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When performing adb pull / on a non-rooted device, I see hundreds of items with pathnames that begin with /proc/self/root/proc/self/root/proc/self/root/proc/self/root/proc/self/root/proc/self/root/proc/self/root/proc/self/root/proc/self/root/proc/self/root/proc/self/root/proc/self/root?

That's not a typo. That is literally how the path of each of these items is prefaced.

It looks recursive or like an infinite loop, but eventually the repetition ends with a unique file or folder name.

What is going on? What is adb doing here?

End Anti-Semitic Hate
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    Usually that happens when dealing with chroot and/or mount namespace. /proc/<pid>/root points to the rootfs a process is seeing. Doing adb pull on "entire device" doesn't make sense. You should at maximum pull only persistent storage partitions, not pseudo filesystems. – Irfan Latif Mar 09 '21 at 07:19
  • @IrfanLatif Yes, I'm undoubtedly trying to capture a gnat with too large of a net. I was trying to apply some of the tips provided in https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/234446/on-a-non-rooted-device-can-adb-access-any-files-that-an-android-file-manager-ca, and so I cast the net as wide and large as possible. I'm searching for anywhere the lost data could be stored (cache, temp files, etc.), and so I tried pulling everything starting at root to try to get everything possible. – End Anti-Semitic Hate Mar 09 '21 at 07:37
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    User data is stored nowhere ever except on /data. – Irfan Latif Mar 09 '21 at 07:53
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    / is just tmpfs in RAM and does not survive reboot. there is no benefit in pulling / no matter device is rooted or unrooted. it makes lot more sense to pull physical partitions, although only one partition is of any use – alecxs Mar 09 '21 at 12:14
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    And also that won't succeed because some pseudo files (like /dev/zero and /dev/urandom) have no end of file. You'll get an infinitely increasing file. – Irfan Latif Mar 09 '21 at 13:01

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