Trying the guest user feature destroyed all my data

Bug Reports
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#1

REPRODUCIBILITY (% or how often): ??
BUILD ID = OS VERSION (Settings > About product): 3.4
HARDWARE (Jolla1, Tablet, XA2,…): Sony Xperia XA2
UI LANGUAGE: Finnish
REGRESSION: (compared to previous public release: Yes, No, ?): No, new feature

DESCRIPTION:

I thought I’ll check out the new guest user feature. I switched to guest user and fiddled around a bit. Then changed back to device owner. The backgroud went black but the phone was usable otherwise. So I rebooted the phone and was greeted with the first use wizard. Had to do the whole tutorial wizard and setting up wlan.

After I got past all that I saw that the whole home directory was reset back to factory. All data from Sailfish side and Android side gone.

All the apps I had installed were still there, developer mode was still on. I updated to 3.4 through OTA so I was still using nemo as a user. nemo was still there in home. So it wasn’t a complete factory reset.

Luckily I had a image backup from a few days ago so I didn’t lose very much data (hopefully, I’m still in the middle of restoring).

I don’t use any patches. I have some apps installed from OpenRepos but these should all be user land stuff. Nothing that would mess up system files.

PRECONDITIONS:

Nemo as a user. Maybe important, maybe not.
Encryption not in use. Maybe important.
Update: I am using Battery Buddy which does use some background services.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

  1. Enable guest user
  2. Switch to guest user
  3. Switch back to owner
  4. Reboot

EXPECTED RESULT:

Reboot to my normal phone

ACTUAL RESULT:

Rebooted to empty phone

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

I dont’ have any logs anymore. I’m restoring my phone.

5 Likes
Access disk of device not starting properly
#2

Thanks for reporting.

Has anyone else seen this issue?

#3

Hi jovirku,

I had similar problems, but I had luck. The data are still there. The situation was as follows.

My phone is an Sony Xperia XA2 dual sim

I updated my phone without any problems. Then I created a guest account. I changed to the guest account and it worked. I went back to the owner account, I switched back again and then I tried to go back to my owner account but it doesnt work. The display was dark and nothing happend. I restarted the phone and was again in my guest account. I tried again to go back to the owner account. No chance. Then I started again, opend some apps on my guest account and tried again to go back to my owner account. Now it worked. BUT at the moment I wouldnt try this again, because its not safe. Its not clear if you can switch back from one account to another. I hope this will help you to analyze the problem.

Regards
Andreas

#4

Well, maybe that’s what happened to me and I was back on my guest account just didn’t realize it.

But when I rebooted I had to do the first-use wizard. And all data in /home/nemo was gone. I don’t know how guest user works. If it masks the filesystem some how or uses some virtual environment or chroot type system that could explain why I didn’t see my stuff.

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