Android sync/crash issues. Best practices, alternatives?

I would like to backup as much of my Android data as possible, and I’m currently trying with syncthing, which is v1.27.10. The backup data will be stored on my home server, which has the Linux v1.27.10 now too.

I’ve had to take a number of advanced steps, and still having major issues with the Android client, such as it freezing almost daily and needing to be force stopped/restarted, and not saving some settings even tho I’m restarting it normally. So maybe Syncthing isn’t the best for this. Open to alternative suggestions.

For example, I started syncing /sdcard but realized I needed to run it as root in order to read/sync everything there, such as in Android/data or my Signal backups. Even after enabling it to run as root, and telling it to send ownership, permissions, and attributes, it’s still not doing that.

On my Linux home server “receiver” I’m also running it as root so it can set the correct owners and permissions (otherwise everything is owned by my account) but that’s not working totally right either, everything is owned by root now with a few random exceptions which sometimes match what is on the Android file system.

At least all the data is being synced now, but with the ownership and permissions wrong, and the Android instance freezing all the time and not saving the settings, I must have configured something really wrong here or this is not the solution I need.

PSA about Google’s “One” so-called backup: The only reason I’m doing all this is because Google utterly failed to backup my data and has lost the most important parts, ~20 years of text messages I’ve meticulously transferred across my devices over the years. Google One was telling me my data was backed up but it was lying to me, or their “backup” is not a real backup and it appears to save only 1 copy of the most recent data with no previous incremental data available? Answers and documentation are scarce. It seems when my previous device bricked itself overnight*, it interrupted the Google One backup and so none of my SMS data got saved and thus not restored to my new device, but MMS picture messages were. This was only shown by logging into Google Drive and checking deep in the status of the special backup area reserved there for Google One. Anyway, I’ve had a ticket open with Google for like 2 months now at least. They finally escalated it to an engineering team to see if they can find any of the previous successful backups and thus my data, but I’m expecting it’s gone forever.

*2nd PSA: This is a widespread issue with the Pixel 5a’s, due to poor soldering it looks like, but Google won’t admit anything. If you still have one or know someone who does, warn them and backup the data now because it will likely brick itself at some point. Then Google might offer to repair or replace your device though, which is nice.

3rd PSA: and would be nice if it weren’t a lie. I opted to have mine repaired at a local iBreak-uFix shop, but Google never followed through with the work order. When I called support back, they rescinded the repair offer and forced me to mail the bricked device back to them, making me wait weeks without a smart phone for a replacement. Then they destroyed that device before I had a chance to restore and verify the backup from Google One, likely destroying the only copy of my data in existence.

After that many f*ckups, and lying to me about repairs, it’s something I’d look into going into arbitration or small claims court over. Waiting to see if the 2nd level engineering team comes back with anything before going that route.

Instead of trying to sync the whole /sdcard, I would suggest to sync specific folders from it only (e.g. DCIM, Music, Pictures, etc.), and then when it comes to Android/data, you’re already rooted, so I think you could just use https://github.com/NeoApplications/Neo-Backup to back your apps with data up completely, and then sync those backups with Syncthing.

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Yeah I’ve had Neo Backup installed too and it’s backing up everything + all the extras like data and specials into /sdcard/backups/neo. so I don’t need to worry about backup /sdcard/Android/data at all? Android’s file system is so convoluted and abstracted, I never know, so that’s why I try to grab everything. If that’s the case, then I can stop running Syncthing as root, and permissions and ownership of the data doesn’t matter anymore either I guess?

Theoretically yes, although to be extra sure, you should test your backup, meaning uninstalling the apps completely and then trying to restore them using Neo Backup.

Just a side note, but an app like https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.tmo1.sms_ie is able to back both SMS and MMS up. I’ve used it myself when transferring messages between different devices, and it did its job as expected.

Running Syncthing as root on Android has an advantage of being able to update file timestamps. Normally, because of Android restrictions, Syncthing is unable to set timestamps directly, so it only records them in the database. If the database is lost, then the timestamps are gone with it. I had this happen in the past, so since then I’ve always been running Syncthing as root (only on Android).

So if I turn off the syncing of ownership and permissions, then /sdcard will sync just fine to 100%. This just goes against everything I know as a sys admin, but Android is abnormal. I took it even a step further and tried to sync /data but even root has issues reading that completely. However, if I bind mount it someplace like /mnt/data then it will sync that to 100% no problem. I guess, if I ever need to restore something, then Android will take care of setting the proper permissions and ownership?

Bacula actually has an Android client, but it’s only available with an enterprise license. I’d love to see how it does backups, I bet it’s amazing.

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