REPRODUCIBILITY: always
OS VERSION: 5.1.0.11
HARDWARE: XA2 / Plus / Ultra (both single and dual SIM)
UI LANGUAGE: N/A
REGRESSION: N/A
DESCRIPTION:
The SW archives for the XA2 line on phones are missing the recovery image hybris-recovery.img which makes it impossible to run the Recovery Mode on these phones.
PRECONDITIONS:
A crashed XA2 which needs to be booted to Recovery Mode to attempt to restore it to working condition.
STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
Download *.zip from Jolla Shop (e. g. Sailfish_OS-Jolla-5.1.0.11-h4413-1.0.0.7.zip)
List the contents / extract the *.zip file
EXPECTED RESULT:
*.zip file contains the hybris-recovery.img file like the *.zip files for other phones (didn't download all of them, but at least Xperia X, 10 II, and 10 III have it).
ACTUAL RESULT:
hybris-recovery.img is missing in the *.zip archives.
MODIFICATIONS:
None
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
If anyone has hybris-recovery.img for Sailfish 5.x for XA2, I would be really grateful if you share it with me - so I could make a dd backup of my phone and try to fix the file system. Currently, I only have hybris-recovery.img for Sailfish 4.0.1.48 (i.e. the the first version I installed on my XA2 back in 2021) and I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to use that (although it boots OK).
I say you have nothing to lose, give the 4.0.1.48 recovery image a shot. Worst case, it doesn’t work and you reflash /boot with the 5.1.0.11 hybris-boot.img, and you’ll be back where you started.
At least in my experience with my ports, the only reason that the boot image (recovery or otherwise) would change is due to kernel updates (eg. new boot args, kernel configs, updated modules, etc). Therefore, it stands to reason that the 4.0.1.48 recovery will still be able to get you to an early init stage where you can remotely log in, mount your /data partition and copy it away.
Gave 4.0.1.48 recovery image a shot and was able to create a full dd image on SD card, run the file system check and copy what was left from the /home partition to the SD card. Couldn’t get the RNDIS connection working either on Windows 11 or Ubuntu - had to use an old Windows 10 PC (the connection wasn’t very stable there as well but at least it worked).
As I had a fairly recent backup on the SD card, I installed 5.1.0.11 from scratch and now the phone is up and running again and will continue its duty as my daily driver. Of course, there is still some work to do with restoring the Android side, but that’s not priority no 1 at the moment. And I already have some experience fixing the damage caused by a “misbehaving” Android app (and possibly me because I chose the incorrect way to stop that “misbehaviour“) from the past.
Since Sailfish OS 5.1 Sony Xperia XA2 and 10 do not need the separate hybris-recovery.img anymore and you can access recovery from the normal boot image by keeping volume down button pressed when powering on the device.
or even better: announce! 
