testsAndMisc/docs/DOCS-syncyomi-restore-runbook.md

SyncYomi / TachiyomiSY restore runbook

Written after the 2026-08-09 incident, in which a restore that reported success replaced a 2182-manga library with a 267 KB stub.

The bug

TachiyomiSY 1.13.2 (current release as of 2026-08-09) fails a backup restore with:

android.database.SQLException: Error code: 5, message: database is locked

The locked database is the app's own data.db on the phone, not the SyncYomi server. The stack runs through Room's InvalidationTracker — UI screens hold observer queries while the restore wants an exclusive write, and the bundled SQLite returns SQLITE_BUSY instead of waiting.

Upstream, open and unfixed: #1634 and #1638.

Why it is dangerous

The loud failure is survivable. The dangerous case is the quiet one:

1. A restore fails with code 5. The library is now empty or partial.
2. A retry reports Worker result SUCCESS — but writes almost nothing.
3. SyncYomi pushes that near-empty library to the server.
4. The good server copy is gone.

On 2026-08-09 the whole sequence took 51 seconds, and the real library survived only as stale pages in the server's SQLite write-ahead log.

A success toast is not evidence. Verify by entry count, always.

Restoring safely

1. Turn sync OFF in SY first. Settings → Data and storage → Sync. Skipping this lets a background sync overwrite the server mid-recovery.
2. Force-stop the app — adb shell am force-stop eu.kanade.tachiyomi.sy, or Settings → Apps → Force stop.
3. Cold-start straight into the restore. Do not open the library, do not let it sit on a tab loading covers. Every open screen is another observer holding a connection, which is what the restore loses the race to.
4. Put the phone down while it runs. Navigating during a restore adds exactly the contention that triggers the bug.
5. Verify by count, not by the toast. Compare against the guard's baseline: cat ~/.local/share/syncyomi_guard/last_known_good.json
6. Only then re-enable sync, so the verified library propagates up.

If it fails, force-stop and retry from step 3. Upstream reporters needed up to five attempts. Retrying is expected, not a sign of a new problem.

If it will not restore at all, the upstream workaround is a downgrade: install 1.12.0 → restore → upgrade back to 1.13.2. This wipes data.db, so do it only with a verified-good .tachibk in hand.

Known collateral: categories

A restore that recovers every manga can still drop all categories and all category memberships. Observed 2026-08-09: 2182/2182 manga and 57 389/57 389 distinct chapters restored, while 18 categories and 1724 manga-to-category assignments were lost. Matches the upstream report in #1634.

Categories are not recoverable by re-syncing — the server copy is whatever the phone last pushed. They come back only from a .tachibk that still has them.

Chapter counts shrink legitimately

A restore deduplicates chapter entries. On 2026-08-09 the total fell from 75 376 to 68 418 (−9.2 %) while the distinct chapter count was unchanged at 57 389: 6958 duplicates were collapsed, and nothing was lost.

Do not read a falling chapter count as data loss without comparing distinct chapter URLs. The guard's 10 % threshold is set above this specific event for exactly that reason.

The guard

python_pkg/syncyomi_guard/ checks the server payload every 30 minutes, fails loudly on a collapse, and keeps 14 restorable .tachibk snapshots.

# check now
python3 -m python_pkg.syncyomi_guard          # exit 0 healthy, 1 collapsed

# install / remove the timer
./linux_configuration/features/setup_syncyomi_guard.sh
./linux_configuration/features/setup_syncyomi_guard.sh --uninstall

systemctl --user list-timers syncyomi-guard.timer
journalctl --user -u syncyomi-guard.service -n 20

Snapshots live in ~/syncyomi/snapshots/ and are ordinary .tachibk files — adb push one to the phone and restore it directly.

Retention: 14 snapshots at 30-minute intervals is about 7 hours of history. That covers a fast incident — the 2026-08-09 window was 51 seconds — but not a slow drift noticed days later. For that, the reference copy is ~/syncyomi/recovery/, which is never pruned.

After a deliberate library purge the guard will report a collapse; accept the new state with --accept to re-baseline.

Outcome of the 2026-08-09 incident

Manga and chapters were fully recovered. The 18 categories were not, and the loss was accepted deliberately — the baseline now records 1 category, so the guard runs green against reality.

Three attempts failed to get categories back onto the phone:

1. Restore the recovered .tachibk → app briefly showed categories, but the next sync pushed 1 category up.
2. PUT the full 18-category payload straight to the server → server held 18, phone synced and flattened it back to 1.
3. Repeat of 2 with the same result.

Round 2 is the informative one: the server had 18 and the phone had 1, and 1 won. The phone was not losing a merge — it was honestly reporting what it had. The restore writes manga and chapters but silently drops the category tables, which is the narrow form of the same 1.13.2 bug.

The categories still exist in ~/syncyomi/recovery/syncyomi_recovered_2026-08-09.tachibk (18 definitions, 1724 memberships). Getting them into the app needs the downgrade path — 1.12.0 → restore → verify → upgrade — which was not attempted. If a future SY release fixes #1634, retry the restore before the downgrade.

Recovering from the server WAL (last resort)

If the server payload is already degraded and no snapshot predates it, the old payload may still exist as stale pages in syncyomi.db-wal.

Do not restart the container and do not checkpoint — a clean close deletes the WAL and the only remaining copy with it. Snapshot all three files first:

sudo cp -a ~/syncyomi/config/syncyomi.db{,-shm,-wal} /some/safe/dir/

Then rebuild by applying every WAL frame over the base database, last writer wins, and extract sync_data.data. The 2026-08-09 reconstruction and its verification are recorded in docs/superpowers/evidence/syncyomi-library-recovery-2026-08-09.json.

~/syncyomi/recovery/recovered.db is a forensic artifact, not a database. It was assembled by splicing pages from several checkpoint generations, so it is not any single committed SQLite state — quick_check passes and the payload blob decodes, but do not copy it over config/syncyomi.db. The deliverable from that recovery is the .tachibk beside it.