Backup WhatsApp from NANDROID

Question

Hi guys: refering to this: Restore Whatsapp

Get the same issue.

I just reset all my phone after an OTA bricked.

I made an nandroid backup, but, i dunno how to acces - on my phone - the "data/data/com.whatsapp" file to read owner and group. I think for the nandroid its going to be ok.

Cheers

Answer 1

install WhatsApp, then boot in TWRP and look from adb shell

• show the folder attributes with the ls command

  ls -dln /data/data/com.whatsapp
  

example output:

mint@debian ~ $ adb shell
/ # ls -dln /data/data/com.whatsapp
drwx------   13 10104    10104         4096 Jan 15 04:15 /data/data/com.whatsapp  

next, restore the backup (or part of it)

• download open-gapps-pico.zip for your platform (ARM) to PC

• extract the tar binary (tar-arm for ARM) and push it to phone (in TWRP)

  adb push C:\adb\tar-arm /tmp/
  

• open adb shell and make the binary executable (TWRP)

  chmod 0750 /tmp/tar-arm
  

example output:

mint@debian ~/Downloads $ adb push tar-arm /tmp/
387 KB/s (427448 bytes in 1.075s)
mint@debian ~/Downloads $ adb shell
/ # chmod 0750 /tmp/tar-arm 

• in TWRP look for the location where your (internal/external) sdcard is mounted

  df
  

example output:

/ # df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs                  1010636        44   1010592   0% /dev
tmpfs                  1010636        28   1010608   0% /tmp
/dev/block/mmcblk0p19   253920      2380    246300   1% /cache
/dev/block/mmcblk0p20 11608792   9847780   1728244  85% /data
/dev/block/mmcblk0p20 11608792   9847780   1728244  85% /sdcard
/dev/block/mmcblk1p1  31150720  22588512   8562208  73% /external_sd

• find the backup folder with the ls and cd commands

example output for cd change directory:

/ # cd /external_sd
/external_sd # cd TWRP
/external_sd/TWRP # cd BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG

example output for ls list files and folders:

/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG # ls
2019-03-20--03-44-24_CUBOT_KING_KONG_7081C_V16_20180517
2019-04-16--08-03-32_CUBOT_KING_KONG_7081C_V16_20180517
2019-04-21--07-15-28_CUBOT_KING_KONG_7081C_V22_20181228
2019-06-18--20-30-44_CUBOT_KING_KONG_7081C_V16_20180517
2019-06-23--05-37-30_CUBOT_KING_KONG_7081C_V16_20180517
2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180

enter the latest backup folder (you can also use * as wildcard)

/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG # cd 2019-06-26*

list ls the backup file names inside. the interesting is the data.ext4.win* backup

/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG/2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180 # ls
boot.emmc.win          data.ext4.win002       recovery.emmc.win.md5
boot.emmc.win.md5      data.ext4.win002.md5   recovery.log
data.ext4.win000       data.ext4.win003       system.ext4.win
data.ext4.win000.md5   data.ext4.win003.md5   system.ext4.win.md5
data.ext4.win001       data.info              system.info
data.ext4.win001.md5   recovery.emmc.win

• Before unpacking, find the required file name(s) which contains your whatsapp files. use the tar-arm binary with parameters -t (test) and look into each file -f data.ext4.win*, while the error output is filtered out with 2> /dev/null and the the file list is filtered for folder name /data/data/com.whatsapp with the grep command

  /tmp/tar-arm -tf data.ext4.win000 2> /dev/null | grep /data/data/com.whatsapp
  

example output: (no result for data.ext4.win000 data.ext4.win001 data.ext4.win002)

/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG/2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180 # /tmp/tar-arm -tf data.ext4.win000 2> /dev/null | grep /data/data/com.whatsapp
/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG/2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180 # /tmp/tar-arm -tf data.ext4.win001 2> /dev/null | grep /data/data/com.whatsapp
/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG/2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180 # /tmp/tar-arm -tf data.ext4.win002 2> /dev/null | grep /data/data/com.whatsapp
/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG/2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180 # /tmp/tar-arm -tf data.ext4.win003 2> /dev/null | grep /data/data/com.whatsapp
/data/data/com.whatsapp/
/data/data/com.whatsapp/cache/
/data/data/com.whatsapp/code_cache/
/data/data/com.whatsapp/lib
/data/data/com.whatsapp/app_minidumps/
^C

• now you can extract the folder /data/data/com.whatsapp (as last argument) from the file(s) -f data.ext4.win003 with the tar-arm binary with -x and additional parameters --selinux --xattrs -p for file attributes, while -P will keep the leading / which will restore everything to /data and -v make the whole thing more visible for you. handle each data.ext4.win* file for its own:

  /tmp/tar-arm --selinux --xattrs -vxpPf data.ext4.win003 /data/data/com.whatsapp
  

example output:

/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG/2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180 # /tmp/tar-arm --selinux --xattrs -vxpPf data.ext4.win003 /data/data/com.whatsapp
/data/data/com.whatsapp/
/data/data/com.whatsapp/cache/
/data/data/com.whatsapp/code_cache/
/data/data/com.whatsapp/lib
/data/data/com.whatsapp/app_minidumps/
^C

finally, change the owner and group

/ # chown -Rh 10104.10104 /data/data/com.whatsapp