Database Develop

[WARNING][INFO]Data Encryption on Android

As we know google is going to pre enable the Data encryption on Android L and we already have it as an optional extra security ..
So before anyone rushes to enable it to feel more Secured . First let's learn about it ..
As this option is available in Security .
If you enable it you have to enter password/PIN(compulsory) ..
80% minimum battery + plugged in for charging is necessary .
Once the encryption starts it will take about 15 minutes to complete the process ..
Once it's complete , it will automatically reboot the phone . booting will be in 2 stages.. On first stage it will ask for password/PIN to decrypt the phone/phone storage
And then the second boot process will be the normal one ..
And now comes the warning part ..
Once you encrypt the data , you have to decrypt it on every boot and you can't disable this .. You have to factory reset the phone to remove this .
And here at XDA we flash mods and zips etc almost every day/week ..
So if you encrypt your phone and then you flash anything via bootloader ..IT WILL FORMAT EVERYTHING ..(including internal storage, basically factory reset)
So if you are an advanced user with custom rom/recovery etc i suggest you to first do a complete backup If you really want to try the data encryption .
So i hope this information be helpful for those who are unaware and don't know what can happen , and i suggest you to read about it before you enable it ..

For most of us, we already know that encryption causes issues, always. Maybe not immediately, but always at some point.
Its the new people that go "oh encryption, sounds good, must use", when they don't have any data that's actually important enough to justify the need for encryption.

Lethargy said:
For most of us, we already know that encryption causes issues, always. Maybe not immediately, but always at some point.
Its the new people that go "oh encryption, sounds good, must use", when they don't have any data that's actually important enough to justify the need for encryption.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's why i created a new thread specially for those who are inexperienced .
Not everyone are born developers/pro
Everyone learns with making mistakes
And our Job is to help them at XDA .
IMO this is what XDA is for at the first place ..

I'll rely on custom ROMs as always, that certainly have it disabled by default.
I think it's insane google would try to force this on us. Shame on them. ?

How does android L handle staying unlocked in trusted areas if encryption is enabled?

Despite the warning, we will see how the encryption will work in Android L. It might not be the same process as described from Kitkat/JB of encryption.
Who know if the process of encryption will be changed in Android L, so that you don't have to do each step to encrypt/decry pt and the flashing/modding issues.

I see many bricks coming from this as well, from unknowing flashers.

inferol said:
Despite the warning, we will see how the encryption will work in Android L. It might not be the same process as described from Kitkat/JB of encryption.
Who know if the process of encryption will be changed in Android L, so that you don't have to do each step to encrypt/decry pt and the flashing/modding issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably they are going to change the way it works .. , because they haven't updated it since it first came out with ICS ..

The inability to use pattern lock is enough to turn me off Android encryption. All the other problems just makes it a no brainer.

May be they have overcome these issues and thus made it default....
I find no sense in making some hectic procedure as default

wow. wonder who will have access to the encryption keys.. or more likely supplied the encryption technique in the first place?
cough... nsa, feds, gchq, ect...... cough
don't believe the security services fake crying about encrytion... just a fairy story to pacify the sheep

meangreenie said:
wow. wonder who will have access to the encryption keys.. or more likely supplied the encryption technique in the first place?
cough... nsa, feds, gchq, ect...... cough
don't believe the security services fake crying about encrytion... just a fairy story to pacify the sheep
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When NSA forced TrueCrypt to hand over their keys, they essentially and purposely updated their product to be broken to ensure no one used it. Wonder what Google would do?
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Wakamatsu said:
The inability to use pattern lock is enough to turn me off Android encryption. All the other problems just makes it a no brainer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can't do it out of the box, but you can make it work fairly easy with twrp and a backup. The quick version is:
before encryption, setup your pattern lock, do a nandroid backup in twrp. Reboot, change to a PIN/password to allow encryption, perform encryption process. Boot back into twrp, it will prompt you to enter your pin/password, since it can decrypt and then function inside of the encrypted volume (and therefore restore an unencrypted backup inside of the encrypted envelope in essence). Restore your backup that has pattern unlock and reboot. It should prompt you for your strong pin/password on each initial boot, but once booted, it will use your pattern unlock. Downside is you can't change your pattern after that, so pick what you want the first time. You can change your pin/password if you want, I use EncPassChanger myself. I also use bootunlocker to relock the bootloader after I'm done, just have to make sure to unlock before flashing any updates.
I use this process on both my N5 and 2013 N7.

rootSU said:
When NSA forced TrueCrypt to hand over their keys, they essentially and purposely updated their product to be broken to ensure no one used it. Wonder what Google would do?
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Source for this?

markassbuster said:
Source for this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Action speaks louder than words sometimes all u need is to observe

markassbuster said:
Source for this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They can't really openly say that buy the industry "knows".
But the opening paragraph of this page hints at it.
http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net

rootSU said:
They can't really openly say that buy the industry "knows".
But the opening paragraph of this page hints at it.
http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AH OK thanks. I thought there was some recent, concrete news about what went down.

Thing is, now what will we gotta do to still be able to flash zips with encrypted device? XD

So I recently encrypted my phone....because I read it only encrypts the data partition...so if I wanted to update my CM11 version (m9 to m10 for example) I wouldn't be able to?
I should have read into it more I guess...
edit: TWRP saved my ass. Just looked at it and it decrypts the data partition.

I encrypted my phone, but now wish I hadn't. I'm pretty sure it is the cause of some small issues I have had flashing different ROMs.
fml :crying:

Went to bed with an encrypted phone.

And this morning the phone was acting weird. I rebooted the phone and did not get the screen to unlock before the phone boots. Now I see the phone is no longer encrypted. Anybody else have this happen?
I'm stock with with faux kernal.

Larzzzz82 said:
And this morning the phone was acting weird. I rebooted the phone and did not get the screen to unlock before the phone boots. Now I see the phone is no longer encrypted. Anybody else have this happen?
I'm stock with with faux kernal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mines encrypted, and mine doesn't have an unlock code, as i didnt set one up. how do you know your device in unencrypted? or are you just assuming it is? you have to format your data before ypu can decrypt it btw. if you gobinto your main settings, security, itll tell you if your phone is encrypted or decrypted.

I looked in the settings/security and saw this... If I'm reading this correctly, the phone is no longer encrypted.

Larzzzz82 said:
I looked in the settings/security and saw this... If I'm reading this correctly, the phone is no longer encrypted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yup, looks like its decrypted. as heres my encryoted n6..

and how does a phone decrypt itself?

Larzzzz82 said:
and how does a phone decrypt itself?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
good question! maybe a derp somewhere.. have you rebooted since?

I did reboot because chrome and messaging would not open up. The icon would get a white halo around them yet nothing would happen. Upon rebooting I was not asked for my pattern lock before Android fully booted

Larzzzz82 said:
I did reboot because chrome and messaging would not open up. The icon would get a white halo around them yet nothing would happen. Upon rebooting I was not asked for my pattern lock before Android fully booted
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
did u factory reset the phone from recovery?

Nikos2k said:
did u factory reset the phone from recovery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Through twrp, yes, last night. Just what was recommended. I did not do anything in the advanced settings

Larzzzz82 said:
Through twrp, yes, last night. Just what was recommended. I did not do anything in the advanced settings
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The reset probably disabled the encryption
Re-encrypt it through Security settings

Nikos2k said:
The reset probably disabled the encryption
Re-encrypt it through Security settings
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The phone was decrypted before I reset. It was never decrypted to begin with until yesterday when I was having issues with a couple of apps. I rebooted and I decided to check if it was because it didn't ask for my pattern lock as it used to when booting up.

Larzzzz82 said:
The phone was decrypted before I reset. It was never decrypted to begin with until yesterday when I was having issues with a couple of apps. I rebooted and I decided to check if it was because it didn't ask for my pattern lock as it used to when booting up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as I know, there is no way to decrypt the contents of an encrypted nexus6 (which is not the same as disabling encryption, as an actual decryption of the device would preserve the contents of the device)
Since you now have an unencrypted device, the contents of your device must have been erased during the disabling of the encryption

Nikos2k said:
Since you now have an unencrypted device, the contents of your device must have been erased during the disabling of the encryption
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, they weren't. Everything was intact.

Larzzzz82 said:
No, they weren't. Everything was intact.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think that android5 has a function to decrypt the whole content of the device.
In this page about how encryption works its says "New Android 5.0 devices encrypted at first boot cannot be returned to an unencrypted state."
And obviously it should be so.
Anyway, maybe it's better that you factory reset the device and encrypt it afterwards so that you set a pin yourserf
(android5 devices are encrypted on first boot, and there is no password)
When you had the pattern security option set, did TWRP ask for any password?
And if yes, how did you input the pattern?

TWRP does not ask me for a password. I broke the seal on the box of this phone came in. It was set up before I had a sim card in it.the phone was encrypted. I did look within the first week or two of my owning it. aside from unlocking, rooting, and a couple of mods, it is stock. I am NOT using a custom ROM. I have installed faux kernel within the last couple of weeks and the request for a pattern unlock in the middle of booting Android remained until the other day. To say I am perplexed as an understatement.

Larzzzz82 said:
And this morning the phone was acting weird. I rebooted the phone and did not get the screen to unlock before the phone boots. Now I see the phone is no longer encrypted. Anybody else have this happen?
I'm stock with with faux kernal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When did you install the kernel and had you done a TWRP factory wipe prior to the install?
Your post made me double check my phone - I am now unencrypted
Earlier this week I had had done a TWRP (2.8.4.0) factory wipe to do a clean install of CleanROM 1.4 and I think TWRP did a full decrypt wipe without me wanting to do so when it was supposed to do a simple reset

SP_Kenny said:
When did you install the kernel and had you done a TWRP factory wipe prior to the install?
Your post made me double check my phone - I am now unencrypted
Earlier this week I had had done a TWRP (2.8.4.0) factory wipe to do a clean install of CleanROM 1.4 and I think TWRP did a full decrypt wipe without me wanting to do so when it was supposed to do a simple reset
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The factory wipe in TWRP, besides wiping everything, it disabled the forced encryption, so you have to select encrypt yourself if you want it to be encrypted.
And "CleanROM is decrypted by default. This means if you are encrypted or are decrypted you will stay that way! It wont change you crypto settings!"
---------- Post added at 02:27 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:24 AM ----------
Larzzzz82 said:
TWRP does not ask me for a password. I broke the seal on the box of this phone came in. It was set up before I had a sim card in it.the phone was encrypted. I did look within the first week or two of my owning it. aside from unlocking, rooting, and a couple of mods, it is stock. I am NOT using a custom ROM. I have installed faux kernel within the last couple of weeks and the request for a pattern unlock in the middle of booting Android remained until the other day. To say I am perplexed as an understatement.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Anyway, you can encrypt it yourself, but if you select a pattern instead of pin/password in the security settings, i do not think that you will be able to access the data in TWRP as it seems there is no way to input the pattern in TWRP
So b4 entering recovery, u will have to change the security setting

In the past when I had done a factory rest / wipe via TWRP it had not changed my encryption. This only happened with the current version and gave no indication that it was going to be in an unencrypted state
Sent from my Nexus 6 using XDA Free mobile app

I like my security so I guess I'll just leave my device encrypted. I believe if I decrypted, it wouldn't really make it that much faster than this?

Apologies if this was suggested further in the thread, and that I'm replying to an old post. But I recently had this problem and figured out a solution.
- Accessibility was enabled and for some reason this cached the boot password. So- when I removed the app (rights) and turned off accessibility, and changed (reset/reentered) the password in security settings... On next boot the phone correctly asked me for password.

Slow boot up

Anybody ever figure out why it takes so long for the nexus 6 to boot up after turning on? Is there a way to fix that (preferably not requiring root)?

toledodj said:
Anybody ever figure out why it takes so long for the nexus 6 to boot up after turning on? Is there a way to fix that (preferably not requiring root)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you using an android 5.1 rom and kernel? Google supposedly sped up that process and I can definitely tell it doesn't take that long compared to what it did on android 5.0.1.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using XDA Free mobile app

Just did a test and mine booted in about 40 seconds. Doesn't feel long at all. I'm unencrypted though, that might be a factor...

Yeah, I'm running completely stock 5.1. Encryption is still enabled and unchangeable

I never thought it was a long boot up?! Seems about normal for me, using Euphoria rom and Leankernel also decrypted.

toledodj said:
Yeah, I'm running completely stock 5.1. Encryption is still enabled and unchangeable
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Encryption is probably the reason and the solution would be to flash a modified boot image and then wipe your phone. No root needed.
How long does your boot up take?

It takes about a minute.

Downgrade back to marshmallow

So can't check "allow OEM quick" on N.
Already opted out of developer preview thru the site, and 4 days later, still no ota back to MM. Suggestions?
I thought to just fastboot twrp and try to flash a stock rom to allow unlock then start from the beginning but wanted opinions first.
Sent from my Robin using XDA-Developers mobile app

sookieball said:
So can't check "allow OEM quick" on N.
Already opted out of developer preview thru the site, and 4 days later, still no it's back to MM. Suggestions?
I thought to just fastboot twrp and try to flash a stock rom to allow unlock then start from the beginning but wanted opinions first.
Sent from my Robin using XDA-Developers mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well, to flash stock, you dont use twrp, you use fastboot while youre in the bootloader. and in N, allow oem unlock is automatically enabled.

It isn't tho
It i tried OEM unlock and it didn't work. :-/
Sent from my Robin using XDA-Developers mobile app

sookieball said:
It isn't tho
It i tried OEM unlock and it didn't work. :-/
Sent from my Robin using XDA-Developers mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
how? did you do fastboot oem unlock?

Maybe you've already tried this, and I don't know if it will work, but have you tried re-enrolling and unenrolling in the hope that it will jog the revert mechanism into life?

I have tried enrolling and unenrolling a few times....
No dice.
Sims,
In fastboot... fastboot OEM unlock. Then error.
Sent from my Robin using XDA-Developers mobile app

sookieball said:
I have tried enrolling and unenrolling a few times....
No dice.
Sims,
In fastboot... fastboot OEM unlock. Then error.
Sent from my Robin using XDA-Developers mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you pribably cant oem unlock while on N then. that probably why they made it unavailable. im not on N now, so cant test.

What about trying a sideload of the full OTA? I thought (I might be wrong) that it's independent of a locked bootloader.
https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/ota#instructions
It's worth a shot, especially as it doesn't overwrite your data.

On a related note, I'm on preview 3 - battery drain when idle is higher than what it was on stable M, so thinking about reverting back to M.
1. To avoid a factory wipe, can I just flash the img files from the stable M (skipping userdata) on top of the preview 3?
2. If so, to avoid getting the N preview update notification, I guess I will need to un-enroll from the beta program. Will that cause an OTA to be sent back to my phone (causing factory wipe as described on the beta page)? Or does it recognize that I'm already on 'M' and skip the OTA?
3. Before I do this, is it possible to flash the radio only from the latest "M" image on the "N" preview? (could that help with the drain when idle?)

Did you not like my previous answer...?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=66961421&postcount=104

dahawthorne said:
Did you not like my previous answer...?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=66961421&postcount=104
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL! Yes, I did! And thank you for that as well - the part that I didn't understand (and unless I missed it in your response, I don't think we talked about in that post) was - since I'd still be enrolled in the preview/beta program, how do I get out of the program, without getting factory reset.
(I do have a nandroid backup as a last ditch option - trying to do this the 'clean' way first)
The preview is working well for me as well - skype is the only app giving me grief, but I can live with that. The battery drain on idle seems to be significantly higher than what I encountered with "M" stable. With barely any usage this morning (screen on for 11 minutes), my battery is at 77% (full charge and off the charger at 10 pm last night). Cell Standby is the the highest drain (6%). Phone idle and Android system tied for 2nd place at 3%.
With the latest M build, I'd be at over 90% battery remaining (with similar usage).

You're right on all counts...
I think the answer to your wipe question is that you'd have to agree to do it - if you unenrol and have already reverted manually to M, the downgrade OTA may be downloaded (though from my experience, as I said, I think the developers are smart enough to recognise that it's a waste of time and even that won't happen) but you would still have to push the button to accept it. They won't unceremoniously dump it on you without your permission.
And the battery drain... I was wondering if it was my imagination, or maybe just that my phone is a year old (I got a replacement last May) and the battery's a bit tired, but I've noticed that the percentage drops almost before my eyes. I have Battery Bot Pro showing my percentage figure on my status bar, and it seems to me that every time I unlock the phone another one or more percentage points have gone. It went from 97% this morning to 77% in a couple of hours, and I recharged it before I went out to work - it's now already down to 75% and falling. Like you, I'd expect it to be a clear 10% or more better than this over this period.
Looks like Google have a bit more work to do on their power management...
Edit: And in the 5 minutes since I wrote this, with the phone sitting beside me, screen off, nothing running, it's already down to 74%. Not at all impressive. Despite being relatively happy with it, I may have to renege on my previous comment that I can't see myself reverting to M.
And before you ask, I'll be reverting using my TWRP backup of M which I took immediately before I installed N...

Thank you
I'll wait for the June security update (factory image) and install that directly (skipping userdata). If that fails, I'll revert to the TWRP backup. (restoring TWRP on my old N5 has given me grief in the past, so going to avoid that if possible)
Edit: maybe I'll try flashing the radio from the May image onto "N" and see if that helps. The battery drain appears to be radio related.

Done. No problem at all. TWRP took about 12 minutes to restore 7GB of data, then a rather nerve-racking 5 minutes with the Google quad-icon swapping bits, and I'm back to MOB30I.
Seven updates waiting; BBC Radio, Skype, Google Drive, Sygic, all the broken apps working again, still have root.
Welcome back, old M world...
And if you're thinking of restoring M early next month, I'd give the OTA version a try. Just out of curiosity I sideloaded the MOB30H OTA on my Nexus 5 a few days ago, and it worked flawlessly without wiping any data. That's what I'll be doing on my N6 in June.
I've also just unenrolled from the Beta program, and checked for a system update. Exactly as I thought, "Your system is up to date" on MOB30I. I know that the OTAs have been slow for some people, but I don't expect to see the revert OTA - I'll post in this thread if I ever do.

dahawthorne said:
And if you're thinking of restoring M early next month, I'd give the OTA version a try. Just out of curiosity I sideloaded the MOB30H OTA on my Nexus 5 a few days ago, and it worked flawlessly without wiping any data. That's what I'll be doing on my N6 in June.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would the fact that I'm rooted cause any issues with sideloading the OTA? (I realize the new OTA is essentially a full image, so it should just overwrite the system, and I'd have to reroot after that)

No problems at all, no. My N5 was rooted & encrypted, and the OTA slid in easily. As I said in another thread, it boots into TWRP but the OTA is designed to handle that. I installed TWRP again anyway, probably pointlessly but just to be on the safe side, and then used it to install SuperSU 2.74.
Easy as pie...

I unenrolled, got a prompt for system "update" back to MM, it downloaded, and now I am going on 30 minutes on the install part....been stuck on the reboot screen with 4 colorful circles....
How long does it take to re-install MM? TIA
EDIT: Decided to hold down power button for about 5 seconds and it rebooted to setup screen

dahawthorne said:
And the battery drain... I was wondering if it was my imagination, or maybe just that my phone is a year old (I got a replacement last May) and the battery's a bit tired, but I've noticed that the percentage drops almost before my eyes. I have Battery Bot Pro showing my percentage figure on my status bar, and it seems to me that every time I unlock the phone another one or more percentage points have gone. It went from 97% this morning to 77% in a couple of hours, and I recharged it before I went out to work - it's now already down to 75% and falling. Like you, I'd expect it to be a clear 10% or more better than this over this period.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I ended up flashing the radio (only) from MOB30I on to the N preview, and so far, the battery life on idle is back to how it was on M. I think I have a reason to stick on to the N preview a bit longer now
banditsw said:
How long does it take to re-install MM? TIA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looks like you got it sorted out, but just for future reference, the reason it took long is because it essentially factory reset your phone - a factory reset with full wipe on the encrypted N6 cane take 20-30 minutes.

I'm impatient, me, so by the time I read this I was already back on MOB30I, but in any case I'm happier to have all working apps without the rash of library errors and force-closures. Interesting thread...
But we never heard back from sookieball after I suggested a sideload: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=67013821&postcount=8

dahawthorne said:
But we never heard back from sookieball after I suggested a sideload: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=67013821&postcount=8
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I ended up reverting back to the "M" stable image yesterday (was waiting for the June image to be available). No issues with the "N" to report, except one custom app that I use was giving me some issues.
Anyway, thought I'd share my "downgrade" story
If you do the downgrade the right way (un-enroll from the Beta program), and get the OTA back to the latest "M", it will likely go well - because it performs a factory reset on your phone.
I however, didn't wait to set my phone up from scratch (lazy), so I flashed the factory image for the latest "M" (and skipped userdata.img). Bad idea. Flash went thru' successfully, but I ended up with pretty much an unusable phone because two system processes kept crashing in a loop after booting up. I then tried ADB sideload for the new OTA image file - same results. Wiped cache partition - no difference.
I then remembered that some apps (like Google Maps) had different versions for "N", and realized that the issue must be because of apps like that not being compatible with "M". Thankfully, I had a nandroid backup of the "M" (May security release) from before I installed "N", and I installed that - and then, updated to the June security release of "M".
Whew!
So, in summary, If you are rooted, take a nandroid backup in TWRP before you install "N" preview. If not, plan to factory reset your device after going back (or while going back) to "M" - no shortcuts.

LineageOS: Encrypted phone, all data gone

I thought that while encrypting my phone, the result would be that my data is preserved, just encrypted. So I went through the encryption process only to find that all my data is wiped, so that I have to restore everything from backups, as far as I have them.
Did I overlook something, or is this a bug? I have LineageOS 14.1, installed yesterday, official.

Found that after a reboot, the data was again gone. (after I spent considerable time setting the phone up yet again), now factory reset, running unencrypted, until I know what has been going wrong here. Sigh. Custom roms and encryption continue to be a toxic mix for me.

yahya69 said:
Found that after a reboot, the data was again gone. (after I spent considerable time setting the phone up yet again), now factory reset, running unencrypted, until I know what has been going wrong here. Sigh. Custom roms and encryption continue to be a toxic mix for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I first started playing around with encryption (Samsung Note 3) I discovered that to get encryption to work properly I had to format /data (you lose everything, including internal shared storage) and that it worked better on stock ROM rather than custom ROMs.
Sent from my OnePlus3T using XDA Labs

BillGoss said:
When I first started playing around with encryption (Samsung Note 3) I discovered that to get encryption to work properly I had to format /data (you lose everything, including internal shared storage) and that it worked better on stock ROM rather than custom ROMs.
Sent from my OnePlus3T using XDA Labs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
which I kind of accepted after learning it the hard way, but the problem was that after encrypting the device, all data was wiped each time the phone was rebooted, so something is buggy here.

yahya69 said:
which I kind of accepted after learning it the hard way, but the problem was that after encrypting the device, all data was wiped each time the phone was rebooted, so something is buggy here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I resolve this problem using latest official twrp.

dimon2242 said:
I resolve this problem using latest official twrp.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How did you? (What version of TWRP did you install) After all, it is not TWRP that does the encryption, or is it? So I don't see how this could be the cause.
With TWRP, I had the additional issue that it kept asking me for a password to mount /data, but it wouldn't accept the PIN that I had set in Android. I have no idea what other password it might want.
Oh, well, there is just too much fumbling in the dark in this whole mobile devices business. I have been a Linux user for some 20 years, and there, if things go wrong, you can actually view what is happening. On android, this is so much more difficult, even with logcat.

yahya69 said:
How did you? (What version of TWRP did you install) After all, it is not TWRP that does the encryption, or is it? So I don't see how this could be the cause.
With TWRP, I had the additional issue that it kept asking me for a password to mount /data, but it wouldn't accept the PIN that I had set in Android. I have no idea what other password it might want.
Oh, well, there is just too much fumbling in the dark in this whole mobile devices business. I have been a Linux user for some 20 years, and there, if things go wrong, you can actually view what is happening. On android, this is so much more difficult, even with logcat.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried default_password as the password in TWRP?
Also, if you can actual log into your system normally, then you can set the password again and require it on boot.

BillGoss said:
Have you tried default_password as the password in TWRP?
Click to expand...
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What "default password"? You mean, literally typing "default_password"? No I did not. What would that have done?
After all, again, it required a password for the /data partition, hence a password with whom it is encrypted. But I had used no password other than the PIN. And again, I can't see how my problem of data disappearing on each boot would be caused by TWRP.
Also, if you can actual log into your system normally, then you can set the password again and require it on boot.
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Again, what password do you have in mind? The PIN? Yes, the system asked for the PIN at boot, but nonetheless, all data was wiped on each boot.
For the time being,I run the system without encryption, because I have had enough of setting is up again and again anew (had to do this three or four times.)
Again, it looks like this is a bug. Because after initially encrypting the phone, my data should still have been there. But it was gone. The phone was now encrypted, but there was nothing on it. That's something that I am pretty sure is not supposed to happen.

just had the same using Samsung S5 Duos with latest lineage-os (20180427): this is a cluster-f**k, I cannot believe it. I advocate using Lineage-OS whereever I go. Of course, it's my fault, I did trust Lineage-OS too much so I didn't think of backing-up. I didn't believe something like this could happen.

chaos_prevails said:
I did trust Lineage-OS too much so I didn't think of backing-up. I didn't believe something like this could happen.
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You probably already realize this, at this point. But there is no such thing as an OS (on any device) that is so secure or stable, that backing up your data is not necessary. Even regardless of OS, memory corruption and data loss can happen for any number of reasons. Golden rule: If your data is important to you, back it up.

Of course, I know.
I took the loss of all data as opportunity to flash newest modem, CSC, and PDA firmware via latest stock-rom, and then re-flashed latest Lineage OS again. This time, it didn't factory reset my phone with encryption. Don't know if that had anything to do with my old firmware (I had G900FDXXS1CPK2 installed when factory reset-with-encryption happened).
Beside, I was lucky as no other migration method to my new phone worked out except going via a old-school micro-sd card copy. I could undelete almost all pictures on it