Finding Nemo - Xperia X

[toner_cloud]

@toner_cloud

@peterleinchen

Or grab older 3.2.1 version (3.3.0 introduced encryption and 3.4.0 the ‘defaultuser’)

Where from?

I’ve found 3.2.0 and have downloaded it. I must confess though that I’m a little reluctant to try flashing that as all the instructions from Jolla say that the phone can’t be downgraded.

@attah

If you look around a bit before first boot, like with disabling encryption, it looks entirely possible to change the name of the default user…

I think my best approach might be to start from scratch again with 4.3, remove the encryption stuff and then, following the suggestion from @attah take a look around to find the places to rename the default user.

[peterleinchen]

That might be true. Possibly a reflash to Android8 might be necessary before flashing older SFOS (@olf or other?).

[toner_cloud]

@attah

@attah

I’m somewhat reluctant, because of the superficial nature of the problem and high chance of breaking things.
But put it this way; in the disassembled image (i.e. as the disk will look pre-first-boot) there is a grand total of 4 occurrences of defaultuser, two of which are groupadd and useradd. One is possibly a false positive.

I’m stuck!
If I do a ‘find’ from the telnet session I get these
find / -type f -name groupadd
/rootfs/usr/sbin/groupadd
find: /sys/kernel/slab/L2TP/IPv6: No such file or directory
find: /sys/kernel/slab/L2TP/IP: No such file or directory
/mnt/usr/sbin/groupadd

and also
find / -type f -name useradd
/rootfs/etc/default/useradd
/rootfs/usr/sbin/useradd
find: /sys/kernel/slab/L2TP/IPv6: No such file or directory
find: /sys/kernel/slab/L2TP/IP: No such file or directory
/mnt/etc/default/useradd
/mnt/usr/sbin/useradd

Obviously the things in sbin are binaries but should I simply be renaming anything or modifying anything? Nothing, to me at least, defines the defaultuser specifically by name. So where do I go from here? Reboot and try modifying the usernames as I did before?

Any help appreciated.

[peterleinchen]

I think it would be better to mount the flash image file and search there first. Then go to device.
As phone resources are way smaller than on a PC.

But at least you should look for

find / -type d defaultuser

and

grep -ir defaultuser /

[vlagged]

I think the advice against downgrading is referring to version --dup. Flashing should work.

[toner_cloud]

@vlagged

Flashing should work.

I’m prepared to give it a go as the current situation is a shambles. Half of the backup restore doesn’t work, plus and worse, none of the files in /home are present. There has been plenty written about backups in the past and I won’t add to it here. But it means that the 2 databases for my own apps have gone.

On a new build or rebuild, the user is asked to sign in to their Jolla account. Those login details were in an encrypted database provided by Safe Lite. Where’s that now? Gone. Where is the database for my Beertent app? Gone. Where’s the database for my CarSails app? I don’t think I need go on.

Should it have been saved in a backup to the sd card perhaps? Not now. If I use the phone as a corporate user and have a name a-n-other to distinguish myself from default user, then the sd card isn’t writable. Jolla really haven’t thought this through have they?

I could understand why Jolla made the decision early on to keep data for none Jolla apps in /home//.local/share/… but now with the current backup routine in place, it’s all lost on a rebuild.

So really a backup is about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike.

So before I flash the phone again, I’ll sshfs mount it and copy over to my PC all the data I want to save. I now save all contacts and the calendar on my Nextcloud install on a NAS so it didn’t bother me that they wouldn’t restore. But call logs? As I said earlier, there’s been plenty written about backups so I’ll refer to those if the restore doesn’t work after flashing 3.2 - assuming that works!

[nthn]

@toner_cloud

I could understand why Jolla made the decision early on to keep data for none Jolla apps in /home//.local/share/… but now with the current backup routine in place, it’s all lost on a rebuild.

This fixes that problem: My Backup | OpenRepos.net — Community Repository System.

[toner_cloud]

@nthn

This fixes that problem: My Backup | OpenRepos.net — Community Repository System .

Thanks for that. My sshfs copy is still running but as soon as it’s finished, I’ll try flashing 3.2 and assuming everything works as intended, I’ll add this to the list of apps to install. Many thanks.

[nthn]

Actually, keep in mind that it only fixes the lack of backups for non-Jolla apps if those apps have added the [X-HarbourBackup] section to their .desktop file.

[toner_cloud]

Duly noted. I can add that to my own 2 apps. Thanks.

[toner_cloud]

@vlagged

I think the advice against downgrading is referring to version --dup . Flashing should work.

It did work! I started with v3.2.0. That went to 3.4.0.24 → 4.0.1.48 → 4.1.0.24 → 4.2.0.21 and finally I’m back at 4.3.0.12.

So if anybody else would like to try it, all I can say is, it worked for me! I just overwrote 4.3 with 3.2.

I tried the restore to see if that would work. Fat chance! It fails with people again but that’s ok. Sadly it still hasn’t downloaded the comms history but perhaps I can extract that from the backup file and just do a restore for that alone. I’ll create a tar file with just that in it and give that a try. It’s extracted Notes, Messages, and Gallery can now see the sd card again.

I’m prepared to mark this as Solved now, if I can work out how.

Very many thanks to all those who have helped along the way and if anybody else should stumble across this thread in the future, hopefully it will help them too.