termux-scripts

Automate everything on your android phone using termux app.

Changelog

Note that starting with commit 3586230 the folder structure is simplified (see #9). Starting from there, backups made with older versions can no longer be restored. BUT:

• Your backup will be migrated to the new structure automatically on the first backup
• If you still need to restore an old backup, you can either
  • use an older version of this repo or
  • easily adapt to the new folder structure manually, move e.g.
    org.kde.kdeconnect_tp/data/data/org.kde.kdeconnect_tp to org.kde.kdeconnect_tp/data/
    and
    org.kde.kdeconnect_tp/sdcard/Android/data/org.kde.kdeconnect_tp to org.kde.kdeconnect_tp/sdcard/

Backup and Restore

• Incremental back up and restore
  • APK (also works with split APKs),
  • /data/data/... folder,
  • and /sdcard/Android/... folder
• either locally on your phone or remotely via SSH (via rsync) or to the cloud (via rclone)
• Requires
  • root access (su),
  • termux:API app
• Note that these scripts only backup user apps and data.
  I recommend backing up at least the following in addition:
  • /sdcard
  • /data/system_ce/0/accounts_ce.db Accounts
  • system apps if needed (browser, e.g. chromium, vanadium, com.android.launcher3)
  • /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases SMS/MMS (alternatively, you could use SMS Import / Export to write SMS+call logs and contacts to the filesystem and back them up from there)
  • /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases/ call logs (maybe also /data/data/com.android.calllogbackup)
  • Maybe /data/data/com.android.providers.settings
  • Maybe /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts (if you're system includes Seedvault, org.calyxos.backup.contacts might work as well)
  • Maybe /data/data/com.android.providers.calenders (alternatively you could sync them calenders and contacts using davx5 or MyPhoneExplorer)
  • Wifi Connections and Bluetooth pairings. Please tell me how.
    Wifi connections are stored here: /data/misc/apexdata/com.android.wifi/WifiConfigStore.xml. Not sure if restoring works from there, though.
  • Note that restoring files to /data/ might not be possible. I have my doubts, especially about keystore, accounts and contacts.
  • (/data/misc/keystore - see #7)

Preparation

• For local backup only, the packages mentioned bellow are needed
• For backing up to via SSH, yo need a key in your termux and the appropriate public key added to authorized_keys on the target device
• For backing up to the cloud, you need to configure an rclone remote. See rclone

# Install packages
apt install termux-api tsu openssh
# Either install
apt install rsync
# or
apt install rclone

# Fore remote backups, set up key
ssh-keygen -t ecdsa -b 521
# Copy key to the remote machine. Password authentication has to be enabled in order to install pubkey on remote machine.
ssh-copy-id -p 22222 -i id_ecdsa.pub user@host

Usage

Start the script. On finish an android notification displays the result. Tapping the notification will open the log file.

Note that

• rsync is used by default for local backup or via SSH. You can opt in to use rclone (see rclone).
• restore will not uninstall an app if it exists. Downgrade or signature mismatch might lead to failure.
• for now, restore will likely fail for apps that use an android keystore. If you backed up /data/misc/keystore, you might be able to restore it manually, though. See #7.
• Restoring a backup into a higher/lower Android version (e.g. when migrating to a new phone) is risky!
  Known issues:
  • Android 11 -> 12: Some apps (e.g. whatsapp, locus map) moved their public storage from /sdcard to /sdcard/Android/data/${packageId}. Solution: Restore, before starting the app manually move folder.
• restoring locally might only work from "tmux'" folders or /data/local/tmp/, not from /sdcard.
  There are reports of errors such as this:

  System server has no access to read file context u:object_r:sdcardfs:s0 (from path /storage/emulated/0...base.apk, context u:r:system_server:s0)
  Error: Unable to open file: base.apk
  

Usage examples

# Find out package name
sudo pm list packages | grep tag

# Local roundtrip
./backup-app.sh com.nxp.taginfolite . # Backup to ./com.nxp.taginfolite
./restore-app.sh com.nxp.taginfolite  # Restore from ./com.nxp.taginfolite

# Remote roundtrip
# If not set the default port (22) is used
export SSH_PORT=22222
# If not set the default key is used
export SSH_PK="$HOME/.ssh/my-non-default-key"
# If not set, the default is used
export SSH_HOST_FILE="$HOME/somewhere/known_hosts"
# optional
export RSYNC_ARGS='--progress --stats'
export LOG_LEVEL='INFO' # Options: TRACE, INFO WARN, OFF. Default: INFO 

# Backup and restore individual apps
./backup-app.sh com.nxp.taginfolite user@host:/my/folder/backup # Backup to /my/folder/backup/com.nxp.taginfolite
./restore-app.sh user@host:/my/folder/backup/com.nxp.taginfolite

# Batch backup
# Backup all user apps (might be several hundreds!)
# Dont forget to backup /sdcard, /data/misc/keystore, etc. in addition (see above)
./backup-all-user.sh user@host:/my/folder/backup/backup
# Restores all apps from a folder (except termux, because this would cancel restore process! See bellow)
# It the app does not work as expected after restore, consider restoring the keystore (see above)
./restore-all.sh user@host:/my/folder/backup/

# Restore termux separately, if necessary
pkg install rsync
# Uncomment if needed
#RSYNC_ARGS=-e "ssh -p 22222 -i $HOME/.ssh/mykey"
rsync --stats --progress --human-readable -r --times $RSYNC_ARGS user@host:/my/folder/backup/com.termux/data/data/com.termux/files/home/ ~
rsync --stats --progress --human-readable -r --times $RSYNC_ARGS user@host:/my/folder/backup/com.termux/data/data/com.termux/files/usr ../usr/
# Packages are there but don't seem to work, so install them again
for pkg in `dpkg --get-selections | awk '{print $1}' | egrep -v '(dpkg|apt|mysql|mythtv)'` ; do apt-get -y --force-yes install --reinstall $pkg ; done
# If you have been using a different shell, re-enable it, for example:
#chsh -s zsh

Rclone

• --rclone - use rclone instead of rsync
• rclone supports dozens of cloud providers, local, ssh, etc. Each can be combined with deduplication, encryption, etc.
  Note: For local or SSH copy rsync has some advantages, e.g. keeping timestamps, user rights, symlinks, etc.
• Getting started:
  • Set up your remote with sudo rclone config. Why sudo? Because the backup is also executed with sudo to be able to access folders like /data/data, etc.
  • When backing up to the cloud I recommend to add an encrypted remote and use it for backing up
  • Backups can then be triggered like so, for example

    ./backup-all-user.sh --rclone remote-encrypted:/my/folder/backup/

• Note:
  • --rclone ignores SSH_* env vars, but passes on RSYNC_ARGS. Maybe this will be renamed to SYNC_ARGS one day.
  • If you want to exclude files use RSYNC_ARGS in conjunction with --filter-from.
    That way you escape bash quoting hell another time.

    export RSYNC_ARGS=--filter-from=$HOME/.shortcuts/.rclone-app-excludes.txt 

  • I ended up excluding wide parts of my termux installation to save time and space

    + /files/usr/var/lib/dpkg/status
    - /files/usr/**
    - /files/home/storage/**
    - /*/.npm/**
    - */node_modules/**
    

  • The first backup to the cloud will take hours! Rough approximation: 100 apps/10GB (encrypted): 6 hours. Subsequent (differential) backups will be much faster. Rough approximation with only few changes: 100 apps/10GB: 20-60 minutes.
  • A local rsync via SSH (unencrypted) takes about 2 hours initially, 15 minutes subsequently.
  • You can optimize your backup times by identifying and excluding large folders.
    • locally, e.g.

      cd /data/data && sudo ncdu

    • or remotely after first backup

      rclone ncdu remote-encrypted:/my/folder/backup/

  • Common warnings:
    • Failed to copy: invalidRequest: pathIsTooLong: - well, the path is longer than your cloud provider supports.
      Possible Solutions:
      • Exclude files (if not essential)
      • Try to use a path as short as possible. As close to your root path in the cloud as possible.
        termux-scripts already optimized its internal folder structure (#9). Not much room for optimization left.
    • Can't follow symlink without -L/--copy-links - rclone can't handle symlinks. You could use RSYNC_ARGS and -L but this would copy the file or folder behind the symlink which in my experience isn't want you want usually.
    • Can't transfer non file/directory - the file is empty. Even including doesn't seem to help

Options

• -a / --apk - backup/restore APK only
• -d / --data - backup/restore data only
• --exclude-packages (for backup-all-user, restore-all) semicolon separated wildcards (globbing expressions) of
  app package names to exclude. e.g.

  # Note that --exclude-packages=... won't work
  --exclude-packages 'net.oneplus.*;com.oneplus.*;com.android.vending.*'

• --exclude-existing (for restore-all, restore-app) don't restore apps that already exist
• --start-at $PACKAGE - skips all packages before, useful for continuing after an error in backup-all-user.sh or restore-all.sh
• --bypass-low-target-sdk-block - avoid error INSTALL_FAILED_DEPRECATED_SDK_VERSION: App package must target at least SDK version 23, but found 21 for legacy apps, starting with Android 14. See PackageManager for more details.
• --rclone - use rclone instead of rsync. See rclone.

Limitations

• restoring APKs from a phone that has a different CPU architecture might not work (e.g. armv7 vs armv8/aarch64)
• rsync is run with --delete by default. So it deletes files that have been deleted in the source per app but does not delete apps that have been deleted. This is defensive but might clutter your backup over time. If you want a list of apps that are in backup but not installed ont the phone, try the following in termux:

REMOTE_APPS=$(mktemp)
ssh user@backup-host ls /app/backup/folder | sort > $REMOTE_APPS

sudo bash -c  "comm -13  <(ls /data/data | sort) $REMOTE_APPS"

Default excludes

By default a number of folders (caching, temp, trackers, etc.) are excluded to speed up backup and restore. See rclone-data-filter.txt for details.

Alternatives

• Neo-Backup Looks promising and much more convenient to use an app. But needs to create a local backup that then can be uploaded: Takes longer and requires twice the space :/
• Similar scripts, but remote via adb (still require root, last commit 2013): ART https://xdaforums.com/t/tools-zips-scripts-android-backup-and-restore-tools-multiple-devices-platforms.4016617/, https://community.e.foundation/t/how-to-do-a-restore-back-up-from-seedvault/39603/2, remote backup