adbsync bombing in my case

[mcondarelli]

First of all: is this project still active? I see several issues but no update in a long time.
If it is not: is there a better alternative?

In any case I get the following:

emotiq@ikea:~/prove/cinderella/emotiq$ ~/.local/bin/adbsync -n push . /data/misc/emotiq_runtime/emotiq
Ignoring symlink ./workarm-dist/libcommsrv.so
Ignoring symlink ./workarm-dist/libenetutils.so.1
Ignoring symlink ./workarm-dist/libcommsrv.so.1
Ignoring symlink ./workarm-dist/libemocryptiq.so.1.0
Ignoring symlink ./workarm-dist/libenetutils.so
Ignoring symlink ./workarm-dist/libesupport.so.1
Ignoring symlink ./workarm-dist/libenetutils.so.1.0
Ignoring symlink ./workarm-dist/libesupport.so
Ignoring symlink ./workarm-dist/libemocryptiq.so.1
Ignoring symlink ./workarm-dist/libesupport.so.1.0
Ignoring symlink ./workarm-dist/libemocryptiq.so
Ignoring symlink ./workarm-dist/libcommsrv.so.1.0
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/emotiq/.local/bin/adbsync", line 8, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
             ^^^^^^
  File "/home/emotiq/.local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/BetterADBSync/__init__.py", line 379, in main
    files_tree_destination = fs_destination.get_files_tree(path_destination, follow_links = args.copy_links)
                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/emotiq/.local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/BetterADBSync/FileSystems/Base.py", line 45, in get_files_tree
    return self._get_files_tree(tree_path, statObject, follow_links = follow_links)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/emotiq/.local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/BetterADBSync/FileSystems/Base.py", line 33, in _get_files_tree
    tree[filename] = self._get_files_tree(
                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/emotiq/.local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/BetterADBSync/FileSystems/Base.py", line 34, in _get_files_tree
    self.join(tree_path, filename),
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/emotiq/.local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/BetterADBSync/FileSystems/Android.py", line 189, in join
    return os.path.join(base, leaf).replace("\\", "/") # for Windows
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "<frozen posixpath>", line 90, in join
  File "<frozen genericpath>", line 164, in _check_arg_types
TypeError: join() argument must be str, bytes, or os.PathLike object, not 'NoneType'

can someone explain/help?

Many Thanks in Advance

[jpstotz]

The question if this project is still alive is good. I had contacted the author some months ago, but got no reply.

I forked the project to fix some smaller problems I had. It has to be installed directly from GitHub:

pip install git+https://github.com/jpstotz/better-adb-sync#BetterADBSync

In your case however the problem is not BetterADBSync but your Android device:

The adb daemon by default runs with shell permissions therefore all file operations via adb push/pull are also executed with shell permissions. And the folder /data is not accessible with with shell permissions. I assume internally you run into a "permission denied" error and BetterADBSync is not prepared for that error. That means you simply can not push files directly to /data, even if the phone is rooted. Push to a different path and then copy/move the files in a adb shell session with root permissions.

[mcondarelli]

Thanks @jpstotz

The adb daemon by default runs with shell permissions therefore all file operations via adb push/pull are also executed with shell permissions...

That is not true in my case (I successfully did an adb root) and I can access files with plain adb push whatever /data/misc/emotiq_runtime/emotiq and it succeeds with no errors.

I suspect there's something else amiss (unless better-adb-sync manages to drop permissions, but that would require adbd restart on target).

Are you aware of some better-maintained equivalent project?

[jpstotz]

Ok, that your device supports adb root is quite unusual. I don't know an alternative to betteradbsync.

The get more details on your problem I would recommend to add verbose and show-progress argument:

~/.local/bin/adbsync -v --show-progress -n push . /data/misc/emotiq_runtime/emotiq

[mcondarelli]

Thanks again for the prompt answer @jpstotz !

To clarify: the device I'm using is a device for which I actually have complete control as I'm compiling AOSP for it and I'm currently using userdebug build.

Unfortunately using your suggested options produces the same exact output as above.
Most likely error happens before hitting any conditional printout.

[jpstotz]

From the stack trace it is only known that something fails while checking the file-system destination, thus /data/misc/emotiq_runtime/emotiq or a sub-folder on your phone. On device ls -la and ls -lad calls are executed and the result parsed. I would recommend to perform those commands manually on the phone for the mentioned folder and all sub-folders to see if the output is unusual in a certain way.

[xandro0777]

@jpstotz thanks for maintaining your fork, unfortunately I had no luck trying it. Installed from github

$ adbsync --version
1.4.0

$ adbsync -v -n -L --show-progress pull /storage/emulated/0 .
[2025-11-05 18:57:56][CRITICAL] /storage/emulated/0: FileNotFoundError (SAOLogging.py:63)
[2025-11-05 18:57:56][DEBUG] Stack Trace (SAOLogging.py:64)
Stack (most recent call last):
  File "/home/rz/.local/bin/adbsync", line 8, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "/home/rz/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/BetterADBSync/__init__.py", line 376, in main
    perror(path_source, e, FATAL)
  File "/home/rz/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/BetterADBSync/SAOLogging.py", line 97, in perror
    logging_fatal(msg)
  File "/home/rz/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/BetterADBSync/SAOLogging.py", line 64, in logging_fatal
    logging.debug("Stack Trace", stack_info = log_stack_info)
[2025-11-05 18:57:56][CRITICAL] Exiting (SAOLogging.py:65)

Yes, /storage/emulated/0 does exist

$ adb shell ls -l -d /storage/emulated/0 
drwxrwx--- 50 root everybody 3488 2025-08-31 13:25 /storage/emulated/0

Any idea? I could dive into Python debugging but perhaps it is something silly I have overlooked?

[xandro0777]

Btw original adb-sync with similar command line worked fine..

[jpstotz]

Try adding the slash at the end so that the soft link is resolved : /storage/emulated/0/

[xandro0777]

Nope, didn't help, however I added a few debug statements and found that the problem occurs in this directory

$ adb shell ls -l /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/net.osmand.plus/files/tiles/
total 177
-rw-rw----  1 u0_a266 sdcard_rw 172032 2023-03-24 13:08 Mapillary (raster tiles).sqlitedb
-rw-rw----  1 u0_a266 sdcard_rw      0 2023-03-24 13:06 Mapillary (raster tiles).sqlitedb-journal
drwxrwx--x  3 u0_a266 sdcard_rw   3488 2023-03-24 13:06 Mapillary (vector tiles)
drwxrwx--x 19 u0_a266 sdcard_rw   3488 2025-03-01 11:53 Microsoft Earth
drwxrwx--x 10 u0_a266 sdcard_rw   3488 2022-04-11 20:37 OsmAnd (online tiles)


[2025-11-05 19:38:43][INFO] is dir /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/net.osmand.plus/files/sounds (Base.py:30)
[2025-11-05 19:38:44][INFO] is dir /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/net.osmand.plus/files/srtm (Base.py:30)
[2025-11-05 19:38:44][INFO] is dir /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/net.osmand.plus/files/tiles (Base.py:30)
[2025-11-05 19:38:44][INFO] is dir /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/net.osmand.plus/files/tiles/Mapillary/ (vector/ tiles) (Base.py:30)
[2025-11-05 19:38:44][CRITICAL] /storage/emulated/0: FileNotFoundError (SAOLogging.py:63)
[2025-11-05 19:38:44][DEBUG] Stack Trace (SAOLogging.py:64)

[xandro0777]

Do you think this information would be enough for you to localiZe the problem?

[jpstotz]

@xandro0777 Sorry but I don't anything special in your output besides the file or directory names starting with a space.

Anyway I am a maintainer of better-adb-sync, just a user with development experience. The original author of this project does not respond anymore. I have collected some PRs from other users and made some smaller corrections in my better-adb-sync fork: https://github.com/jpstotz/better-adb-sync

May be this fork already fixes your problem?

[xandro0777]

@jpstotz I am using exactly your fork. For some reason I can't access/file issues for your fork so I am describing my problem here. So checked out *your* fork, followed deinstall/rebuild instructions. It bombed before doing anything upon encountering the directory names with spaces in it. Hence I added those debug statements. Later today I tried excluding the offending subdirectories, didn't work. Of note, original adb-sync didn't have this issue, it had other issues though. Perhaps as file quoting was converted to shlex the initial tree scan or directory names were forgotten? Looked at the various diffs that looked great.. I would guess it is something fairly trivial. I am willing to dive deep into this and know the basics of Python but my knowledge of the various branches and their quirks is limited.. and the last thing I want to do is to create yet another fork of this software. Let me know if I can help. Enabling issues in your fork would be helpful.

[jpstotz]

@xandro0777 Sorry this happens if you do too many things at the same time. I don't know why the issues were disabled on my fork, but now they are enabled.

Seems that your problem was a side-effect of the improvement I implemented based on #56. ls -b escapes spaces which breaks adbsync. I fixed that problem and also improved the exception logging, as the stack trace logging printed the current stack trace but not the stack trace of the error.

[xandro0777]

Great thanks, testing it since some hours and everything seems to work.

[xandro0777]

Would you mind if I create an issue here saying this project is currently inactive and slightly broken pointing to your fork that seems a lot better?