Google Pixel 4a update from /e/OS 1.21 to 2.0 files required

/e/OS Devices Google
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I do not like to make a clean install because there is always something missing afterwards, I may have not made a backup of everything. Banking apps need a new activation code by snail-mail. There are app data which you just cannot backup without root. I don’t like root on my device. An important example for me is the personal dictionary, which was built over years. That means without root you are not owning all your data even not with /e/ OS. From my perspective the security concept for data in Android serves Google and other cloud providers, but not the data owner, in terms of backups and restoring.

In the process I just finished, again I learned something. For example that Android 11 can’t read or write exFAT OTG, although it is possible to produce files bigger than 4 GB on the phone. I found that out because I wanted to save the 20 GB Signal Backup on an external USB drive instead of on my computer. The WhatsApp backup doesn’t reveal the place where it is saved in the app.

I agree with you, it is a good practice to make a clean install/reinstall of devices. Unfortunately, with Android it is not easy for me to retain all data, if I do not want to use the cloud.

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I finally did it and want again thank you all for your advice and support. Following, I describe what I did.

As I said, I would go for a dirty upgrade.

  • Most of my time went into backups of my data.
  • I checked the existence of the vendor part with the Windows version of payload-dumper https://github.com/ssut/payload-dumper-go in e-3.2-a15-20251023539040-community-sunfish.zip. It is there, so I decided to upgrade directly to e 3.2.
  • The installed recovery version on my phone is 1.21 and has only the update option “adb”. Therefore, I took this route from https://community.e.foundation/t/dirty-upgrade-to-e-os-t-is-possible-but-not-for-all-devices/59961/24
  • During the sideload process, the phone showed a message “Signature verification failed install anyway?” which I agreed to.
  • The reboot took a while, but the phone started like before, only some icons had to be grouped and arranged again.

Result: the dirty upgrade worked for a Google Pixel 4a from version 1.21-r to 3.2-a15.

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Congratulations for your serious and determination.

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thank you, version updated :slightly_smiling_face:

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yay, you can do useful seedvault backups now :slight_smile: As to 4GB on exfat OTG: wonder if writing to a f2fs filesystem via usb would’ve worked (probably now with A15 vs A11?).

Signal local backups (“backupv2”) will be friendlier sometime the coming months: in a folder vs one-big-file, also more “snapshotty” == space saving.

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I will look at the seedvault backups.

I tested a f2fs formatted USB stick on the Pixel 4a with /e/ OS e-3.2-a15-20251023539040-community-sunfish and it didn’t work. It only offered to format the stick.

As for Signal backups it would be good, if there would be a possibility to limit the file size to 4 GB to make backups directly on an FAT formatted stick. But that’s off topic.

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