[Script] VERY simple application backup script for ROM upgrades [not for newbies]

[krzych]

Hi,

I'm new to the business and I spent some time to learn the environment trying different applications and different approaches for almos every action I took. Today, I have not much bigger knowledge, but I finally decided to take few things in my own hands because existing software is not fulfilling my wishes.

I started with this simple script which eases the pain of reinstalling all applications after ROM upgrade. There are few such tools already, but I found those quite bloated with unnecessary thing for my own approach.

With this script I assume:
1. There is/was SSHDroid installed (or any tool with busybox and you can access shell command line) both in old and new ROMs and your ROM have bash installed in /system/bin/.
2. Backup/restore operation includes only INTERNALLY installed applications, it completely ignores SYSTEM and SDCARD installed ones.
3. This is TEMPORARY backup so it should be as fast as possible not caring about occupied space (!). Althought I added -zip parameter to enable compression if you are running out of space on your sd.
4. Installed ROM is clean with no additional apps installed (excluding those needed by the script)
5. You have basic knowledge about bash scripting, because I take NO RESPONSIBILITY of the script behavior or data loss it can do.

So, basically it is simple. It runs like this:

1. On old ROM type: sbackup -backup
2. Flash your ROM
3. On new rom type: sbackup -restore

Just like that. The applications data is tar'ed in one file per application so if you want to get rid of any, just delete it from backup directory. The directory name is same as script name on sdcard but you can change it adding a parameter without a '-' sign at runtime (first non-option parameter is treated as backup directory path). The file is zipped because this forum disallows files without an extension so... it is zipped ;D

It was tested on my fresh LeeDroid 3.3.3 GB AFTER i installed some apps. I backed them up and then restored. All seems to be perfect right now, but I will test it more thoroghly very soon because I'm planninig to have CM7 based ROM too just to choose that I need Sense or not (two nandroids for fast switch weekly ;P).

With this script and MyBackup functionality of backing up contacts, sms, history and similar it should be quite complete approach to restore all the data needed on the fresh ROM. In the future maybe I will look at the MyBackup part too. Maybe.

Feel free to comment, use, suggest or anything you like, and have fun ;P.

 

[jgrimberg1979]

How do I run this script? Do i run it from sdcard or from system /bin? When i do it from system bin it says cannot create directory. When i run it from sdcard/sbackup it says permissions denied?

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

 

[krzych]

How do I run this script? Do i run it from sdcard or from system /bin? When i do it from system bin it says cannot create directory. When i run it from sdcard/sbackup it says permissions denied?

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

And thats why I mentioned in topic about not being a newbie (and I meant not forum newbie but more a linux newbie). The thing is, it's a simple script - without any user-proof capabilities, comments inside or something BUT...

But ok, I will try to help you run it. First of all, you have to set permissions to the script. It has to have executable permission to be run by the system (and I mean filesystem permission). This can be done by chmod instruction of busybox. Most of the times it's done like this:

chmod 755 filename

This is a reason of not running form sdcard if your sdcard is NOT ext filesystem (it is usually windows fat filesystem not to generate problems with reading it under windows).

Second thing to run is to have /system/bin/bash because first line of the script (a comment like this: #!/system/bin/bash) instructs busybox to execute script using bash. This can be simply changed by modifying this line, but you have to remember that changing the shell executing script have consequences. Differens shells have sometimes different syntax, althoght i wrote this script simply so it should run on most of them, especially sh.

Third thing is to have write permissions to the directory in which the backup will be created. In original version of the script it is /sdcard, because backup is made in /sdcard/sbackup. So, you have to check it (second error - problems with creating directory).

And a last tip - it can be run from ANYWHERE. Even if your partition does not alolow executing, you can do it like this:

bash-3.2# /sdcard/test
bash: /sdcard/test: /system/bin/bash: bad interpreter: Permission denied
bash-3.2# . /sdcard/test
OK
bash-3.2#

First try does not succeded, but second did. The trick is a dot which means to execute file with a shell not caring about why or permissions.

And thats most simple introduction I could write. It applies to ANY script you want to run.

Please anyone - if you want me to help, paste your results here because without a precise error message it can be very hard to deduce what caused for example permission denial or anything usual.

For now, I won't add any more error handling, but if there will be more users caring about, I will add it.