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May 25, 2020 at 18:57 comment added andrewdevans 2x faster using dd than tail on my laptop: (printf "\x1f\x8b\x08\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00" && dd if=backup.ab bs=1M iflag=skip_bytes skip=24) | tar ztv
Apr 28, 2020 at 21:43 comment added alchemy @JosefScript, its all for unencrypted ab files. Im in the same boat. Trying Izzy's answer below (android.stackexchange.com/a/42224/95893) that uses perl, actually trying his GitHub app because its a pain to install the reqs for his script. I just posted a issue on his GitHub about how to use his ab2tar tool on encrypted. Let me know if you come up with anything, and Ill do the same, thx
Apr 28, 2020 at 16:52 comment added JosefScript I tried every method given in all answers here, but I only get empty tar files. What am I doing wrong?
Dec 14, 2019 at 9:05 comment added craq Is there a way to make this work with an encrypted backup? I recently upgraded my phone and chose to encrypt its file system. That gave me an encrypted backup and I had to resort to the far more complicated abe.jar method.
Dec 1, 2019 at 11:17 comment added user310784 @Matifou @Rache As I have the same problem with invalid compressed data and I have set a password at backup, I suspect that as the problem. Since neither tar nor gzip support password protection, I guess, there is now way, this command can easily adjusted to ask for a password. :(
Sep 30, 2019 at 3:49 comment added Matifou got same issue, gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--format violated tar: Child died with signal 13 tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
Jan 26, 2019 at 6:13 comment added craq Thanks, that was really helpful! As one of the commenters on a similar answer, I received an "unexpected end of file" error, but everything seems ok. And like @dailyglen, I'd quite like to know if this is reversible?
Jul 3, 2018 at 17:14 comment added Tom Russell Very nice. Can it be modified to accept a decryption password?
Nov 21, 2017 at 19:42 comment added Rache I made a backup with adb 1.0.36 (Revision 1.7.0.0+r33-2) and this method produced an error from zgip: invalid compressed data--format violated
Jun 12, 2016 at 7:31 comment added antekone Explanation: author creates a standard Zlib file header for a .tar.gz file with printf command (0x1F 0x8B is a signature, 0x08 is the compression method, 0x00 are flags and 4 x 0x00 is timestamp), then appends to this header the contents of backup.ab file, starting from offset 25d. Such stream is a valid .tar.gz file, and the tar xfvz command recognizes it as such, so it can successfully uncompress the stream.
Jul 31, 2015 at 9:23 comment added Lucky Could you add an explanation to the answer.?
May 3, 2015 at 23:46 comment added dailyglen Nice! Do you also have the equivalent of "pack" (to take the uncompressed directory tree and create a .db file)?
S Jul 27, 2014 at 13:17 review Low quality posts
Jul 27, 2014 at 14:18
S Jul 27, 2014 at 13:17 review Late answers
Jul 27, 2014 at 15:50
Jul 27, 2014 at 13:05 history edited Kari CC BY-SA 3.0
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Jul 27, 2014 at 13:01 review First posts
Jul 31, 2014 at 18:40
Jul 27, 2014 at 12:58 history answered Kari CC BY-SA 3.0