get at least a .5 tb card so all the data used by the phone can easily fit plus 100 gb headroom.
I pretty much hit the ground running and a reload is 99% complete in about 5 hours with no loss of critical data.
Not copying settings for some apps and especially system settings is a better plan as any bad settings don't get carbon copied. Manual set up also keeps you in aware of what does what. Plus you will find and learn new tricks like this.
I reload about every 6 months to take full advantage of the new optimizations I incorporated since the last reload. Invariably you play with trash apps trying to find the good ones and the poorly written ones can leave a mess behind. It's simply impossible to weed out all the trash and subtle misconfigurations that happen over time.
A reload takes out the trash.
Each reload should get you a couple steps closer to device perfection.
Once you have a fast, stable platform be very cautious of any firmware or OS updates as it only takes one to wreck everything. Many times an "upgrade" turns into an ugly downgrade.
Many app updates are useless or wreck the the app as well.
No reason to fix something that ain't broke... once optimized leave it be.
Find something else to play with.
Just install Samsung Smart switch on your phone. And back up to the SD CARD.
You'll still need to setup individual apps but you will keep system settings.
pcriz said:
Just install Samsung Smart switch on your phone. And back up to the SD CARD.
You'll still need to setup individual apps but you will keep system settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you.
I forgot about this app.
Last time I used it transfering from a S4 to the 10+ it was a terror. However it should do much better on the same model/OS.
16 gb took 10 minutes to backup to a fast card plus you can see and edit its saved files.
The icon layout will be lost if it saves the theme/icon pack I will wuv it to death...
It should save some time... if not I'll reset again:laugh:
The legendary Tom Platz. Now that's a blast from my past lol
Limeybastard said:
The legendary Tom Platz. Now that's a blast from my past lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have big legs too. Seemed to fit.
tomplatz said:
I have big legs too. Seemed to fit.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll take your word for it. No need for pics. ?

Question Image Backup

I haven't rooted a phone in about a decade. Back then, unlocking the bootloader didn't reset the phone. I've got a Pixel 6a that I want to backup before I root it and lose my setup.
Way back when... there was no decent imaging backup for Android. Is there one now? I just want to do something like I do with Windows PC "disks". Which is transfer an entire disk image (or partition).
Thanks for any insight.
(Oh, and I did do a search, just maybe with the wrong keyword or wrong place.)
I'm actually using the Pixel backup in your Setttings-System-Backup.
On wifi it takes about 10 mins to backup - then if i fresh flash or go back to stock, you can access it in the setup menu. It essentially copies all your texts and app-data...then as you re-download apps the cache is there, etc.
It's pretty slick. Oh - the backup file is saved in your Drive-backup folder. Make sure it's there before you reset - GL
mmead1143 said:
I'm using the Pixel backup in your Settings-System-Backup.
On wifi it takes about 10 mins to backup - then if i fresh flash or go back to stock, you can access it in the setup menu. It essentially copies all your texts and app data...then as you re-download apps the cache is there, etc.
It's pretty slick. Oh - the backup file is saved in your Drive-backup folder. Make sure it's there before you reset - GL
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks,
That will keep the essential info, yes. But, I want an exact image that will restore everything exactly as it is now. Meaning all shortcuts and nested shortcuts are exactly in the same place. I've got dozens of shortcuts nested and spread out over three home pages.
Reconstructing those every time I reset was why I quit tinkering with Android, to begin with. In my case, I may be screwed because I'll have to root to run any such backup... catch-22.
But, I am already running the built-in backup on a two-hour schedule.
Lawrencetate1 said:
Thanks,
That will keep the essential info, yes. But, I want an exact image that will restore everything exactly as it is now. Meaning all shortcuts and nested shortcuts are exactly in the same place. I've got dozens of shortcuts nested and spread out over three home pages.
Reconstructing those every time I reset was why I quit tinkering with Android, to begin with. In my case, I may be screwed because I'll have to root to run any such backup... catch-22.
But, I am already running the built-in backup on a two-hour schedule.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah - not sure the google backup will do all that. But all my widgets etc. come right back, not like the background image.
So you'll lose some stuff but not much from my history with it - that said, I'm pretty minimalist so maybe keep looking haha GL
No twrp images anymore since google switched to 'dynamic' updates that use 2 partitions...slot A/B. Kinda sux imho...

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