[Magisk] lorenzin:
Editing to add - I successfully restored root by uninstalling Magisk, rebooting, reinstalling Magisk, and walking through the initial root installation steps again from scratch. Leaving this here in case some other poor soul does the same dumb thing I did and needs reassurance!

Original post:

TL;DR: I tried to install busybox to get My Backup Pro working, and instead it appears to have broken granting root access via Magisk... removing busybox didn't fix it. Looking for suggestions on how to get Magisk working again!

I apparently know just enough about rooting Android / using Magisk to be dangerous, and *not* enough to stay out of trouble. 😬

Last week, I successfully rooted my new Google Pixel 8 running Android 14 on Google Fi (Build UD1A.230803.022.A5), verified that I had successfully rooted it using Basic Root Checker, and have happily been installing apps and migrating data manually to it over the past week.

Today I thought "hey, I've got enough data on here now that I should set up backups!"

I've been using My Backup Pro on the older Android phone I'm migrating from, so I:

Installed My Backup Pro and launched it

Allowed all system permissions

Got this message:

"Your busybox is not installed or out of date. Please install the latest busybox. Your backup and restore operations might not function properly. Please install it and restart My Backup.

Installed: v None

Min required: v 1.22.1"

When I hit OK, My Backup Pro redirected me to BusyBox Free by stephen (Stericson) in the Play app

I installed Busybox Free, ran the app, tried to install busybox, and, got this message:

"We could not verify the integrity of the binary selected to be installed and as a result installation will not occur for the safety of your device. Please close the application and re-open it in order to re-attempt installation. If the issue persists, please email me at Stericdroid@gmail.com so I can assist you with fixing this issue."

So I thought maybe I just needed a different busybox installer. I uninstalled BusyBox Free and installed BusyBox Installer by sunilpalmathew (lots of downloads, good rating)

Ran the one-click busybox install and got "Congrats, you're up to date!"

Rebooted my phone as directed

Launched My Backup Pro, got the same error about busybox not installed or out of date. Womp womp. ☹️

Redirected me to BusyBoxFree again, so I reinstalled Busybox Free on my phone and tried to install busybox again, to see if it would work better this time. (The definition of insanity...)

Got prompted over and over for Superuser, granted every time, just kept repeating til it finally gave up and gave me an error along the lines of "could not get superuser, verify that you have root on this device." Uh-oh...

I ran Basic Root Checker and got the dreaded "Your device doesn't have root access" 😱

Magisk log shows:

- Basic Root Checker was granted root access when I first installed it (I only granted it temporary access)

- earlier today, My Backup Pro, Busybox Free, and Busybox Installer were granted root access

- after I rebooted, Busybox Free and Basic Root Checker were denied root access

and lots of these log entries:

033 886 6270 W: su: request rejected (10268)

037 887 6270 E: write failed with 32: Broken pipe

So it looks like whatever Busybox Installer did when it installed busybox broke Magisk's ability to authorize apps for root access.

No problem, I thought - I'll just remove busybox and it'll go back to working again! Sadly, no.

I used the Remove option in Busybox Installer, and it appeared to successfully remove the apps it installed - but after a reboot, I still get the same behavior in Magisk.

Is there any way to fix this that doesn't involve data loss? I've spent many hours over the past week working on getting apps installed and configured, data migrated, etc. and I'd *really* like not to start that over from scratch.

(But if that's the only way to get back to a rooted device with working Magisk, so be it... It'll just be a memorable lesson in not poking things I don't fully understand.)

Sorry for the wall o'text. Any suggestions very greatly appreciated!