Help! Looks like rebooting Android into safe mode has triggered DAVx⁵ to delete all my contacts and calendar entries

[pa]

And likely tasks too, although they appear to be cached in OpenTasks, but I can’t export from there

History:

1. Am fully paid up on all software, and it’s all fully up to date
2. Had Radicale hosting CalDAV and CardDAV syncing on Windows PC which has been retired weeks ago, awaiting reinstallation. I have this backed up in two ways but it’s weeks out of date.
3. DAVx⁵ has been annoying every now and then saying that it can’t connect, even when off that Wi-Fi SSID (apparently that’s a known location services/Android issue, but there should be a workaround/mitigation), and most recently even when set to only manually synchronise, but I can live with that, no problems, and have been doing for ages. (Will report these issues one day if there’s time.) But DAVx⁵ has not had any problems working without being able to sync, nor has Business Calendar 2, OpenTasks, or Android Contacts and this is for weeks through multiple reboots, shutdowns, boots, force-stops, clear caches, all absolutely fine.
4. This morning I have been editing calendar and tasks. For an unrelated reason I booted into safe mode, something I have never done before, to try to troubleshoot something. Yay software. Didn’t help, so rebooted normally.
5. After rebooting, I notice that Business Calendar 2 can not see my single DAVx⁵ calendar! Completely gone. Not just the events, the entire calendar seems to have been deleted by DAVx⁵. I only have one calendar, a single collection restricted to only calendar events.
6. All contacts gone from the single DAVx⁵ account entry, but unlike how BC2 can’t even see the calendar, the entry still exists. Only had one contacts list, CardDAV, restricted to only contacts.
7. OpenTasks still shows all tasks in all CalDAV task lists (about twenty)
8. DAVx⁵ still shows my CalDAV/CardDAV account, and all the containers, it doesn’t think anything is wrong
9. I now can’t trust that when I eventually sync my phone with DAVx⁵ to a fresh CalDAV/CardDAV server, that any of my calendar entries or contacts, or even my tasks, will be synced
10. Has DAVx⁵ completely deleted the data, or just hidden it somehow?

Please help restore the data, I cannot afford to lose three weeks of changes

I can provide logs from DAVx⁵ if you show me how, over the morning from the time before the safe mode reboot until afterwards, or any other information

Note 1: I just took a TWRP Android recovery backup of the entire phone, but I believe that it fails to decrypt my data partition so is useless, perhaps even if I were to restore it to the same phone
Note 2: Not sure if you block backups but I could try a Helium or adb backup of everything, including DAVx⁵ in the hope that that will help you recover the data?
Note 3: If it matters, I had a Business Calendar 2 widget on my home screen and an OpenTasks widget on the screen to the right of that, they did not render in safe mode at all (not even greyed out like the app icons were) but are back fine in normal mode now, the calendar widget only shows birthdays from the contacts (all of which have been deleted) but no events from the calendar. The OpenTasks tasks widget seems normal, shows all the tasks.
Note 4: Business Calendar 2 now shows that my calendar account is back, tried deselecting and selecting it but it’s completely empty.

[rfc2822]

Sounds like a problem with your Contacts and Calendars storage, maybe related to the safe boot. The good news: DAVx5 never deletes entries on the remote server unless they have explicitly been set to DELETED on your device.

In your posting, I couldn’t find whether the data are still on your server? They should be.

[rfc2822]

I have just booted to safe mode on my device. In safe modes, no 3rd-party apps like DAVx5 are loaded, so there’s no DAVx5 account, so the system will remove all contacts and calendars.

Then, after a normal boot, everything was gone, but after a forced sync in DAVx5, everything is downloaded from the server again and now available.

[pa]

Hello Mr SMTP, thanks for writing back so promptly ^_^

That’s not good news! And the server is offline and three weeks out of date. I don’t want to sync with that in case it overwrites my data with either a. old stuff, or b. nothing!

So the DAVx⁵ app itself doesn’t store or cache anything?

[devvv4ever]

Hello Mr SMTP, thanks for writing back so promptly ^_^

If – then Mrs SMTP at least

[pa]

@devvv4ever oops!

[rfc2822]

@pa No, DAVx⁵ doesn’t cache anything. It’s just a bridge between the Contact/Calendar store and the *DAV server, see the illustration on https://www.davx5.com/faq/system-integration.

I recommend to make a server backup and then sync with the server. The three weeks of changes are probably lost, if they have never been synced. (And I don’t know what DAVx⁵ could do against that – maybe a notification “Your account hasn’t been synced for a while” after a week or so…)

[pa]

@rfc2822 dammit. Thanks. I guess I should magically have known that Android resets all the providers when booting into safe mode. There could have been a warning though, or an option!

Anyone here with any skills extracting residual data from Calendar Storage com.android.providers.contacts and Contacts Storage com.android.providers.contacts?

[rfc2822]

@pa The storages write to SQLite databases (/data/data/com.android.providers.calendar/databases/calendar.db and a similar one for contacts), which are accessible when the device is rooted. Maybe there’s some kind of journal… good luck!

I will add an FAQ entry about safe mode and that it removes all local DAVx⁵ entries.

[rfc2822]

FAQ updated: https://www.davx5.com/faq/accounts-gone-after-reboot-or-update

[pa]

Thanks, I’ll look into those, and thanks for the luck, looks like I’ll need it!