Google Pixel 8a (2025)
Setup

Table of Contents

• When the New Phone is Received
• Inital Setup on the Stock OS
• To Root or Not To Root
• Installing CyanogenMod (LineageOS) v22.2
  • Unlocking Bootloader, Installing LOS Recovery and LOS Image
  • LineageOS Initial Setup
  • Setting Up LineageOS Settings and Apps
• Launcher Icon Layout
• Android Backups: SeedVault
• Installing Magisk and Procedure Confirmation (on Pioneer)
• Google Pay on Rooted Phone

When the New Phone is Received

The first step is to make a documentation directory for the new phone, where the various ID numbers can be recorded. Suggestion: clone it from the old phone, but remove photos etc. specific to the old phone.

When Orion is set up and reasonably operational, which I hope to be soon, the old Selen will be renamed to Barbet and Orion will be renamed to Selen. The IP addresses follow the names; the MAC address stays with the chassis. Both phones are on Google Fi which uses eSIMs; rather than trying to move the currently active eSIM to the new phone, I expect that the setup program will provide a way to map my phone number to the new phone's preinstalled eSIM. [Yes this happened.]

What's in the box:

• The phone.
• USB cable, type C to type C, USB-2.0 according to a Google source, 3.x per a different source.
• SIM ejection tool, poke it in the tiny hole in the SIM tray cover, whose diameter is less than 0.9mm.
• Setup guide plus various regulatory statements. Content of the setup guide: Power it up and follow the on-screen instructions.
• No charger per commerce regulations in China and I think the European Union.

First steps:

• Copy down serial numbers etc. Particularly the MAC address and the IMEIs. The box label has the IMEIs but not the MAC address. There are two IMEIs, one for the physical SIM and one for an eSIM,
• An eSIM is a digital credential equivalent to the X.509 certificate hosted by the physical SIM, certifying your right to receive service from the carrier. CDMA carriers long ago switched from the physical RUIM to a digital credential. Google Fi (my carrier) uses eSIMs.
• Once I have the MAC address:
  • Add it to hostdata.db and install files such as /etc/ethers.
  • Rebuild the DHCP configuration so it knows Orion's MAC, so Orion will get its fixed IP addresses.
  • Reload the firewall so it will accept the phone's packets on Wi-Fi; I do MAC registration.
  • These steps were all done and tested, except I went directly to the new phone being Selen and the old one being Orion.
• Charge the phone. Usually a new phone is mostly charged, but this one was 14% charged out of the box.
• Turn on the phone with the stock OS. Go through Setup. Specifically, it will need the Wi-Fi password (QR code not supported). No, the new phone's setup produces a magic QR code, probably with a random ESSID and password for its own Wi-Fi, and the old phone can use that to communicate with the new phone.
• If the MAC address is not yet known, look in Settings-Network&Internet-Wi-Fi. Look at the Settings icon for the SSID you're connected to. Advanced-Network Details-Device MAC Address. But the default is to randomize the MAC address. Look for Privacy a few lines higher, and set it to Use Device MAC. (Then finish hostdata.db and firewall setup.)
• Finish setting up the stock OS and continue to the checkout procedure.

Inital Setup on the Stock OS

Going through the steps in Google's guide to import data etc. from an old Android phone.

• Make sure you have:

  • Old phone (charged) and its USB cable
  • New phone (charged). Anything over 50% will be fine, says jimc.
  • The new phone's type C to type C cable.
  • Wi-Fi working.
  • We're using eSIMs, but if a physical SIM were involved, you would need the SIM ejector when moving it to the new phone.

• Preparation to port your phone number to the new phone, if you're using an eSIM or a new physical SIM. Get on your carrier's app or website. It's likely that you have turned on port-out suppression so your number can't be stolen. Turn this off, so your number can be detached from your old phone. (And turn it back on after it works on the new phone.)

• Update the old phone's software. Back up user data. (Done)

• Create a Google account if you don't already have one. (Have one)

• SMS, Calendar and Contacts will sync to your Google account (if you use Google for these items, which I don't), also photos and videos. Let them sync off the old phone, later onto the new phone.

  On the old phone, open Settings-Accounts-(Google account). Click on Google Account — This controls what happens to your data once Google has it (not what I need now). Click on Account Sync. My stuff was synced this morning, no need to sync again. I'm afraid that the important stuff like device settings and app list aren't synced from this page.

• Power on the new phone. Hold down the power button for 3 secs at least, until a splash screen appears. For stock it's the Google logo; for LOS it's a 10 sec warning that your bootloader is unlocked and the GRU could have messed with everything on the phone. Give it some time for initial boot because it has to recompile all the Java bytecode. On the stock OS it took about 2 minutes; only 1 min for LOS because there were fewer factory installed apps.

Steps in the Pixel 8a (Android-14) setup wizard:

When the phone finishes booting, it will run the setup wizard. Select language and accessibility options (I didn't change any). The default language is English. Hit Get Started.

First screen: Set up using another device. Click Pixel or Android.

They give you a magic QR code. Scan it on the old phone. I'm speculating here: the new phone turns on a hotspot with a random ESSID and password, which the old phone uses to copy stuff to the new phone. They say they could also use the USB cable if Wi-Fi is hosed, but I didn't see an option to decline working Wi-Fi. What about NFC? On the old phone I tried the camera app; it will do the MIME thing for some schemas but evidently didn't recognize this one. I used QR Scanner (ad supported, hiss, boo), which worked; both phones said they were copying stuff.

The new phone eventually asks for your pattern or other authentication method like a PIN, transferred from the old phone. And it installs this method on the new phone (if the box is checked).

Important step: Connect to Mobile Network -- download the eSIM. Confirm your carrier. Move your number to the new phone? Heads up! This deactivates your number on your old phone. Unfortunately your Google Fi service can't be activated right now. You'll be prompted to activate as soon as you've finished setting up your device. Code: B081 (or BO81?) The reason was that I had port-out suppression turned on.

Set up fingerprint lock. I'm going to skip, not try to do this in the middle of other critical steps.

Set up face unlock. Again I'm going to skip.

Copy data from your Android device: apps, photos, contacts, and more. Yes I'll do this. It's making an inventory of what to copy, 4.4Gb to copy out of 88Gb available, will take about 11 minutes, so it says. Bluetooth? Or Wi-Fi? Probably the latter. Items selected to copy: 78 apps, 66 contacts, 76Mb photos, 18Mb music and other audio (at least 1 ringtone), SMS messages, MMS attachments, device settings (including Wi-Fi passwords), call history. Your Google calendar, contacts, photos, Gmail would be synced also if I had any of these. Execute. It did something for about 5 secs, then proceeded to the next page. Actually it was copying stuff while handling Google Services etc etc, and it finished (notice on the old phone) in maybe about 11 minutes.

Note: in Settings - Backup or Copy Data you can do this copy process ad-hoc.

Google Services: These were turned on: Use location, allow scanning. These were declined: Send usage and diagnostic data. On this page you can't opt out of: Install updates and apps. (You can change the automatic update setting in Settings.) Hit Accept.

Google Services: Back up your device. Decline, I'll use Seedvault.

Read the warranty. It's also available in Settings-About Phone-Warranty; you don't have to read it now.

Agree to the terms of service, arbitration agreement, and privacy policy.

Set up Google Assistant. Not a chance, hit Skip. Assistant on lock screen? Hit Skip again. Actually this could be useful in an emergency if I were willing to trust Google Assistant.

Check out fast with your phone. Set up Google Pay. Skip this, investigate if it works on LOS, later.

Anything else? Available items: translations, identify music, set up the always-on display, prepare for emergency (contact info?), adjust your font, add another email account, install additional apps. I did none of these.

Sign up for Google hardware email updates, i.e. sign up for their spam. Skip.

Results of copying: everything requested was copied. As for Apps, it has a list of them and will install them when setup finishes.

All set, hit the home button now.

There are 3 notifications pending:

• Google Fi not fully activated, tap to finish activation.
• Installing apps (in progress). Finished 73 of 73 apps.
• Click here to get Android-15 (except it disappeared; I did it later from Settings - System - Software Updates).
• 46 new updates. Evidently my old phone's no auto updates setting was honored: click on this to go to the updater, and start it downloading. Finally finished.

Up to this point it's gone from 100% charge to 90%.

Not all app data is necessarily copied. Wireguard has no tunnels. I have files in /storage/emulated/0/jimc, but only files with approved extensions were copied: png, jpeg, jpg, mp3, but none of the txt or html files.

• Google Fi is still waiting to be set up. The port out feature is enabled for this number. You need to turn it off, to port out your number. Click the button. Do something involving Chrome which gives you a toggle to turn off port-out protection. It will take about 5min to port the number. Once it happens, test voice calls and SMS (passed). Then in the Fi app, select a group member (jimc), scroll down to Phone Settings - Privacy & Security, scroll down to Number Lock. Turn it on.

  One disappointment: it did not place app icons on the launcher screen. I was hoping it would restore icons in their original positions, but I'm going to have to copy them all from the app drawer.

  I discovered these tidbits of information:

  • The normal way to see the IMEI is in System-About Phone. You can also display the baseband processor's copy of the information by dialling *#06# . It shows you:

    • IMEI: International Mobile Equipment Identifier (the one you're currently using, SIM vs. eSIM)
    • ICCID: Integrated Circuit Card Identifier, identifies the SIM
    • MSISDN: Your phone number, per the SIM
    • Serial number -- This seems to be the only place to find it.
    • MEID: Mobile Equipment Identifier, like IMEI. Seen on older phones but not the Pixel 8a.
    • (The same dial code worked on the Sony Pioneer and the Pixel 5a.)

  • Fastboot (bootloader) has a menu choice for Barcodes, which shows most of this stuff with a barcode for each.

Limited Additional Setup on the Stock OS

I want to try these out on the stock OS, without putting a lot of time into it:

• Set the device's name, and the lock screen text.
• Pair my earbuds (Bluetooth) and see if they work.
• Set my preferred ringtone.
• Set up fingerprint authentication. See if this works better than on the Pixel 5a.
• Set up face ID.
• Make a complete list of apps that ended up on the phone; try to separate apps installed by me, from apps installed by default.

Device's Name

The device's name (Selen) is important since it is the friendly name used for Bluetooth connections. Set it in Settings - About Phone - Device Name (the first item).

Go to Settings - Display - Lock Screen - Add Text to Lock Screen. I put the device name and my e-mail address on the lock screen, as another possible way to recover my phone if lost.

Bluetooth Pairing

For the Anker Soundcore A20 earbuds, the Soundcore app automates most of the procedure.

• Wake up the earbuds; put them in your ears.
• On the old phone, in Settings - Connected Devices -- Bluetooth, select the Soundcore Sleep A20 and on the resulting page, forget it. Actually it's legal for it to be paired with multiple peers, and you only need to disconnect it, but since the old phone is being retired, forgetting (deleting the pair relation) is more appropriate.
• On the new phone, (install and) run the Soundcore app. It will search for relevant devices and will find your earbuds. Click on that row.
• Go through the setup steps; if you already have your plug seals installed you don't have to do anything; just review the instructions.
• You're now paired, and the phone's apps (e.g. VLC) can play audio on the earbuds.

Pairing to a generic peer, like Xena (laptop):

• Remove pairing to the old phone, which is also called Selen.
• On the new phone, in the notification menu, long-press Bluetooth. Alternatively, Settings - Connected Devices.
• Under Connection Preferences, the available modes are: Bluetooth, NFC (already on), Cast, Printing, Chromebook, Quick Share, Android Auto. Click on Bluetooth.
• This can probably be done from either direction but I'm starting on the new phone.
• On the peer (laptop), make it discoverable. Click on the Bluetooth icon in the notification area and it gives you a control panel. Under Adapter, click on the already selected one, called Xena. Visibility setting: it should be Hidden; click on Temporarily Visible. It stays visible for 3 minutes.
• On the phone, click on Pair New Device. It finds Xena right away. Xena pops a dialog with a number, so does Selen. Check that the numbers match. Hit Pair on the phone, then Confirm on the laptop.
• If audio is playing on the phone, it will than ask Xena for permission to play the audio there. If you dumbly accept, the audio will start playing on the laptop's low quality speakers. Click on the device list row for Selen. Click on Disconnect which is the top menu choice. The sound will go back to Selen and the connected earbuds.

So that was a lot less painful than the experience on older phones.

Setting Ringtones

Ringtones are set in Settings - Sound & Vibration. On the old phone the Phone Ringtone was called Draco, and the Default Notification Sound was CyanDoink. The stock OS gives you a ringtone of Your New Adventure and notification Eureka. Very wimpy. For choosing ringtones I'd better shut off the Bluetooth music (I don't want Nuclear Launch through earbuds) and retire to someplace where my wife won't hear me.

Growl. I downloaded AOSP CyanDoink from Native-Ringtones.com, but online suggestions for how to set a user file as a ringtone or notification sound were ineffective; the sound picker for stock Android-15 lacks the icon for picking a user file.

I ended up with these choices: Ringtone is Pixel Sounds - Hotline (sounds like an old fashioned phone); notification sound is Sound Matters - Crested Francolin at Dawn (a bird call, loud enough to be heard in a noisy environment) (CyanDoink is better).

Fingerprint Authentication

The Pixel 5a had a capacitive reader on the back cover, while the Pixel 8a has unknown technology (believed to be optical) in a spot in the lower center of the screen. I had no luck at all getting the 5a's sensor to recognize that I even have fingers. A lot of people complain that the 8a's sensor won't work for them, while a lot of others say it's totally reliable. One person said to set up the same finger in 4 slots, doing it in total darkness. Then do the same finger in the remaining slot in normal daylight. Let's see if this does anything for me.

Open Settings - Security & Privacy - Device Unlock - Face & Fingerprint Unlock. It wants to see your pattern, password or PIN. Click on Fingerprint Unlock, then Add Fingerprint. It give you a short paragraph on what to do. Choose which finger to add. Hit Start. It shows a picture of a fingerprint in the lower center of the screen; put your finger a little bit firmly on it and centered. It will turn the screen under your finger to full brightness for a moment. Lift your finger and put it down again but turned toward the tip or both sides, corners, etc, so the sensor sees the whole fingerprint. Do this many times; there's a progress circle; it seemed like 20 to 30 times. If you successfully followed the instructions, it will tell you that your finger is enrolled. You could then do another finger, or the same finger with different lighting.

Partially following the forum poster's suggestion, I enrolled one finger in total darkness (under 1 lux), then the same finger in normal indoor daylight (250 lux). Testing, I put the display to sleep (press power button), then woke it (tap screen), and put my finger on the fingerprint icon. First in daylight, I got about 10 successes and one failure in which my finger was clearly off center. Then back to the dark closet, I tried it 10 times with no failures. This was a big success!

Face Unlock

You set this up on a neighboring page: Settings - Security & Privacy - Device Unlock - Face & Fingerprint Unlock. Click on Face Unlock. The procedure is simpler than for fingerprints. I did this in 250 lux indoor daylight. Read the cautions and click I agree. It wants you to look straight ahead with the phone directly in front of you so your face is centered in the target circle. It thinks about it for a few seconds, then tells you to tilt your head back, so it's looking at you from where you would normally hold your phone. You're done!

I then tested it again but not so many times. I put the display to sleep, then woke it with a tap, and on a success it showed an unlock icon and the text Unlocked by Face. Swipe up to remove the lock screen. On a failure it will offer the next authentication method (fingerprint, pattern, password, PIN), but if you turn to look more directly at it, it may then succeed in a face unlock. They warn you that in dim light, face unlock likely won't work and it will give you the alternate method.

See here for why LineageOS (LOS) refuses to support Face Unlock on 99% of phones even if the stock OS has it, and recommends that users not (yet) on LOS should adopt their policy.

WireGuard VPN Tunnels

When apps were copied from the old phone, WireGuard was included, but while many apps had their data copied, WireGuard didn't; it was probably interdicted by the app because the phone's private key is part of the data. I exfiltrated the tunnel configurations like this:

• I renamed the old phone to Barbet, in Settings - About Phone - Name (the first item).
• Then I paired it with the laptop Xena; see the description with the audio test.
• WireGuard dotdotdot menu has an option to export tunnels to a zip file, in /storage/emulated/0/Download/wireguard-export.zip . This is on the old phone.
• I used the Total Commander app to exfiltrate. Navigate to the directory. Long press on the filename. In the menu that appears, select Move/Copy/Send via Bluetooth. In the resulting dialog, ignore/accept the proposed filename and click on Send via Bluetooth. It asks which peer to export to; select Xena.
• The file appears on Xena in its preconfigured download directory, plus a notification box. Change the mode to 600 (read-write owner only) due to the private keys inside.
• Extract the payloads, one file per tunnel, with this command: unzip wireguard-export.zip
• Change their modes to 600 also.
• You're going to generate QR codes. Temporarily expand the terminal window to about 85x45 bytes, so they fit.
• For each tunnel conf file do these steps:
• Show the QR code by: qrencode -r itsname.conf -t UTF8 -o -
• On the new phone, in the WireGuard app click on the plus icon (add a tunnel) and choose Scan a QR Code.
• Hold the phone parallel to the laptop's screen but unable to see the screen. Sneak up on the displayed QR code. Get its left or right side in the targeting box and move the phone farther or closer to the screen so the QR code fits. Now move the phone sideways so the whole thing is in the box. Promptly the phone will turn off the camera and will pop a dialog box asking for a friendly name for the tunnel.
• And repeat for the other conf files.
• On the laptop and the old phone, shred all the secret files when you're confident that you won't have to do something over.

All the tunnels worked with no fiddling, except for one that has unrelated issues on the server. The new phone is now using WireGuard routinely.

To Root or Not To Root

When I had my Galaxy S5 rooted, what were the effects on the phone? That is, what did I use rooting for? And what negative effects were there?

• In Android-11 and earlier, you need root to set the clock. The app Smart Time Sync can set it from GPS and/or NTP. On the non-rooted Pioneer I relied on the carrier's time. T-Mobile provides time accurate to 2 secs, though there are nonspecific reports that some carriers' clocks are much worse.

• Media (music and video) has paranoid protection probably involving DRM. With root I could get non-DRM content (legally owned) from my library onto the phone, so I can perform it without a network connection. I haven't been able to do this on the non-root Pioneer.

• Backing up the Trim Area I expect will be a lot more accomplishable with root. If I use TWRP, and if afterward I'm locked out of TWRP (like now), can I restore the backup?

• Other backups of system data are feasible with root.

• Troubleshooting and investigation often requires root.

• On the other hand, banking and payment apps like Google Pay are paranoid about being hacked, for good reason, If the phone is simply rooted, they will not work; there is a uniform API called SafetyNet that they can call to detect if the phone has been tampered with. Magisk is the currently popular hack to get around this.

• It would be acceptable if the phone were sometimes rooted and sometimes not, during which time payment apps would work (I hope). Magisk has a feature to do this easily.

• The fight between Google Play Services and Magisk is a cat and mouse game, or more like Whack-a-Mole. An upgrade to Google Play may knock out the payment apps until Magisk gets updated. I will need to keep old, vulnerable versions of Google Play Services for when this happens.

• The LOS installation instructions warn that just unlocking the bootloader may be enough to trigger SafetyNet, so I may already be locked out of payment apps whether or not I root the phone.

Conclusion: being rooted is not a number one priority for my use of the phone.

Installing LineageOS (CyanogenMod) Version 22.2

Web resources: (Akita is the code name for the Pixel 8a chassis and for LOS files built for it.)

• LineageOS info page about the Akita, containing links to:
• Directory of LOS images (zip files) for Akita
• LOS installation instructions for Akita

During installation the new phone will be wiped totally. Data that you want to save should be backed up. I've created only one file that I want to keep. Exfiltrating it now via Bluetooth. [Done]

You should obtain in advance the current LOS image, vendor_boot image, GApps (Google Apps) package and any others needed. (Use GApps in web searches, not google apps, and the instructions have a direct link to their index page.) LOS instructions put links to the images on the pages where they're installed; it's a lot better to download them all in advance.

• Obtain boot.img, dtbo.img, vendor_kernel_boot.img, vendor_boot.img from their download directory for the Akita device. You will also want the main LOS image file; as this is written it is called lineage-22.2-20250521-nightly-akita-signed.zip (with the version and date) (1.3Gb, 9.5min for me). Normally you will use the first (most recent) set of links, but back-version files are available if needed.

  To verify the signature on the LOS zip file that you just downloaded, you can use their verifier Javascript. Click on the button and it will give you a file browser; select the downloaded zip file; after a few seconds it will report success (or failure) and the Distinguished Name of the certificate whose private key was used to generate the signature.

• LOS Wiki overview of GApps. On this page choose the correct GApps bundle: in my case it's LOS-22 (Android-15) for ARM64. Download it now. A SHA256 sum is also available. 484Mb download, took 2.5min. Checksum is OK.

Unlocking Bootloader, Installing LOS Recovery and LOS Image

The following steps are from the LOS installation instructions for Akita, which should be read (and obeyed) in parallel, plus added clarification by jimc.

• 0a. WARNING, your DRM keys will be gone forever (See extensive discussion of this issue for Pioneer.) The rest of the phone will be totally wiped, so back up user data.

• 0b. The phone needs to be charged. Anything over 50% should be plenty, says jimc.

• 0c. Up/downgrade the stock OS to the Android version on which your LOS image is based: Android-15 for LOS-22.x. If you can't get the needed stock image, install a matching back-version LOS image, and upgrade that in a separate step. It's generally recommended to upgrade one major version at a time, e.g. LOS-16 to LOS-17 to LOS-18 to LOS-19.

• 3. Connect the USB cable to the host. How you connect made a lot of difference on the Pioneer. See here for how I got this working. For Akita I used the provided USB-C to C cable from my laptop's USB-C port to the phone. All adb commands worked on the first try.

• Unlocking the bootloader. From a tutorial on Droidwin by Sadique Hassan, 2021-08-27; jimc has created this summary and has added a few key items. The tutorial matches the LOS instructions (except for comments).

  • Back up user files, which will be wiped.
  • You will need the adb utility. Check recency of versions on developer.android.com. Either install their zip file or install from your distro (which is more sanitary if the version isn't ancient). The OpenSuSE package for Tumbleweed, as of 2025-05-26, is android-tools version 35.0.2 while developer.android.com has v36.0.0 (next version) (I'll use SuSE).
  • In the stock OS, open Settings-System-Advanced-Developer Options-OEM Unlocking (turn on). Also enable USB Debugging.
  • The USB cable should still be connected to the phone. On the host execute adb devices; make sure your phone answers. The key shown is the device serial number; check it in About Phone.
  • On the host execute adb reboot bootloader. It showed its info screen after about 3 secs, with this content. This is coming from the stock OS, but I'm almost certain that LOS does not replace the bootloader; behavior and info are identical. The Enter Reason item tells why it thinks fastboot was started.

    Product revision: akita MP1.0 B1
    Bootloader version: akita-15.2-12862154
    Baseband version: g5300o-241205-250127-B-12973597
    Serial number: (14 bytes)
    Secure boot: PRODUCTION
    NOS production: yes
    DRAM: 8Gb Micron LPDDR5
    UFS: 128Gb Micron
    Device state: locked (unlockable)
    Boot slot: b
    Enter reason: reboot bootloader
    UART: disabled
    

  • On the host, execute fastboot devices and make sure your phone answers. [It does.]
  • On the host, execute fastboot flashing unlock. I needed to confirm on the phone. Use the volume keys to select Unlock, and the power key to confirm.
  • It performs the unlock procedure and wipes user data, taking about 12sec, after which it shows the info screen again. (It may or may not have rebooted back into fastboot; I can't tell.) It now shows the device status: unlocked.
  • Due to the factory reset, you will need to re-enable USB debugging for subsequent steps. So reboot to the stock OS by pressing the power button (menu choice Start) or executing fastboot reboot. Now when booting it shows for about 10sec a warning about the unlocked bootloader.
  • Since it's been factory reset, it wants to do setup again. Skip all time-consuming steps including don't copy apps from the old phone. Re-enable USB debugging. Confirm the connection to the host.
  • On the host, execute adb devices and make sure your phone answers. [It does.]

• 4. We're going to run the bootloader (fastboot) again. On the host:
  adb reboot bootloader

  On the host, execute: fastboot devices
  and make sure your phone answers.

• Now install four images ending with Recovery. Either change to the directory where the images were saved, or prepend the directory name to the filenames. Assuming you used the standard filenames, execute on the host in this order (actually the order probably doesn't matter):
  fastboot flash boot boot.img
  fastboot flash dtbo dtbo.img
  fastboot flash vendor_kernel_boot vendor_kernel_boot.img
  fastboot flash vendor_boot vendor_boot.img
  (Each one takes under 2sec.)

• Fastboot is still running, and you want to boot into Recovery. use the Volume-Up key to cycle to the Recovery Mode item, and press the power button to boot it. (Volume-Down also works but goes through more choices.)

  It thinks for about 10 sec, displays the warning about the locked bootloader (10 sec), then the Google splash screen, then the LOS Recovery front page.

• LOS image installation: The phone should be running your custom Recovery. If not, do the previous step.

  • Hit Factory Reset, then Format Data/Factory Reset (and confirm). This wipes user data again, among other items. It takes about 15sec. The LOS instructions say it sets up the future user data without encryption, but that didn't seem to happen on Pioneer. Nor on Barbet or Akita; Settings-Security-Encryption&Credentials-Encrypt Phone says it's still encrypted.
  • Return to the main menu (left arrow in the top logo row). Hit Apply Update. Pick Apply from ADB. The menu shows ADB Sideload (and Cancel); it's now waiting for the host to send the LOS image.
  • On the host, execute: adb -d sideload <LOS_image.zip> . Supply the correct filename of the LOS image. It works for about 2.5min showing a few messages; most of the time is spent copying the image. Tap the screen (in the lower area) if the screen saver blanks it. When done it shows the Apply Update screen again. Using LOS's vendor_boot.img I got no error messages, but they warn that with some recovery programs, adb will report progress up to 47% and then show various bogus error messages such as No Error or Undefined Error 0 which are reporting success. The Pioneer with TWRP does this. Blow off the non-error message. On Akita, transfer stopped at 47% but there was no error message, bogus or not.
  • It finishes by offering to reboot recovery, so you can install additional packages. This isn't in the LOS instructions. Tell it yes.
  • I'm installing GApps. Do not let it boot LOS. Once Recovery gets booted up again, repeat the last 2 steps starting from Apply Update, sending the GApps bundle. It takes about 1.5min to install. Ignore the error message about unable to mount metadata etc; it was wiped. Whatever key GApps is signed with, it isn't LOS's key, and the LOS Recovery will complain about a bad signature. Blow this off; hit Install Anyway.
  • If you're installing Magisk or some other add-on, repeat the above steps. The current recommendation for Magisk is to install the Magisk app and do the whole job from there.
  • Disconnect the USB cable.
  • Return to the main menu and hit Reboot System Now.
  • You will boot into your new LOS. Allow extra time because it has to recompile the Java bytecode. The Pioneer took 3 minutes to boot and the instructions mention up to 15 minutes, probably on older phones. The Barbet took 2 mins to first boot the stock OS, and only 1 min (exactly) to boot LOS.

LineageOS Initial Setup

• When the new OS has finished booting, it shows the setup wizard. You can change the language (en_US is the default) and vision settings. Hit start. We're using the Android-15 setup program so this is going to be very similar to what I did for the stock OS.
• Set Up Using Another Device: Boot up the other device (old phone), On the new phone,, click on Android Device. It does several steps, the most important of which is for the old phone to scan the QR code shown by the new phone.
• No Google Fi app; later we'll have to download it, then set that up.
• Copy Data From Your Android Device. Choose What to Copy (everything). It's copying in the background, about 9min. It continues to more stuff.
• Give permissions for Google Services (no Google Drive backup, don't auto delete old stuff, yes use location, yes allow scanning when Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is supposed to be off, don't send usage data to Google, accept the possibility of auto updates (suppress this later)).
• Nearby Share: Since I don't have any nearby contacts who use Android (they use iOS), I'm declining this.
• Talk to Google Hands Free: This means Google Assistant or Gemini will listen for your cue phrase. Not a chance, decline it.
• Copying is done, close the app on the old phone.
• Seedvault backup restoration: I'm going to try this but it's probably going to fail because the backup isn't available by DAV. They offer a USB drive, but I have to figure out how to connect it. Later. If I had a USB OTG cable, this would be a very good option.
• Send diagnostic and usage data to LOS. I turn this one on (but not for Google on the stock OS).
• Dark theme.
• Navigation: 3 buttons (vs. gestures, which mostly still work).
• Apparently it's finished with user interaction with setup -- next is to install a gazillion apps. Then, update existing apps.
• Very, very, very nice: it has my app icons in their proper places on the launcher screens.
• Also nice: it has my proper notification sound (CyanDoink) and ringtone (Draco).

Now that I have all my apps, let's activate Google Fi.

• Knowing who I am, It's doing the setup in the background.
• Set up various stuff: Wi-Fi Calling,
• Your phone isn't connecting to our network. Contact Support and we'll help you.
• It never did tell me what the problem was, but once I logged in to my Google account, it finished the setup.

What the Setup Wizard seems to have transferred (or set up anew):

• Wi-Fi set up anew, type password, no QR code.
• Gmail account, copied.
• Unlock pattern, copied.
• Google Services permissions, set up anew.
• Most but not all apps.
• App data, so most apps don't have to be configured again.
• User data from /storage/emulated/0 including photos and music, but only files with approved mime-types, not jimc's important stuff.
• Most settings and options, not including settings that are new in the new LOS version.

Setting Up LineageOS Settings and Apps

Now I have LineageOS running on the phone. Here's a journal of what I did to set it up.

• See here for setting the device's name.

• Wi-Fi still randomizes the MAC. Follow to Settings - Network & Internet - Internet - Wi-Fi - CouchNet - Privacy, and select Use Device MAC. Turn off, then turn on Wi-Fi to renew your DHCP address, getting the fixed IP that goes with that MAC.

• The Setup Wizard's copier apparently copies only files with an approved mime-type, i.e. photos, audio or video. Not including my text files, SSH keys, HTTP directory, etc. Transferring those files will be an important early step.

• Re-do the miscellaneous setup for the stock OS:

  • Pairing my Bluetooth earbuds and laptop. [Done]
  • Set up fingerprint authentication. [Partial, need to enroll a finger in darkness.]
  • Send over the WireGuard tunnels, [Done and tested.]
  • Install my root certificate for https. Settings Security & Privacy - More… - Encryption & Credentials - User Credentials. The installer seems unwilling to install a new CA cert unless your phone is rooted, and the Play Store doesn't seem to have any apps that can get around this. Solution: in Firefox, make an exception for my domain. Yuck.
  • Set up face unlock. The stock OS handles this very analogously to fingerprints, but in LOS that setting doesn't exist (Settings - Security & Privacy - Device Unlock - Face & Fingerprint Unlock - Face Unlock). There's a possible setting to teach Google Assistant to do a face match; do I want to touch that? There are face unlock apps but am I too paranoid to use them? A LOS developer explains that most face unlockers just take a picture of your face and match it with the stored face model. A paper photo of your face would do as well. iPhone and a very few Android phones have a pair of infrared cameras, so they can recognize if the target's 3D shape is humanoid, and it's very hard to paint the fake so the infrared spectrum comes out right. Conclusion: LOS refuses to support face unlock on 99% of the phones, even if the stock OS has it.
  • Add to my list of apps that ended up on the phone to include the ones specific to LineageOS.

• Additional immediate-early apps that I need to set up first because I'm actively using them:

  s
  • Firefox (but not yet detailed setup). [Done]
  • Bitwarden [Done]
  • Set up wireless debugging (to import user data) [Done]
    adb push /home/backup/selen/sdcard/jimc/. /sdcard/jimc/.
    Ditto for htdocs.
  • Import the latest instance, since the above backup, of any files that changed, specifically the blood pressure file. [Done]
  • Jota+ (to edit blood pressure file) [Done]
  • Firefox bookmarks (to find the music to play)
  • VLC (plays music, default setup is actually fine) [Done]
  • Y.a. Phase Beam live wallpaper
  • Night Clock (which is my alarm clock)

• On Firefox for Mobile, the home page is the new tab initial page, with pinned sites, recent bookmarks, etc. For the normal desktop kind of home page, set a bookmark and jump to that. Firefox for Mobile used to accept file:// URLs, but no longer; it silently displays nothing. So I installed NiM Web Server and configured it to serve my homedir to localhost:8080, and set the bookmark to that.

• NEEDS WORK Import the CFT root cert. It's on https://diamond.cft.ca.us/~certauth/ and Firefox doesn't have the trust anchor. Make an exception and download it. But none of the importation procedures will install the cert: download and open with the native cert installer; Settings-Security-Encryption&Credentials-Install a Cert; StrongSwan cert installer.

• NEEDS WORK Import jimc's user cert (for use with the VPNs). But when it installed the PKCS#12 file it asked for the password encrypting the private key, then circulated saying extracting for at least 5min.

• In LOS-22 the launcher icon layout is copied from the old phone.

Now I'm going to go through Settings and see what's available. I expect that most will be informational (like Wi-Fi scan results) and most of the rest will be left at defaults or at whatever value was imported from the old phone; only changed settings are shown here.

• Network&Internet-Internet-WiFi-CouchNet (settings): In Share you can get a QR code with the password of the SSID, or under Add Device you can have it read a QR code off someone else's phone or a printed card. Under Privacy choose Use Device MAC if DHCP needs to know who you are, which CouchNet does. The IPv4+6 addresses, default route, DNS servers, and theoretical link speeds are shown at the bottom of this page.
• Network&Internet-Hotspot&Tethering-WiFi Hotspot: Fill in the Hotspot Name (SSID), turn on Security: WPA2-Personal, and configure a (good) password.
• Network&Internet-Private DNS: it's pre-filled with surya.jfcarter.net, but is turned off. This is DNS over TLS, and Surya (and Jacinth) have the server, but for my use-case it has few benefits and is a hassle when debugging network issues. So I'm leaving it off.
• Apps-Default Apps-Browser: My choice is Firefox. The default is Jelly (org.lineageos.jelly), labelled Browser under its icon. In the stock OS the default is Chrome, but in LOS you have to install it yourself (if you want it).
• Apps-Default Apps-Home-Settings-Show Google App: Turn off. If this were on, the default, swiping right from the home screen would run it. At least in the stock app, its default behavior is to show a newsfeed.
• Apps-(Name of app): Several of these are going to need special settings, to be done later. [Now all done.]
• Notifications-Do Not Disturb-People-Starred Contacts: turn on.
• Notifications-Do Not Disturb-Schedules-Sleeping: was imported from the old phone. 23:00 to 07:00, alarm will terminate the schedule.
• Notifications-Do Not Disturb-Display Options-Custom: I don't remember setting this up but it's probably imported. Choices: if the screen is off, don't wake. If on, don't pop notifications on the screen, and hide from pull-down shade. I think I'd better review these settings. NEEDS WORK
• Notifications-Wireless Emergency Alerts: everything on except state and local tests (which I found annoying).
• Sound-Phone Ringtone: Draco (imported, and they didn't randomize the names this time).
• Sound-Adaptive Sound: turned on. When playing on the phone's speaker it turns up the volume in a noisy environment.
• Sound-Default Notification Sound: CyanDoink (imported).
• Sound-Default Alarm Sound: Hassium (default), which is horrible. I changed to a music track, Walk in the Forest, which is easily snarfable on the Internet. Also check out Nuclear Launch and Rooster.
• Display-Lock Screen-Privacy: Sensitive content only when unlocked.
• Display-Lock Screen-Add Text: "Selen -- jimc@jfcarter.net"
• Display-Lock Screen-Double Line Clock: turn off. I think it looks ugly.
• Display-Lock Screen-Tap to check phone: This is for waking up the display. You can also put the screen to sleep by double tapping on the status bar. These supplement power button actions, and are on by default. I like both of them better than pressing the power button.
• Display-Lock Screen-Lift to check phone: turn off. Annoying.
• Display-Screen Timeout: 5 min, and Screen Attention turned on. This means if you're looking at the screen, e.g. reading something, it doesn't count toward the screen timeout delay.
• Display-Dark Theme: turn on, may be the default on this phone. An OLED screen (vs. IPS or other light valve) uses zero power to show a black pixel, so the dark theme is recommended on this phone.
• Display-Font Size: There are 7 levels in -3…+3 and the default for text appears to be -1 (but this could also be their interpretation of my setting on the old phone). I might make it one step bigger. There is also a zoomer for everything (which adds to the text size); default is 0 which I kept. You could also turn on bold or high contrast text.
• Display-Rotation: The default is to rotate to match local gravity (except the lock screen doesn't rotate), and all orientations are allowed except 180°. I turned that one on too, There's a rotation lock in the quick settings panel, preventing rotation e.g. if you're reading in bed and the phone isn't vertical.
• Display-Screen Saver: Turn off; if I want the screen saved I'll put it to sleep, or rely on the sleep timeout.
• Display-Tap to Sleep: It's on by default and I like it better than pressing the power button.
• Wallpaper-Home Screen-Icon Shape: the choices are:
  • Default: A real circle.
  • Pebble: Subtly triangularly bulged circle
  • Square: Really square (too square)
  • Vessel: Square with rounded corners and two notches on each side; think of some coffee mugs.
  • Tapered Rect: An octagon with straight sides. The correct term is chamfered, not tapered.
  • Teardrop: Circle with the lower right corner squarified
  • Rounded Rect: Square with slightly rounded corners
  • Squircle: Hyperellipse with exponent 3 or 4, basically a square with curved sides and rounded corners. Pretty good, actually. This is the one I chose.
• Display-Wallpaper&Style: The default on-device wallpaper is kind of a blue shape with the upper left corner black. It works well with the dark theme. Half of the wallpapers are the same shape in different colors, the blue being best. I really want Phase Beam back (live wallpaper). Create Wallpaper doesn't seem to do anything — it requires artificial intelligence support which the stock OS has but LOS doesn't. I kept the default dark theme and 4x5 icon grid. You can get to this page with a long press in the home page's background.
• Security-Screen Lock: during initial setup I changed to Pattern (3x3). I should think about a new, more complex pattern. NEEDS WORK
• Security-Fingerprint: This failed on both the stock OS and LOS-19. See the checkout section for a little more detail. NEEDS WORK
• Security-Device Admin Apps-Find My Device: turn on. We're already opted in by default to Find My device; this setting lets the user to tell the mother ship to tell the phone to lock itself or erase itself (factory reset). Default is off; I turned it on.
• Security-Encryption&Credentials: I'm having trouble to import the CFT root cert and my user cert, needed for the VPNs. NEEDS WORK
• Security-Confirm SIM Deletion: For eSIMs, which I don't have. But if I did, I would want a confirmation before deleting it. They don't say what kind of confirmation though.
• Privacy-Trust-Restrict USB: Turn on. This forbids USB devices to be plugged in when the screen is locked.
• Privacy-LineageOS Statistics: This is on by default. They send to the mother ship: a GUID identifying the phone, the chassis name (Akita), the LOS version, the country (US) (I guess where the phone currently is, or where the carrier is), and the carrier's name.
• Privacy-Autofill with Google: Not a chance, turn off.
• Safety&Emergency-Emergency Information: Filled in. For paramedics etc. to use the feature:
  • Wake up the phone.
  • On the lock screen swipe up.
  • Tap Emergency Call at the bottom.
  • It gives you a dialpad (you could call 911) and a label Emergency Information at the top. Click the label.
  • The emergency information that the owner entered is shown. You can call the emergency contacts from this screen.
• Passwords&Accounts: Now that the PIM server is upgraded, sync by CardDAV Sync and CalDAV Sync have been set up.
• System-Languages&Input-On Screen Keyboard: Where is Hacker's Keyboard? Installed and made selectable; also I suppressed Google Voice Typing.
• System-Buttons-Show Arrow Keys: Turn on. Very nice, when the keyboard is shown, then on the main button bar there will be a small arrow at each end that moves the cursor.
• System-Buttons-Home Long Press: Default is Search Assistant, I changed to No Action.
• System-Buttons-Power Menu-Advanced Restart: turn on, offers recovery or bootloader options. I wonder what Device Controls does. This menu is reached when you long-press the Power button.
• System-Buttons-Long Press for Torch: Turn on, and leave Automatically Turn Off at the default of Never.
• System-Buttons-Keyboard Cursor Control: Volume up/down moves the cursor right/left. The direction can be swapped. Default is off.
• System-Status Bar-Quick Pulldown: change to Right: Right corner down swipe opens the complete quick settings menu.
• System-Status Bar-Network Traffic Monitor: Turn on (upload+download). And Auto-Hide (when no traffic).
• System-Status Bar-System Icons: almost all are enabled, but are only shown when active, e.g. shown if there's a Bluetooth connection, absent if no connection. I left them at the default.
• System-Status Bar-Battery Status Style: changed to Circle, and percentage inside the icon.
• System-Gestures-System Navigation: change to 3 button navigation (Back, Home, App Switcher). This turns off a lot of gestures. Almost all of the rest are off by default.
• System-Date&Time-Use 24hr Format: turn on.
• System-Developer Options: To turn this on, go to About Phone, find the build number (at bottom), and tap it 7 times. Developer Options section will appear. Therein, turn on Use Developer Options.
• Developer Options-OEM Unlocking: You had to turn this on to install LOS, and can't turn it off.
• Developer Options-Automatic System Updates: I think the default is on, and I turned it off.
• Developer Options-Quick Settings Developer Tiles-Wireless Debugging: Turn on.
• Developer Options-Rooted Debugging: The phone has to be rooted to use this, so I left it off until the phone is actually rooted.
• About Phone-Device Name: Here is where you set the hostname, which is used as the friendly name for Bluetooth.

Installing CyanogenMod (LineageOS) Version 19

(This is the original version, delete when finished)

On the very day I'm writing this, LOS released version 19 (Android-12L) for Barbet and 40 other phones including the Pioneer. In the LOS staff blog dated 2022-04-26, they say, On the whole, we feel that the 19 branch has reached feature and stability parity with 18.1 and is ready for initial release. Should I go along? If I install v18.1 and then upgrade to v19, it's not as much work as replacing the stock OS, but the upgrade is nontrivial. I'm going to install v19. But I've stashed the last v18.1 image files, so I can downgrade if necessary. For the next month or so I should upgrade weekly, then go back to my usual update every 2 weeks. (Note, while the new version is called LineageOS 19, the image filenames include 19.1 as the version.)

Web resources:

• LineageOS info page about the Barbet, containing links to:
• Directory of LOS images (zip files) for Barbet
• LOS installation instructions for Barbet

You should obtain in advance the current LOS image, vendor_boot image, and GApps (Google Apps) package. (Use GApps in web searches, not google apps.) (LOS instructions put this step after you've booted into Recovery.)

• LOS download directory; it has subdirectories per date. Normally get the most recent image. Also download its sha256 sum. (But no GPG signature, hiss, boo!) Size 1.09Gb. Sample command line to check the checksum; note the backslash before the question mark:
  sha256sum -c < lineage-19.1-20220428-nightly-barbet-signed.zip\?sha256

• TeamWin Recovery Project (TWRP) website. This is what I normally use. Click on Devices and pick yours. Oops, Google Pixel 5 is supported but Pixel 5a isn't. The CPU is identical and it would probably work, but I'm not going to try it.

  The LOS instructions tell you to download a custom recovery, of which TWRP is the most popular; however they also give a link to theirs, under the name vendor_boot.img in the same directory as the main image.

• XDA-Developers overview of GApps packages
  LOS Wiki overview of GApps

  In the past I've always used OpenGApps. But a key quote from the LOS overview is: If Open GApps is not listed for your Android version, it is not recommended. Which it isn't for Android-11 and 12. They recommend MindTheGapps (link to index). For Barbet you want the arm64 architecture, for Android-12. Size: 241Mb. The download page gives a MD5 sum; check it.

  The first time around I used an experimental OpenGApps bundle. But it put the Setup Wizard into an infinite loop of making me configure Google Services permissions. Thanks to u/monteverde_org on Reddit/Cyanogenmod for showing me the error of my ways.

Unlocking Bootloader, Installing LOS Recovery and LOS Image

The following steps are from the LOS installation instructions for Barbet, which should be read (and obeyed) in parallel, plus added clarification by jimc. Step numbers match with that howto.

• 0a. WARNING, your DRM keys will be gone forever (See extensive discussion of this issue for Pioneer.) The rest of the phone will be totally wiped, so back up user data.

• 0b. The phone needs to be charged. Anything over 50% should be plenty, says jimc.

• 0c. Up/downgrade the stock OS to the Android version on which your LOS image is based: Android-11 for LOS-18.1, or Android-12 for LOS-19. If you can't get the needed stock image, install a matching back-version LOS image, and upgrade that in a separate step. It's generally recommended to upgrade one major version at a time, e.g. LOS-16 to LOS-17 to LOS-18 to LOS-19.

• 3. Connect the USB cable to the host. How you connect made a lot of difference on the Pioneer. See here for how I got this working. For Barbet I used the provided USB-C to C cable from my laptop's USB-C port to the phone. All adb commands worked on the first try.

• Unlocking the bootloader. From a tutorial on Droidwin by Sadique Hassan, 2021-08-27; jimc has created this summary and has added a few key items. The tutorial matches the LOS instructions (except for comments).

  • Back up user files, which will be wiped.
  • You will need the adb utility. Check recency of versions on developer.android.com. Either install their zip file or install from your distro (which is more sanitary if the version isn't ancient). The OpenSuSE package for Tumbleweed, as of 2022-04-28, is android-tools version 31.0.3 while developer.android.com has v33.0.1 (I'll use SuSE).
  • In the stock OS, open Settings-System-Advanced-Developer Options-OEM Unlocking (turn on). Also enable USB Debugging.
  • The USB cable should still be connected to the phone. On the host execute adb devices; make sure your phone answers. The key shown is the device serial number; check it in About Phone.
  • On the host execute adb reboot bootloader. It showed its info screen after about 3 secs, with this content. This is coming from the stock OS, but I'm almost certain that LOS does not replace the bootloader; behavior and info are identical. The Enter Reason item tells why it thinks fastboot was started.

    Product revision: barbet MP1.0(NA)
    Bootloader version: b9-0.4-8048809
    Baseband version: g7250-00118-220211-B-8174514
    Serial number: (14 bytes)
    Secure boot: PRODUCTION
    NOS production: yes
    DRAM: 6Gb Micron LPDDR4X
    UFS: 128Gb Micron
    Device state: locked
    Boot slot: b
    Enter reason: reboot bootloader
    

  • On the host, execute fastboot devices and make sure your phone answers. [It does.]
  • On the host, execute fastboot flashing unlock. I needed to confirm on the phone. Use the volume keys to select Unlock, and the power key to confirm.
  • It performs the unlock procedure and wipes user data, taking about 12sec, after which it shows the info screen again. (It may or may not have rebooted back into fastboot; I can't tell.) It now shows the device status: unlocked.
  • Due to the factory reset, you will need to re-enable USB debugging for subsequent steps. So reboot to the stock OS by pressing the power button (menu choice Start) or executing fastboot reboot. Now when booting it shows for about 10sec a warning about the unlocked bootloader.
  • Since it's been factory reset, it wants to do setup again. Skip all time-consuming steps including don't copy apps from the old phone. Re-enable USB debugging. Confirm the connection to the host.
  • On the host, execute adb devices and make sure your phone answers. [It does.]

• 4. We're going to run the bootloader (fastboot) again. On the host:
  adb reboot bootloader

  On the host, execute: fastboot devices
  and make sure your phone answers.

• Now install the Recovery image. Execute on the host:
  fastboot flash vendor_boot <recovery_filename>.img
  (fill in the actual filename for recovery). [Done, takes about 5sec.]

  So what is the recovery filename, that you were supposed to have already downloaded? If you're using the LOS recovery, it's vendor_boot.img from the same web directory that you got the main image from. LOS instructions imply that you could also use a TWRP image at this point, if one were available for Pixel 5a, which it isn't. That's how I've done it in the past.

  I faked myself out: having failed to find a TWRP Recovery, I then searched around for the relevant LOS Recovery image — and unfortunately I found it in https://mirrorbits.lineageos.org/recovery/barbet/20220428/lineage-19.1-20220428-recovery-barbet.img . So I tried to flash it and got totally tangled up.

• Details are murky about how you get from fastboot into the Recovery you just flashed. The host's fastboot program doesn't have a subcommand to boot into Recovery. What I did: use the Volume-Up key to cycle to the Recovery Mode item, and press the power button to boot it. (Volume-Down also works but goes through more choices.)

  It displays the warning about the locked bootloader (10 sec), then the Google splash screen, then the LOS Recovery front page.

• LOS image installation: The phone should be running your custom Recovery. If not, do the previous step.

  • Hit Factory Reset, then Format Data/Factory Reset (and confirm). This wipes user data again, among other items. It takes about 15sec. The LOS instructions say it sets up the future user data without encryption, but that didn't seem to happen on Pioneer. Nor on Barbet; Settings-Security-Encryption&Credentials-Encrypt Phone says it's still encrypted.
  • Return to the main menu (left arrow in the top logo row). Hit Apply Update. Pick Apply from ADB. It's now waiting for the host to send the LOS image.
  • On the host, execute: adb sideload <LOS_image.zip> . Supply the correct filename of the LOS image. It works for about 2.5min showing a few messages; most of the time is spent in step 1/2. Tap the screen (in the lower area) if the screen saver blanks it. When done it shows the Apply Update screen again. Using LOS's vendor_boot.img I got no error messages, but they warn that with some recovery programs, adb will report progress up to 47% and then show various bogus error messages such as No Error or Undefined Error 0 which are reporting success. The Pioneer with TWRP does this. Blow off the non-error message. On Barbet, transfer stopped at 47% but there was no error message, bogus or not.
  • I'm installing GApps. Do not let it boot LOS. Return to the main menu (upper left arrow). Hit Advanced, then Reboot to Recovery. Repeat the last 2 steps starting from Apply Update, sending the GApps bundle. It takes about 1.5min to install. Ignore the error message about unable to mount metadata etc; it was wiped. Whatever key GApps is signed with, it isn't LOS's key, and the LOS Recovery will complain about a bad signature. Blow this off; hit Install Anyway.
  • If you're installing Magisk or some other add-on, repeat the above steps. The current recommendation for Magisk is to install the Magisk app and do the whole job from there.
  • Disconnect the USB cable.
  • Return to the main menu and hit Reboot System Now.
  • You will boot into your new LOS. Allow extra time because it has to recompile the Java bytecode. The Pioneer took 3 minutes to boot and the instructions mention up to 15 minutes, probably on older phones. The Barbet took 2 mins to first boot the stock OS, and only 1 min (exactly) to boot LOS.

LineageOS Initial Setup

• When the new OS has finished booting, it shows the setup wizard. You can change the language (en_US is the default) and vision settings. Hit start.
• Wi-Fi: pick a network, and enter the password, but first, open advanced options and turn off the private (randomized) MAC if your DHCP wants to see the device MAC, like mine.
• Copy apps & data: This looks like the one in the stock image. Connect the USB cable between the old and new phones: for Pioneer to Barbet, use the Barbet's USB type C cable. Confirm copying on the old phone. Keep the cable connected for the following steps.
• Give permissions for Google Services (no Google Drive backup, don't auto delete old stuff, yes use location, yes allow scanning when Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is supposed to be off, don't send usage data to Google, accept the possibility of auto updates (suppress this later)).
• Set a PIN, except I hit Screen Lock Options and set a pattern.
• Use your PIN or pattern to confirm the permissions.
• I skipped fingerprint setup, Google Assistant, and some miscellany.
• When all this was finished, the wizard showed a summary: 67 apps copied; all the other categories copied successfully. Promptly close the copier on the old phone and disconnect the cable, because it has a spin lock and runs down the battery.
• It takes a minute or so to finish up, then goes on to a tutorial about LOS features. On this screen is a checkbox (on by default) giving permission to send diagnostic and usage data (anonymized) to LOS developers. I left it turned on.
• Choose navigation style: gestures, 2 buttons (back+home, use a gesture to get the app switcher), 3 buttons (including app switcher) (which this troglodyte chose).
• Restore apps and data from a backup from an old LOS phone. Skip, already done.
• And it's done. Actually it's still doing something in the background. It is installing 67 apps. Better wait until it finishes. I think each copied app needs an initialization step.
• It has discovered 7 apps that need to be updated. All but 1 are Google system apps, plus Bitwarden. MindTheGapps has Google Maps, which OpenGApps Nano didn't, and it needs an update. I wonder what Private Compute Services is?
• Now it's downloading language packs for about 10 copied apps.

What the Setup Wizard seems to have transferred (or set up anew):

• Wi-Fi set up anew, type password, no QR code.
• Gmail account, copied.
• Unlock pattern, set up anew.
• Google Services permissions, set up anew.
• Most but not all apps.
• App data, so most apps don't have to be configured again.
• User data from /storage/emulated/0 including photos and music, but only files with approved mime-types, not jimc's important stuff.
• Most settings and options, not including settings that are new in the new LOS version.

Loose ends:

• Wi-Fi Network Preferences: It won't turn on Wi-Fi automatically (when an acceptable SSID is in range), because I turned off the general permission to scan when Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is off (part of Google Services permissions). See how this works out. Poorly; I gave the permission. It's in Location-Location Services-WiFi Scanning. Available in the same menu is Bluetooth Scanning, which potentially could do something useful when a particular Bluetooth device is within range, like your door lock.
• Orion's hostname is Android_15f6. Got to change this, but where? About Phone-Name. Fixed, hostname is now Selen. The hostname is used in only a few places, specifically it's the friendly name shown to Bluetooth peers when they scan.

Setting Up LineageOS Settings and Apps

Now I have LineageOS running on the phone. Here's a journal of what I did to set it up.

• The Setup Wizard's copier apparently copies only files with an approved mime-type, i.e. photos, audio or video. Not including my text files, SSH keys, HTTP directory, etc. Transferring those files will be an important early step.

• Somehow when Wi-Fi was set up, my attempt to use the device MAC was not honored, so I have an aleatory MAC and DHCP IP. Fixing that now. Settings-Network&Internet-Internet-Wi-Fi, click on settings for the network to which you're connected (or any of the networks; the setting is individual per SSID). Click on Privacy and change to Use Device MAC. Turn off Wi-Fi and turn back on, to get your proper fixed IP address.

• Immediate-early apps that I need to set up first because I'm actively using them:

  • Firefox (but not yet detailed setup).
  • Bitwarden (to provide the password for iRobot)
  • iRobot (today we're vacuuming)
  • SimpleSSHD (Dropbear) (to import user data)
  • Set up wireless debugging (to import user data)
    adb push /home/backup/selen/sdcard/jimc/. /sdcard/jimc/.
    Ditto for htdocs.
  • Import from Pioneer the latest instance, since the above backup, of any files that changed, specifically the blood pressure file.
  • Jota+ (to edit blood pressure file)
  • Firefox bookmarks (to find the music to play)
  • VLC (plays music, default setup is actually fine)
  • Y.a. Phase Beam live wallpaper [done]
  • Huge Digital Clock (which is my alarm clock)
  • Google Pay (to pay for an app needed to sync my contacts and calendar).

• Setting up all this, from the stock OS to the above 7 apps being used overnight, took 20% of battery (100% to 80%).

• On Firefox for Mobile, the home page is the new tab initial page, with pinned sites, recent bookmarks, etc. For the normal desktop kind of home page, set a bookmark and jump to that. Firefox for Mobile used to accept file:// URLs, but no longer; it silently displays nothing. So I installed NiM Web Server and configured it to serve my homedir to localhost:8080, and set the bookmark to that.

• Importing my bookmarks and pinned sites for Firefox. There's got to be a better way (short of creating a Mozilla sync account). Some of them are rather intricate, e.g. for the National Weather Service the coordinates of my house are appended, to give a truly local forecast.

  What I actually did: Do this in the order in which you want the bookmarks to be listed. On the old phone, follow a bookmark. In the dotdotdot menu select Share (3 circles rightward opening) In the resulting icon box pick QRbot (View Code). A QR code of the URL appears. On the new phone, start QRbot, which will activate the camera. Hold the phones parallel and move so the QR code is in the targeting box. QRbot reads it and gives you a menu including Open Web Page. Hit it; it's opened with your default browser (which at the moment is LOS's Jelly). It would have been better to switch to Firefox (in Apps-Default Apps-Browser), but I actually selected the URL, long press and pick Copy, use the app switcher to flip to Firefox, long press on the address bar and pick Paste, let it open the web page, then hit the star in the address bar to make a bookmark. Firefox briefly pops a toast about editing the bookmark; hit it promptly if you need to improve the title.

• NEEDS WORK Import the CFT root cert. It's on https://diamond.cft.ca.us/~certauth/ and Firefox doesn't have the trust anchor. Make an exception and download it. But none of the importation procedures will install the cert: download and open with the native cert installer; Settings-Security-Encryption&Credentials-Install a Cert; StrongSwan cert installer.

• NEEDS WORK Import jimc's user cert (for use with the VPNs). But when it installed the PKCS#12 file it asked for the password encrypting the private key, then circulated saying extracting for at least 5min.

• Installing Google Pay, because I'm going to need to pay for an app (DAVx5) which is a prerequisite for using Nextcloud to serve my contacts and calendar.

  • Will Google Pay even touch a phone with an unlocked bootloader?
  • Install Play Integrity API Checker by Nikolas Spiridakis. The phone passes basic integrity but not device or strong integrity.
  • Start up Wallet (com.google.android.apps.walletnfcrel). It accepted all the details of my payment card, then announced that my phone could not be set up because it does not meet security requirements.

• Updating the payment method for the Google Play Store. This turned out to be a lot more difficult than expected due to authentication issues.

• Syncing contacts, calendar and tasks. by CardDAV Sync and CalDAV Sync have been set up. How to do it:

  • Execute the CardDAV Sync or CalDAV Sync app. They're gone!
  • Tutorial on how to connect Nextcloud to Android.
  • Open the Nextcloud app and log in (as yourself). Give the server address as https://jacinth.jfcarter.net:1445/nextcloud . This URL is displayed in …
  • Having filled in your loginID and password on the server, click Log In. (I couldn't get App Password and QR Code to work.) It thinks for a few seconds, then in the phone's web browser it shows a page from the server with your loginID and GUID. Click on Grant Access. It says Your clients should now be connected! You cn close this window. (Close it.)
  • The Nextcloud app inits itself, particularly downloading files to its cache. It can serve these files.
  • Now we're going to connect contacts. On the phone install DAVx5 if not already there, costs $6.49. (So how do I pay for it?)
  • https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/user_manual/nl/groupware/sync_android.html

• I re-created my launcher icon layout (q.v.).

Now I'm going to go through Settings and see what's available. I expect that most will be informational (like Wi-Fi scan results) and most of the rest will be left at defaults or at whatever value was imported from the old phone; only changed settings are shown here.

• Network&Internet-Internet-TMobile (carrier)-Roaming: Connect to data service when roaming (turn on). Default is off, but I had this on the old phone and it was imported.
• Network&Internet-Internet-TMobile (carrier)-Preferred Network Type: 5G (recommended). I think this is the default. It will fall back to LTE, 3G, etc, the best (most recent) technology available.
• Network&Internet-Internet-WiFi-CouchNet (settings): In Share you can get a QR code with the password of the SSID, or under Add Device you can have it read a QR code off someone else's phone or a printed card. Under Privacy choose Use Device MAC if DHCP needs to know who you are, which CouchNet does. The IPv4+6 addresses, default route, DNS servers, and theoretical link speeds are shown at the bottom of this page.
• Network&Internet-Hotspot&Tethering-WiFi Hotspot: Fill in the Hotspot Name (SSID), turn on Security: WPA2-Personal, and configure a (good) password.
• Network&Internet-Private DNS: NEEDS WORK it's pre-filled (imported) with jacinth.jfcarter.net, but is turned off.
• Apps-Default Apps-Browser: The default is LOS's Jelly. I'm switching back to Firefox, but I want to evaluate Jelly seriously. NEEDS WORK
• Apps-Default Apps-Home-Settings-Show Google: Turn off. If this were on, the default, swiping right from the home screen would run it. At least in the stock app, its default behavior is to show a newsfeed.
• Apps-(Name of app): Several of these are going to need special settings, to be done later. [Now all done.]
• Notifications-App Settings-Google Play Services-Other-Backup: Turn off. I've switched my backup provider to SeedVault, and Google Play Services bugs me twice daily to tell it a Google account on whose Google Drive I could back up stuff. Shut that up.
• Notifications-Do Not Disturb-People-Starred Contacts: turn on.
• Notifications-Do Not Disturb-Schedules-Sleeping: was imported from the old phone. 23:00 to 07:00, alarm will terminate the schedule.
• Notifications-Do Not Disturb-Display Options-Custom: I don't remember setting this up but it's probably imported. Choices: if the screen is off, don't wake. If on, don't pop notifications on the screen, and hide from pull-down shade. I think I'd better review these settings. NEEDS WORK
• Notifications-Wireless Emergency Alerts: everything on except state and local tests (which I found annoying).
• Sound-Phone Ringtone: Draco (imported, and they didn't randomize the names this time).
• Sound-Default Notification Sound: CyanDoink (imported).
• Sound-Default Alarm Sound: Hassium (default), which is horrible. I manually configure my alarms with a music track. Also try Nuclear Launch and Rooster.
• Display-Lock Screen-Privacy: Sensitive content only when unlocked.
• Display-Lock Screen-Add Text: "Selen -- jimc@jfcarter.net"
• Display-Lock Screen-Double Line Clock: turn off. I think it looks ugly.
• Display-Lock Screen-Tap to check phone: This is for waking up the display, like the power button does. It's on by default and I'm trying it out. So far it's working out. You can also put the phone to sleep by double tapping on the status bar.
• Display-Lock Screen-Lift to check phone: turn off. Annoying.
• Display-Screen Timeout: 5 min. and Screen Attention turned on. This means if you're looking at the screen, e.g. reading something, it doesn't count toward the screen timeout delay.
• Display-Dark Theme: turn on, may be the default on this phone.
• Display-Font Size: There are 4 levels. Their line-heights (8 lines measured on this screen) are 18 22 25 27.5 mm or 6.4 7.8 8.9 9.7 pt (per line). The default is 7.8pt. but my eyes aren't what they used to be, and the default size seems smaller than on the Pioneer, so I raised to 8.9pt, called large.
• Display-Icon Shape: the choices are:
  • Pebble: Subtly triangularly bulged circle
  • Square: Really square (too square)
  • Vessel: Square with rounded corners and two notches on each side; think of some coffee mugs.
  • Tapered Rect: An octagon with straight sides. The correct term is chamfered, not tapered.
  • Teardrop: Circle with the lower right corner squarified
  • Rounded Rect: Square with slightly rounded corners
  • Squircle: Hyperellipse with exponent 3 or 4, basically a square with curved sides and rounded corners. Pretty good, actually. This is the one I chose.
• Display-Rotation: The default is to rotate to match local gravity (except the lock screen doesn't rotate), and all orientations are allowed except 180°. I turned that one on too,
• Display-Wallpaper&Style: I changed wallpaper to Y.a. Phase Beam, and kept the default dark theme and 4x5 icon grid. You can get to this page with a long press in the home page's background.
• Security-Screen Lock: during initial setup I changed to Pattern (3x3). I should think about a new, more complex pattern. NEEDS WORK
• Security-Fingerprint: This was set up successfully (unlike on Pioneer and Barbet) on both LOS and the stock OS.
• Security&Privacy-More Security&Privacy-Device Admin Apps-Find My Device: turn on. We're already opted in by default to Find My device; this setting lets the user to tell the mother ship to tell the phone to lock itself or erase itself (factory reset). Default is off; I turned it on. Now, how do you use it? I couldn't get a coherent answer. NEEDS WORK
• Security-Encryption&Credentials: I'm having trouble to import the CFT root cert and my user cert, needed for the VPNs. NEEDS WORK
• Privacy-LineageOS Statistics: This is on by default. They send to the mother ship: a GUID identifying the phone, the chassis name (Barbet), the LOS version, the country (US) (I guess where the phone currently is, or where the carrier is), and the carrier's name.
• Safety&Emergency-Emergency Information: Filled in. For paramedics etc. to use the feature:
  • Wake up the phone.
  • On the lock screen swipe up.
  • Tap Emergency Call at the bottom.
  • It gives you a dialpad (you could call 911) and a label Emergency Information at the top. Click the label.
  • The emergency information that the owner entered is shown. You can call the emergency contacts from this screen.
• System-Languages&Input-On Screen Keyboard: Where is Hacker's Keyboard? Installed and made selectable; also I suppressed Google Voice Typing.
• System-Buttons-Show Arrow Keys: Turn on. Very nice, when the keyboard is shown, then on the main button bar there will be a small arrow at each end that moves the cursor.
• System-Buttons-Home Long Press: Default is Search Assistant, I changed to No Action.
• System-Buttons-Power Menu-Advanced Restart: turn on, offers recovery or bootloader options. I wonder what Device Controls does. This menu is reached when you long-press the Power button.
• System-Buttons-Long Press for Torch: Turn on, and leave Automatically Turn Off at the default of Never.
• System-Buttons-Keyboard Cursor Control: Volume up/down moves the cursor right/left. The direction can be swapped. Default is off.
• System-Status Bar-Quick Pulldown: change to Right: Right corner down swipe opens the complete quick settings menu.
• System-Status Bar-Network Traffic Monitor: Turn on (upload+download). And Auto-Hide (when no traffic).
• System-Status Bar-System Icons: almost all are enabled, but are only shown when active, e.g. shown if there's a Bluetooth connection, absent if no connection. I left them at the default.
• System-Status Bar-Battery Status Style: changed to Circle, and percentage inside the icon.
• System-Gestures-System Navigation: change to 3 button navigation (Back, Home, App Switcher). This turns off a lot of gestures. Almost all of the rest are off by default.
• System-Date&Time-Use 24hr Format: turn on.
• System-Developer Options: To turn this on, go to About Phone, find the build number (at bottom), and tap it 7 times. Developer Options section will appear. Therein, turn on Use Developer Options.
• Developer Options-OEM Unlocking: You had to turn this on to install LOS, and can't turn it off.
• Developer Options-Automatic System Updates: I think the default is on, and I turned it off.
• Developer Options-Quick Settings Developer Tiles-Wireless Debugging: Turn on.
• Developer Options-Rooted Debugging: The phone has to be rooted to use this, so I left it off until the phone is actually rooted.
• About Phone-Device Name: Here is where you set the hostname, which is used as the friendly name for Bluetooth.

Launcher Icon Layout

The app launcher (Trebuchet) has an unlimited number of pages. It wants to open on the leftmost of them, whereas formerly I used the middle of three as my home page. For launcher settings, long press in the background and a menu will open with items for settings, widgets and wallpapers. I haven't found a setting to pick a different home page. Here are my settings; * indicates other than the default.

• Allow edit (user can move or remove icons)
• * Show Google app (launch by a left-to-right swipe): turn off
• * Allow home screen rotation: turn on
• Add icon to home screen (when an app is installed)
• Allow notification dots (a bubble over the app's icon, if it's active.)
• Show icon labels on desktop
• Show icon labels in app drawer
• In Wallpaper&Style you can change wallpaper (I already did, to Y.a. Phase Beam), dark/light theme (dark is recommended for a LED display), and grid size. The default is 4x5, which I kept, but you can set it from 2x2 to 5x6.
• In the stock OS you can change the icon shape on this page. On LOS it's in the main Setup-Display-Icon Shape; I picked Squircle.
• Do Not Disturb used to be controlled here, but (on LOS) it's now in Settings-Notifications-Do Not Disturb. Also other Notifications aspects.

My icon layout. Many apps are reached only from the app drawer. I'm going to duplicate what's on the old phone (Pioneer) as much as possible.

Miscellaneous settings: Sounds. Set these in Settings-Sounds (toplevel directory). You can also set them in various other places like the phone app. In several major version upgrades the names of the sounds were randomized, but they stayed stable in the upgrades from LOS-17 to LOS-18.1 to LOS-19.

• Ringtone. Set in Sounds-Phone Ringtone. Default is Orion which is not too bad. There are 111 to choose from. I'm using Draco, with Sheep and Canis Major as 2nd choices.

• Notification. Set in Sounds-Default Notification Sound. I had trouble with not hearing notification bloinks in a noisy or active environment. I changed to CyanDoink, which is annoying but aggressive enough to not be missed.

• Alarm. Set in Sounds-Default Alarm Sound. The default is Hassium, which is horrible and has none of the cachet of Nuclear Launch. Also consider Rooster. Among the provided sounds, Platinum is the best of a bad lot. For my wakeup alarm I use Walk_in_the_forest.mp3 (in ~jimc), which you could add by Add Ringtone, once it's been restored from backups. Confirmed that Huge Digital Clock can find and play this file when the alarm goes off.

Android Backups: SeedVault

The adb Android debugging utility used to have a subcommand to back up the phone, but around 2020 it was removed. I've been using a back-version adb to do these backups, but that's not sustainable, nor prudent. Also I have never done a fire drill, restoring one of these backups, to see just how much stuff is actually being backed up. It's time to get dragged, kicking and screaming, into the current decade. So what's a good backup program that will work on LOS-19?

An open source program called SeedVault is an official component at least since LOS-17. If I'm reading this right, it has these features:

• Mandatory AES encryption of the product. The key is 12 randomly chosen English words, about 128bit at 3 bits per byte. The key persists but you can make a new one on your schedule.
• You can choose to back up app code, or not. If you have apps from sources that might vanish, backing up the code could be a lifesaver. But if you can rely on downloading from the Play Store, backing it up is a waste. But the instructions say that when restoring from the backup, if the code and data aren't restored from the same source, weird things are likely to happen. So I'm backing up the app code.
• The product can be delivered to a local directory, USB flash storage, DAVx5, or Nextcloud. ownCloud is not listed but this is almost certainly generic WebDAV storage and ownCloud will be fine.
• A backup on the phone does you no good if the phone is stolen or dies. My strategy: deposit the backup locally and then exfiltrate it.
• SeedVault has more privilege than an ordinary user but less than root. It uses the same API as adb did, to induce the apps to divulge their data.
• seedvault_backup_parser by tlambertz (in Python) can decrypt and extract the content, or can re-crypt an altered backup. Unfortunately it is written for backup format version 0, and SeedVault in LOS-19 produces format 1. An issue is already posted in their bug tracker. Keep an eye on this. NEEDS WORK

I did a trial backup, with these outcomes:

• Setup is in Settings-System-Backup-SeedVault Backup. The default is Google Drive; hit Change Backup Provider to switch to SeedVault. However, Google Play Services will still give you periodic notices that your data is not backed up.
• The local backup is in /storage/emulated/0/.SeedVaultAndroidBackup and the permissions are the same as everything else in /storage/emulated/0, meaning that one can exfiltrate it by other means, not part of SeedVault.
• It's a directory with a lot of files with encrypted names and content, more than one file per app. So far I can't tell how much space is used by app code backups.
• The backup product size is 2.1Gb, including app code backups, Compare this to about 0.4Gb for the adb backup, including code. Obviously something important was being skipped in adb backup.
• It took 6min 40sec to do the backup, which runs in the background. But there's a scheduled task that runs it daily at about local midnight. I didn't see a menu to alter the schedule. Individual backup files are not rewritten if the source is unchanged since the last backup.

Here's a preliminary assessment of what was backed up, with a count of apps in each fate category:

• SMS, device settings, call history, local contacts were backed up even though not tied to a specific app.
• As far as I can see, data in /storage/emulated/0 (user data) is not backed up.
• 50 apps were backed up with a green checkmark, implying that the code and data are in the backup and are restorable.
• 2 apps reported no data to be backed up, but presumably the code and settings were saved. Jota+ pro key; NiM Web Server.
• 15 apps refused to disgorge their data (or fail to support the API): Bitwarden; Bluetooth Keyboard; Domoticz Lite; Firefox; Gallery Go; iRobot; JuiceSSH; Kindle; LTE Discovery; Net Cell Info; ownCloud; Ring; SimpleSSHD; Sounds; StrongSwan VPN; Thermostat; Whole Foods; WireGuard; Zoom.
• 3 apps were skipped because not recently used: GPS Monitor Proxy; Pixlr; yaxim.
• 2 apps had other fates, no message about why it was rejected: Device Health Services; Google Maps.

How to exfiltrate the backup with adb:

• Execute as root on Iris (the backup storage site).
• Initiate wireless debugging (see the backup howto); connect using the up-to-date version of adb.
• In my scratch area with lots of space I made a dir /scr/selen-bku . cd to that dir.
• DATE=220509
  adb pull -Z /sdcard/.SeedVaultAndroidBackup ./selen-bku-$DATE
  -Z means don't compress. You can't compress encrypted content.
• Communication over Wi-Fi 802.11n, about 50Mbit/s or 6.3Mbyte/s. It gives a progress report, both overall and per file. Elapsed 4min 38sec, Content: 2.06Gb.
• For the backup to be saved, I'll do:
  tar cf /home/backup/selen/backup-selen-220509.tar .
  (Took 41sec.)
• File permissions end up 755 or 644. I could use the -p option to adb pull, but Android permissions on Linux would just confuse it.
• Remove the dir in /scr. Keep the phone's dir, because only changed backups are written; if the app data is unchanged the old backup file is kept.

How to exfiltrate the backup with rsync:

• Now that SimpleSSHD (Dropbear) is properly configured, start it up.
• I can run my normal backup script, which includes a step similar to:
  rsync --rsh="ssh -4 -p 2222" --log-format="%o %f" -a --del selen:/sdcard/.SeedVaultAndroidBackup /home/backup/selen/sdcard/
• It took about 4min to transfer (802.11n) 515 files, 2.1Gb. The directory was first created in this step so everything had to be transferred.

How to decrypt, modify and reencrypt seedvault android backups:

• There's a program to do this on Github, tlambertz's area, called seedvault_backup_parser. It's in Python and is tested on Linux. There's just the one script file called parse.py and documentation. It has a spec file for making a RPM package, but it's not on SuSE Open Build Service. It has a runtime dependency on Cryptodome (current SuSE package name: python38-pycryptodome), which is installed already.

• You can copy from the backup dir containing encrypted files, to a second dir which is decrypted. You need to give the passphrase, 12 English words space separated.

• He shows an example of creating a subset of a decrypted backup containing your Wi-Fi passwords, adding multiple other passwords, and sending it back to the phone in a form that SeedVault can restore. Root not needed.

• I installed the whole thing in Selen's backup directory, where the encrypted backup dir was copied to. 11.5kb compressed,

• To decrypt: First you have to find the backup directory, the one containing .backup.metadata . .SeedVaultAndroidBackup has subdir(s) named as integers (but they aren't times). This is the directory you have to give to parse.py.
  mkdir /scr/selen.seed
  bkup=/home/backup/selen/sdcard/.SeedVaultAndroidBackup/12324…
  ./parse.py decrypt $bkup /scr/selen.seed
  Give the passphrase, 12 English words space separated.
  Oops, the program handles metadata version 0, but the metadata in the current backup is version 1 (in the first octet of the file).

• Too bad, this is going nowhere because I'm not going to hold up finishing the rest of the phone until someone finds out how metadata version 1 differs from version 0 and modifies parse.py to match. There's an issue filed for this update.

A tidbit about DAVx5:

• https://www.davx5.com/ , the project's website.

• Product hype: you can sync contacts, calendars and tasks between your generic Android client(s) and the DAVx5 server (both directions). It can do generic WebDAV, specifically streaming media with the possibility to seek to an arbitrary location in the stream. It supports Storage Access Framework (SAF).

• iOS (Apple) calendar and contact apps can use DAVx5 natively, so you can share content between iOS and Android. (jimc's research: In 2007-03, Cyrus Daboo of Apple and 2 others wrote RFC 4791 which defines CalDAV. In 2011-08 Cyrus Daboo of Apple wrote RFC 6352 (still a proposed standard) which defines CardDAV.)

• They say they have a modern GUI but I don't see much discussion of it. A good feature of ownCloud is that the server provides a web GUI that can do pretty much everything the Android calendar and contact apps can do.

• Their business model is to provide the server, at 1.99 euro per user per month for 5 to 20 users, 1.49 euro/user*month for 20 to 100 users, and the price is negotiable for bigger enterprises. However, the server (and client) are open source, and presumably you can host your own server.

• The app DAVx5 by Bitfire Web Engineering ($5.99) is a sync client that handles CardDAV, CalDAV and WebDAV. This is the official client that goes with the server. There are a zillion other sync clients that DAV5x will work with. You can get the app for free on F-Droid.

• If you're acquiring for free, it's requested that you make a donation. They take Euros by credit card, Paypal, wire transfer, LiberaPay, Bitcoin, or Monero.