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twitter.com/DanielMicay/st Due to A/B updates and rollback, this isn't really as bad as it sounds. If you were using the beta channel and installed this problematic release, then after upgrading you're prompted to wipe due to incompatible data. If you don't it'll just fail to boot.

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Daniel Micay

@DanielMicay

Sep 12, 2020

twitter.com/DanielMicay/st Unfortunately, some users upgrading from this cancelled beta release may encounter a broken upgrade path to the next beta release where the device forces you to do a factory reset. This is caused by downgrading the kernel, but we're unsure exactly why.

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Daniel Micay

@DanielMicay

Sep 12, 2020

After failing to boot a few times, it rolls back the newer beta release and goes back to the problematic one. It'll successfully boot up again and will then try the upgrade process again. Need to back up the data and accept wiping the next time around. Nice having A/B updates.

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so how do you actually back up data without google services (which aren't a thing on grapheneos afaiu)? i've yet to find a way to do it that wouldn't make having a locked bootloader completely pointless, e.g. TWRP

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We include Seedvault which provides support for backing up app data. Some apps go out of the way to blacklist backing up data, which they're supposed to do for caches, hardware-specific data, data that can be easily re-generated, login sessions, etc. but many are very lazy.

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and

So, unfortunately, a lot of apps choose to explicitly disable backups and it won't work for those. Seedvault is comparable to adb backup but without the arcane syntax and poor error reporting. You're prompted to restore in SetupWizard and it can restore when reinstalling an app.

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so... I don't understand how Seedvault can possibly work on Pixel 2, given that it doesn't have an SD card slot

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It can back up to a USB flash drive or a cloud backup service providing a Storage Provider. If you have anything like Termux with a Storage Provider, it's going to show up as one of the possible targets for storing the backup.

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ohhhh that's way more useful than I initially thought, thanks

Daniel Micay

@DanielMicay

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@whitequark

Definitely does have caveats including how it's unfortunately very common for apps to take the lazy approach of disabling backups instead of keeping things that are not portable separate and including a blacklist of things that shouldn't be backed up.

8:22 AM · Sep 12, 2020Twitter Web App

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tbh even if just the OS settings would be restored it would make the phone a lot more useful for me, since I could actually use it without getting every bit of the build perfect on the first time (rn I'm fighting with the build system over open_gapps and the build system wins)

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It restores a decent amount of stuff but not everything. It's going to be getting substantially better in Android 11. The stock OS has slightly better integration of AOSP backup / restore because Play services has some extra bits and pieces to get more into app-based backups.

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