Database Users

Cannot see twrp back up files. Please help.

I recently switched over to team win recovery from cwm. I do like the ui and functionality way better then cwm. The problem I'm having is that I cannot access my back up files from my PC via USB. When I use the file browser that is built into twrp I can see the back up files in the twrp folder. When I plug my tablet into my PC via USB and open the twrp folder it is empty. Also when I open the twrp folder in es file browser it is empty there too. I would like to store the back up on my PC rather then on my tablet. Am I missing something? I was having this same problem with titanium with backed up apps so I upgraded to the paid version and uploaded my back ups to Google drive. After that I looked in the titanium back up folder again on my PC and all the sudden the files were there when before they were not. Its very frustrating. Please help.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Xparent Green Tapatalk 2

I had this same problem with TWRP when I started using it a couple of days ago. I'm not rooted, just unlocked and using fastboot to load the recovery image temporarily to do backups. And when I went looking for the backup files to move to my computer, I couldn't find them. It turns out to be a permissions issue, with TWRP creating the files/directories owned and visible only to root. Not a problem if backing up to a FAT formatted sdcard, but it is a problem with the Nexus 7 since it honors permissions and ownership of all files on the "sdcard".
Two fixes that I know of, though I have only used one so far:
1) After you do the backup, open up the psuedo terminal in TWRP and manually change the permissions or owner of the files recursively. Just set the starting directory in TWRP to "/sdcard/TWRP" and do "chown -R media_rw.media_rw BACKUPS" to change the owner, or do "chmod -R og+rw BACKUPS" to change the permissions. You really only have to do one of those, and I went with the owner change. I was then able to see the backup when connected to my computer, copy the files off, and then delete them to avoid taking up space on the tablet.
2) Although I haven't tried it yet, supposedly you can backup and restore directly to/from a USB thumb drive connected via OTG cable. This would be the easiest method for me, since I want backup and restore capability but without actually storing anything on the Nexus 7. I'm going to try it with a backup tomorrow, but I read about someone doing just that thing for the same reasons in a comment on reddit.
Hopefully that answers your question and gives you a way around it.

Just wanted to bump and let you know that the permissions issue seems to be properly resolved in the 2.2.1.5 version of TWRP. If you update then you shouldn't have to go through any crap to get at the backups.
Additionally, I tried doing a backup to a USB drive and it worked perfectly, so if you prefer that route it is definitely an option. Just make sure that you have the USB drive connected before you boot into TWRP, otherwise it doesn't notice the drive.

mtrs said:
I had this same problem with TWRP when I started using it a couple of days ago. I'm not rooted, just unlocked and using fastboot to load the recovery image temporarily to do backups. And when I went looking for the backup files to move to my computer, I couldn't find them. It turns out to be a permissions issue, with TWRP creating the files/directories owned and visible only to root. Not a problem if backing up to a FAT formatted sdcard, but it is a problem with the Nexus 7 since it honors permissions and ownership of all files on the "sdcard".
Two fixes that I know of, though I have only used one so far:
1) After you do the backup, open up the psuedo terminal in TWRP and manually change the permissions or owner of the files recursively. Just set the starting directory in TWRP to "/sdcard/TWRP" and do "chown -R media_rw.media_rw BACKUPS" to change the owner, or do "chmod -R og+rw BACKUPS" to change the permissions. You really only have to do one of those, and I went with the owner change. I was then able to see the backup when connected to my computer, copy the files off, and then delete them to avoid taking up space on the tablet.
2) Although I haven't tried it yet, supposedly you can backup and restore directly to/from a USB thumb drive connected via OTG cable. This would be the easiest method for me, since I want backup and restore capability but without actually storing anything on the Nexus 7. I'm going to try it with a backup tomorrow, but I read about someone doing just that thing for the same reasons in a comment on reddit.
Hopefully that answers your question and gives you a way around it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the tip. I went everywhere yesterday...
Best buy, radio shack, staples etc looking for an otg cable and had no luck. I'm going to order one online today. I will give the other techniques a try today though. I'm not familiar with pseudo terminal but I'm gonna dig in anyway. That's the best thing about these gadgets for me is hacking in and figuring out. Thanks again for your help!
mtrs said:
Just wanted to bump and let you know that the permissions issue seems to be properly resolved in the 2.2.1.5 version of TWRP. If you update then you shouldn't have to go through any crap to get at the backups.
Additionally, I tried doing a backup to a USB drive and it worked perfectly, so if you prefer that route it is definitely an option. Just make sure that you have the USB drive connected before you boot into TWRP, otherwise it doesn't notice the drive.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I first started out with twrp I flashed 2.2.1.2 via adw. That was before I knew about the goo option in the play store. I've since upgraded to 2.2.1.5 and still having the same issue.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Xparent Green Tapatalk 2

norcal61 said:
When I first started out with twrp I flashed 2.2.1.2 via adw. That was before I knew about the goo option in the play store. I've since upgraded to 2.2.1.5 and still having the same issue.
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Click to collapse
I think that it only works with newly created files. So your existing backups will still have the wrong permissions, but new ones will be correct.
It's the old permissions on directory structure that will mess you up though. If you delete the "/sdcard/TWRP/BACKUPS" directory through TWRP, you will lose your existing backups, but then the next backup that you do should recreate the full directory path with the correct permissions on all of the files and directories. After that you shouldn't have any trouble accessing the backups. I tested that on mine just to be sure that it worked and it did fine for me.
If you don't want to lose your existing backups then just do the owner/permissions change that I mentioned before and you will have access to the old backups as well as having the new ones created with the correct permissions from the start.

mtrs said:
I think that it only works with newly created files. So your existing backups will still have the wrong permissions, but new ones will be correct.
It's the old permissions on directory structure that will mess you up though. If you delete the "/sdcard/TWRP/BACKUPS" directory through TWRP, you will lose your existing backups, but then the next backup that you do should recreate the full directory path with the correct permissions on all of the files and directories. After that you shouldn't have any trouble accessing the backups. I tested that on mine just to be sure that it worked and it did fine for me.
If you don't want to lose your existing backups then just do the owner/permissions change that I mentioned before and you will have access to the old backups as well as having the new ones created with the correct permissions from the start.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool, that totally makes sense. Can't believe I didn't try that all ready. I will definitely make a new back up with the latest version of twrp. I'm running the same ROM and kernel as the back up that I currently have stored. Gonna give it a shot right now and let you know how it works.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Xparent Green Tapatalk 2

mtrs said:
I think that it only works with newly created files. So your existing backups will still have the wrong permissions, but new ones will be correct.
It's the old permissions on directory structure that will mess you up though. If you delete the "/sdcard/TWRP/BACKUPS" directory through TWRP, you will lose your existing backups, but then the next backup that you do should recreate the full directory path with the correct permissions on all of the files and directories. After that you shouldn't have any trouble accessing the backups. I tested that on mine just to be sure that it worked and it did fine for me.
If you don't want to lose your existing backups then just do the owner/permissions change that I mentioned before and you will have access to the old backups as well as having the new ones created with the correct permissions from the start.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No luck. That's weird. I deleted the folder SD/twrp/backups containing the back up, did another back up and still not visible on my PC or in es file browser.

norcal61 said:
No luck. That's weird. I deleted the folder SD/twrp/backups containing the back up, did another back up and still not visible on my PC or in es file browser.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, you may have to delete "/sdcard/TWRP" as well, and just let it recreate everything. I might have changed the permissions on it already on mine, which is why it worked for me just deleting BACKUPS. I'll double-check that when I get back home and make sure.

mtrs said:
Hmm, you may have to delete "/sdcard/TWRP" as well, and just let it recreate everything. I might have changed the permissions on it already on mine, which is why it worked for me just deleting BACKUPS. I'll double-check that when I get back home and make sure.
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Click to collapse
It worked! I deleted the twrp folder all together and it worked like a charm. I'm now able to see and move the backups to my PC. Thank you very much for your help. It is greatly appreciated!
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Xparent Green Tapatalk 2

Some path is :
/data/media/TWRP/BACKUPS/
You need copy to /sdcard/TWRP/BACKUPS and connect to pc will see it.

trungdtdev said:
Some path is :
/data/media/TWRP/BACKUPS/
You need copy to /sdcard/TWRP/BACKUPS and connect to pc will see it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had the same issue and tried searching for "TWRP" to locate every instance of that folder. Turns out that I had previous backups in:
/mnt/shell/emulated/TWRP/BACKUPS/
I am happy to report that I was able to delete several past and hidden backups and recovered over 9gb of space!

[Q] Why can I not delete my /sdcard/clockworkmod folder?

So I've installed a custom ClockworkMod recovery and ROM on my Nexus 7 tablet. Life was good. Recently, I was running out of space and decided to delete my CWM backup (after saving it to my computer). And then, I realized I couldn't.
I went into ES File Explorer to try. I couldn't do it there.
I went into the ADB shell as root to try to remove it. No luck again, just the message when I finally DID try to remove one file:
Code:
# rm boot.img
rm failed for boot.img, Operation not permitted
What am I doing wrong?
Edit: This looks like it's ClockWorkMod (5.8.??)'s fault, but besides reading that another backup won't make the current one much larger, I don't actually know how to delete the current one.

Try "rm -rf ddd" (where "ddd" is the directory name) on the directory containing the files.
Sent from my Nexus 7

BillGoss said:
Try "rm -rf ddd" (where "ddd" is the directory name) on the directory containing the files.
Sent from my Nexus 7
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
in the development section there is a cwm flashable.zip that will delete them.. Then upgrade to latest cwm or TWRP.. its a bug from older version of cwm.. its talked about in the dev cwm thread..
good luck..

I did this in a way not mentioned here that still deserves mentioning... First I updated to the latest version of CWM available (via the Nexus 7 Toolkit) and then booted into recovery, opened the backup option, deleted the backup that was there, then cleaned the nandroids.
I could not find the aforementioned flashable zip, and because of the new CWM I had, I wanted to attempt a proper method of removal before running another rm command via the terminal. Therefore I could not verify the other methods mentioned here, my apologies.

erica_renee said:
in the development section there is a cwm flashable.zip that will delete them.. Then upgrade to latest cwm or TWRP.. its a bug from older version of cwm.. its talked about in the dev cwm thread..
good luck..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
primetechv2 said:
I could not find the aforementioned flashable zip, and because of the new CWM I had, I wanted to attempt a proper method of removal before running another rm command via the terminal. Therefore I could not verify the other methods mentioned here, my apologies.
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Click to collapse
Sorry for re-opening an old thread, but I am having a problem where I have files that I cannot delete from the clockworkmods/blobs folder on my external sd card. So far, I have tried deleting them from a file explorer, deleting them as root from a file explorer, root and non-root deletes from terminal emulator, deleting through windows, adb shell deletes (with system booted).
I also wanted to try adb shell while booted into cwm, but I could not get the adb connection to work from recovery.
I also tried to find the zip file in the developer section and that's the real reason why I revived this thread...Does anyone know where the thread is with the zip file to remove these files?

I think the only way to delete them is through cwm.Boot to recovery and use the menu to delete them.
Sent from my SGH-I927 using xda app-developers app

Kodiack99 said:
I think the only way to delete them is through cwm.Boot to recovery and use the menu to delete them.
Sent from my SGH-I927 using xda app-developers app
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Click to collapse
When I booted to recovery, I am able to delete each of the backups that I created. These all deleted correctly. I then went to Free unused backup files (to delete the files/folders in the blobs folder) and ran that and most of the files are gone. When I boot back into the phone, there are still some files/folders there and they seem to be taking up about 4-5 GB on the card. When I try to delete them through the file manager apps (either as root or not) they will not delete and the manager reports an error (before clicking delete, the manager displays a statistics report that says that the size of the files are over 2TB so obviously something is very messed up about them). I have also tried to delete them through the terminal (again as root and regular user) and they will not delete there either and they totally mess up the terminal window with unprintable characters (the only way to recover is to exit out of the current window and start a new one).
I finally fixed this problem last night by backing up all of my stuff (except the clockworkmod folder) to my computer. I then rebooted into recovery (latest version of CWM non-touch) and formatting the ext SD Card. When I rebooted there were still some folders there (including the clockworkmod folder). I did a format from within the OS and that cleared everything out. I copied all of my stuff back from my computer and I'm now good to go. Not sure how it got messed up to begin with, but the problem is fixed now. I think I'm going to stick with TWRP from now on.

Can't write on internal SD card after root

After having rooted (with nexus 10 toolkit v1.3.0) my nexus 10 and flashed AOPK Nexus 10 (WIP) Task650 & Ktoonsez (1-4) rom, I'm unable to upload to, change or move any files or folders on my internal SD card. I installed Root Explorer and changed from Mount R/O to Mounted as r/w. Access is granted by Super SU. I also tried to change permission settings, unfortunatedly without any success. There appeared the following message:
"Warning
Permissions change was not successful. Please note that some file systems (e.g. SD card) do not allow permission changes."
Is there a possibility to change these permissions in order to be able to create and move files and folders on my SD card?
Thanks for taking your time to help me with my issue!
Anzirothu

1. Clear cache
2. Clear dalvik
3. Fix Permissions
forgot something ?

Thank you for your reply, Patrik!
1. done.
2. done.
3. Fix Permissions - How? With cwm? I did fix permissions with cwm recovery, but the problem persists...

Just so we are clear, when you say "upload to, change, or move" are you meaning you cannot copy a file from your computer to your Nexus 10? Or just that you cant arrange stuff through root explorer from within the tablet itself?

Neither copying from PC to Nexus nor arranging stuff through root exlorer from within the tablet itself. I can't even download an email attachment and put it to the SD card. The card seems to be locked.

I had that problem once but I dont remember what caused it or what exactly I did to fix. I think I just did a complete wipe by locking and unlocking the bootloader and then installing a new ROM again.

I think I did this too (unroot, lock bootloader, then root and unlock bootloader) and then installed the same rom again. I will try it this time with another rom.
Isn't there really no other solution to get access to my SD card again??
Thx for your help!

Are you using a toolkit to unlock and root? If so them maybe it is not doing something right and it messing up a permissions somewhere. It could also be a driver problem on your PC with being unable to copy a file to the tablet.

Thank you for your help!
I am using the nexus 10 toolkit V1.3.0. Right now I'm trying to intall twrp recovery with a fully wiped sd card. No easy task fot me being a noob...

In ClockWorkMod, make sure that /data is mounted
Then download the Android SDK: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
I usually put all the files just in C:/android-sdk-windows
Once you have it all there open up the SDK Manager and download all the additional files needed. You probably only need to download "Android SDK Tools" and "Android SDK Platform-tools", but I always download the other files for whatever version of Android I am running, in our case Android 4.2. That way I have them if I need to do something else.
Once downloaded, open the Android-sdk-windows/platform-tools directory. copy:
adb.exe
adbWinApi.dll
adbWinUsbApi.dll
fastboot.exe
to your base C:/Android-SDK-Windows directory.
Now open command prompt from Start -> run
type: cd C:/Android-SDK-Windows
type: "adb devices" and it should list your tablet. It will actually say something with your devices serial number and then "Recovery" after it, showing your tablet is in recovery. If you dont see this then you either dont have your tablet mounted right from in the Recovery, ClockWorkMod is stupid, or you dont have working adb drivers.
Now copy the ROM you want to flash to C:/Android-SDK-Windows
Then type: "adb push blahblahblah.zip /data/media/0"
That should push the ROM to the root of your SD card. Give it time, it takes a while to push a ROM file. Once it is done, flash the ROM.
That *should* put it in the right spot where it looks like it is on your "internal storage" (what you see when navigating files within the ROM). If you dont see the ROM in clockworkMod then keep navigating back to the root of your internal storage and then open up "data", then "media", then "0" and you should see it. If you still cant find the ROM, push it again but just use "/data/media" as the location.
I just did all these steps myself to verify I remembered it all correct and I was able to successfully copy a ROM and find it on my tablet to flash by doing everything I just listed above. SO you should be good to go if you follow all those steps properly. I know it looks like a lot of work, but it really isnt and will go quite fast. Most of it is just the setup for getting ADB and Fastboot ready to use.
For a ROM to install, I would recommend to someone new like you either of these:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2071082
^^^^^ That one is pretty close to the stock ROM with a few fixes and a couple extra features
or: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2071082
^^^^^ This one is pretty much CyanogenMod 10.1, but built by a different guy and not pulling every new thing from CM, just the "cherry picks" of features. It tends to be a bit more stable and less buggy than the real CM10.1 nightly's
And for a kernel you can flash and forget you will want to try this one:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2098157
^^^^^ To flash that you will want to do a similar thing as how you pushed the ROM to your device. Only this time you will copy the kernels' "boot-r4.img" file into your android-adk-windows directory and use the command: "fastboot flash boot boot-r4.img"
While I enjoy the KTManta kernel more, it does require a bit of tweaking to get running perfect. Which is one of the things I like about it because of all the options to tweak. But for someone just learning this stuff that would be a bad thing, so Franco's kernel is much better than stock and doesnt require you to adjust anything once it is flashed to your tablet.

ADB Backup on 4.2.2

So I was able to do a full adb backup when I was on 4.1.2 before I updated to 4.2.2.. I wanted to do another full adb backup again on 4.2.2 before putting a recovery or custom rom on my device so it would be easy to restore back to my completely stock experience (with root) if I choose. But for some reason after letting it run all the way through (I let it run overnight since it takes so long) the backup is nowhere to be found which leads me to believe it failed somewhere along the way, but no errors are reported. Has anybody had this issue or have any advice on what may be going on? I've tried doing:
Adb backup -all
Adb backup -all C:\Users\Wyth\Desktop
Adb backup -all G:\ (external HDD)
Adb backup -all G:\xtzbackup (in case adb backup had some sort of bug saving to the root of the drive)
If anybody has any help or alternative solutions to creating a full system backup I'd appreciate it! Thanks in advance!

If you are going to supply a path and file name, don't forget the -f switch

dph3055 said:
If you are going to supply a path and file name, don't forget the -f switch
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, that was absolutely the issue. I guess I did that the first time around but forgot the second. I ended up making the backup and then unlocking the bootloader. Unfortunately I forgot that it would completely wipe the internal storage rather than just a factory reset, so I lost my titanium backups. Tried to do the adb restore, and every time after the first app it would just reboot the device. After trying it many times I ended up using the adb extractor tool to create a tar from the backup. Apparently however the backup was no good because when extracting the tar after getting to a certain part every time it came up with unexpected end of archive. But I at least got most of the titanium backup folder out. Tried copying that to internal storage and it was permission denied. Copied it to external sd, and then on the tablet transferred it to internal storage. Then every time I restored any of the data, when I rebooted the tablet it would go into bootloops. After many ftf flashes and time wasted copying things back and forth all over the place I finally am basically just resigning to starting over. Boot into CWM and made a backup, and find that it makes the clockwork mod backup folder in data/media rather than the proper place in data/media/0 or even data/media/legacy. The option to backup to external sdcard also doesn't work, as it refuses to mount sdcard or external-sdcard. Needless to say the last 24 hours or so has been massive headaches. Is there a newer version of CWM for the tablet than 6.0.3.2? It seems pretty buggy and hard to believe that it is what everyone has been using as the button combination to reboot to recovery doesn't even work.
Btw, I'm trying to do this on the stock sony 4.2.2 firmware for sgp312.
Using kernel and recovery from here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2433466
with ftf from here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2424550

[Q] Desperate need some help, failure updating 4.4

my nexus 4 was rooted with 4.3 but then i decide to upgrade to 4.4
this is the video i am trying to follow, basically just wipe & install which i did most the time.
youtube title "NEXUS 4: HOW TO MANUALLY UPDATE TO ANDROID 4.4 KITKAT"
it has two files one is mako and one is gapp.
after i did all the wiping in cwm and try to install the mako file, it shows "no file context" or sth similar, and installation is abort (i think there is problem when i transfer the file), but then i continue to install the gapp file (what the hell was i thinking?)
so now i am stuck in the google start up loop, i can only access cwm recovery mode and don't have a valid rom to install in my sdcard.
i tried to adb push another rom to the sdcard with no success (my storage was already very low, any way to remove files in the storage at this point?)
the "mount & storage" also doesn't seem to let me mount the sdcard (but system shows up "unmount").
so now i don't know what to do.
if anything has any idea or suggestion please let us know.
i am quite desperate now with a dead phone and will try anything.
thanks for reading such a long thread.

Dude that vid is old and it installs pa or some other port just flash factory images from google
Sent from my F1 using xda app-developers app

try to sideload a zip with ADB in recovery. no need to copy to your internal storage.
also try to connect with adb shell, then you can delete some files manual with rm.

Frickelpit said:
try to sideload a zip with ADB in recovery. no need to copy to your internal storage.
also try to connect with adb shell, then you can delete some files manual with rm.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
any step by step guide to do this?
i am still new to this thing even i install a few roms before.
i will google it now, but any additional info is much appreciate.
thanks

Frickelpit said:
try to sideload a zip with ADB in recovery. no need to copy to your internal storage.
also try to connect with adb shell, then you can delete some files manual with rm.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
frustrated..
i can't seem to get my windows to recogize the device (when i type adb devices, it shows an empty list)
already try trouble shooting this for a long time with no result.
any idea?

telly0050 said:
frustrated..
i can't seem to get my windows to recogize the device (when i type adb devices, it shows an empty list)
already try trouble shooting this for a long time with no result.
any idea?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
after tons of troubleshooting finally got it back to work.
it ends up the reason is i didn't update to the latest cwm at the very beginning.
and sideloading 4.4 didn't work because of that too, i have to install an old 4.2 to have it working.