Hi everyone, I ran into an issue while trying to recover my Pixel 6 running GrapheneOS. I woke up to find that my phone had started rebooting in a loop. I am in recovery and trying to sideload an update, but it always fails due to a timestamp downgrade check.
Here is what happens:
I boot into recovery and select “Apply update from ADB”. I run adb sideload with the latest OTA file. The sideload starts with a small transfer, then fails immediately with a message like this:
expected a build newer than timestamp 1770348254 but package has timestamp 1770348253 and downgrade not allowed
I have verified that I am using what should be the latest signed OTA for Pixel 6 and GrapheneOS. The file name, size, and download source look correct. I also reboot the recovery before each attempt.
Even though the OTA file should be newer based on the version number, the recovery refuses it as “older” than the currently installed build. From what I have read on forums, the recovery checks an internal build timestamp value and rejects any package whose internal timestamp is lower than the device’s current build timestamp. It does this to prevent downgrades. (discuss.grapheneos.org)
I have already tried all the solutions I could find online, including multiple versions (stable, beta, alpha), rebooting recovery, and other common troubleshooting steps, but nothing has worked. I do not want to unlock the bootloader and wipe my data if possible.
Has anyone seen this specific error with GrapheneOS OTAs? Is there a way to adjust or regenerate the update package so that it is accepted, or an alternative method to reinstall or recover without losing data? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks!
(i used AI for this text beause my english are REALLY bad)