So. Let’s recap. After the initial problem as described I had to do a full re-flash of the OS.
- I had a very specific issue: not being able to unlock the phone and no custom ambience.
No messages or hints in the logs either, after apparently succesfully upgrading from 4.5.0.25 to 4.6.0.13 through the UI.
- I reflashed the phone completely, and after a reboot it works normally, as expected
- I had a full backup of the complete /home folder and moved defaultuser into place while in recovery. After a reboot, I have the exact same problems again!
- So I moved the original /home/defaultuser back, and voilá, it works again like a freshly-installed SFOS.
- I tried moving parts of the folders under the backup /home/defaultuser into place on the new /home/defaultuser, one subfolder at a time, rebooted, and it always worked again (except for the ambience), all the way until I replaced all folders with their backed-up versions. In other words, I now have /home/defaultuser completely restored from backup. The only thing I changed was to copy the two empty files
jolla-startupwizard-*
from the new ~/.config to the restored.
- Then I also replaced the folders
/home/.system
and /home/.android
and /home/appsupport-root
. I’m honestly no sure about /home/aquota.user anymore. I did NOT replace the zypp cache directories.
Everything still works after a reboot.
- Then, just for shits and giggles, I moved /home/defaultuser as it was created during the flashing/first boot back in place. After a reboot, still works. Then I moved the originally backed-up /home/defaultuser in place again, and voilá, same problems again.
Now I moved my strangely “recreated” /home/defaultuser back again and it works and looks just like before the upgrade (well, after re-installing all the software), accounts, calendars, top menu customisations, everything except for the custom ambience.
Each of these changes was performed in recovery, followed by a reboot into the UI.
My buest guess: while the upgrade itself went OK, something inside /home/defaultuser broke it.
I thought I could trace it back by gradually replacing all subfolders, but could not because it fixed itself during the process.
In case somebody has an idea what to look for, I still have the pre-upgrade backup and a backup of the newly created /home/defaultuser.