I’m about to switch my outdated Samsung tablet and smartphones to LineageOS. But I want to make a backup of my device, including the OS and everything, in case something goes wrong and I need to flash the original OS back into the device.

How do I proceed? I think I need to do a Nandroid backup or something? Is that correct?

    • reisub@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      2·
      16 hours ago

      May I ask what the current tools of choice are for newer Androids? I currently still back up my apps using TitaniumBackup and I can even restore them, they just need manually fixing SELinux permissions on the restored files via a root shell. But I assume there are better alternatives out there nowadays.

      • hexagonwin@lemmy.todayEnglish
        3·
        15 hours ago

        i’ve heard good stuff about Swift Backup and Neo Backup. but personally i’m on android 8 and 11, still using titanium backup since it works well enough.

        • reisub@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          2·
          8 hours ago

          Thanks, I’ll take a look.

          If you ever want to restore on a newer Android (at least I needed this on lineageos with android 15 or 16), you need to fix SELinux permissions on the data files. This is the script I use after restoring, but before starting the app. Maybe it helps.

          #!/bin/bash
# Fix restored file permissions by copying permissions from parent directory
set -euo pipefail

if [ "$#" -ne 1 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 /data/user/0/<appname>"
    exit 1
fi

APP_DIR=$1
SEL_CONFIG=$(getfattr -d -n 'security.selinux' $APP_DIR | grep security.selinux | cut -d'=' -f2- | tr -d '"')
find $APP_DIR -exec setfattr -n security.selinux -v "$SEL_CONFIG" {} \;
    • Creat@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      16 hours ago

      Generally not possible either. Unlocking the bootloader always wipes the phone. So unless it’s already unlocked, or it can be unlocked with some sort of exploit instead of using fastboot, it’ll be worse than a (bad) normal backup.