confused on how to do a complete backup of system

dln949

BQ Aquarius M10 HD, UBTouch 16.04.

I would like to do a complete backkup of this system to my desktop computer (Ubuntu 18.04). I thought I could use this command, which, as I understand, creates a type of "image" file for android devices:

adb backup -apk -all -system -obb -f /path/on/desktop/computer

However, that would not work with this device.

Then I found the discussion here: link text . (I do not know if this will do exactly what I want.) In the third entry @Flohack listed some instructions. (Sadly, for me, the rest of that discussioin quickly devolved into things I could not understand, except I saw things about phones being "bricked", which scared me off from trying the rest of what was in there.) However, I ran into two problems:

Within /data, there is nothing called "system-data", nor "user-data"; and,
When I proceeded with the instructions anyway just for giggles, I got this error message: "adb: error: failed to get feature set: no devices/emulators found".

So, how can I go about creating a complete system backup? My desire is that if I ever have a serious problem, I can simply restore the device back to an earlier state.

kwah

The instructions you are referring to are aiming to backup all data needed to restore system to previous condition (excluding operating system itself, I believe). It looks like it worked for some people, not for me, though.

But it helped me to make backup of all data my own way, including system settings (now my Fairphone even presents itself as "BQ Aquarius 4.5", when connected via BT ).

Back to the instruction.

system-data and user-data are visible in /data only when your device is booted in recovery mode. When system is booted normally they are accessible via different location.

That is:

Connect your device to PC
Run adb devices (output should list your device as recognized)
Run adb reboot recovery

Now you should be able to do adb shell and listing of /data should show these folders.

At this point your adb pull of both should be fine.