Database Info

Where is MMS saved?

I'm sure someone has figured this out.
Where in the file system are the pictures I receive via mms saved?
I'm sure they have to be somewhere, there has to be a way to get them without the fwd to pc email / attach image to new email / email back to phone trick.
Bonus points, I deleted a thread - can I still find those images somewhere in the file system and restore them?

I believe they're stored in a sqlite3 database, so it's not as easy as just copying a file.
It looks like this is the database:
/data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db
I don't have any mms/sms messages atm (recently wiped phone), so I don't have any data to look at in the database.
If you want, give me an IM or PM and I'll give you my cell number so you can send me an sms with a pic, so I can figure out how to extract it from the database

i dont think its in the database: its the same size no matter how many messages there is

Found it. The text and attachments are saved in /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/app_parts
They are stored in files named something like "PART_1228000671287", with no extension.
To see what type of files they are, you can run this command on the phone (assuming you have RC30 v1.2).
sqlite3 -header /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db "SELECT _data, ct FROM part;"
The first column is the full path to the file, and the 2nd column is the mime type of the file

Awesome, good work Android Master JesusFreke.
too bad I have the factory RC30
(why oh why did I hit the update button that night?)*
but that's cool to know that they can be found.
Now we just need someone to apply that knowledge into making a SaveImage option appear in the MMS thread.
* on an unrelated note I need to put in another thread: when RC29 came I noticed the camera worked like 5 times better. I was even able to snap pics of the kids on the swings and they came out clear, when RC30 came it was back to blurriness as usual.

JesusFreke said:
Found it. The text and attachments are saved in /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/app_parts
They are stored in files named something like "PART_1228000671287", with no extension.
To see what type of files they are, you can run this command on the phone (assuming you have RC30 v1.2).
sqlite3 -header /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db "SELECT _data, ct FROM part;"
The first column is the full path to the file, and the 2nd column is the mime type of the file
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would it be possible to write a program that would automatically extract the imgs/vids from that path and put them on the sd card with the correct file extension?

Sure. It would certainly be possible for rooted phones. I'm not sure for non-rooted phones.

I should have added on rooted phones on my first post.
Guess i should get off my butt and start messing around with some code.
I'm kinda leery about messing with root comands.

I think it would be possible for rooted as well. Can't applications have message privys so they can read messages? if they can read them can't they save the data?

JesusFreke said:
Found it. The text and attachments are saved in /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/app_parts
They are stored in files named something like "PART_1228000671287", with no extension.
To see what type of files they are, you can run this command on the phone (assuming you have RC30 v1.2).
sqlite3 -header /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db "SELECT _data, ct FROM part;"
The first column is the full path to the file, and the 2nd column is the mime type of the file
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now I can save my pictures people texted me! Thanks dude!

Backup Sprint Visual Voicemail?

Is there any way to backup the visual voicemail data in its entirety? I've tried looking for the data files using ASTRO but can't find anything other than the core app.
I also came up dry searching this forum.
Thanks

This may or may not be of use to you, but the best way IMO to do this would be just to use Google Voice for your voicemail needs. All your voicemails are stored on Google's servers, so you won't have to worry about it. But aside from Google Voice, I am pretty sure that as long as you don't delete the voicemails, they will remain there after a ROM flash or whatever you intend on doing.

mrinehart93 said:
This may or may not be of use to you, but the best way IMO to do this would be just to use Google Voice for your voicemail needs. All your voicemails are stored on Google's servers, so you won't have to worry about it. But aside from Google Voice, I am pretty sure that as long as you don't delete the voicemails, they will remain there after a ROM flash or whatever you intend on doing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a good thought, but I already have over a hundred voicemails on my Hero that I'd like to save without individually emailing to myself. They don't survive my ROM updates, because usually I end up wiping first or else the ROM won't work.

Hmm... is there a way to refresh the Visual Voicemail app? I haven't used it in ages, so I don't remember. If there is, you may be able to refresh the app after a flash and it'll redownload all the voicemails.

Hmm. i'm actually curious if anyone knows how to get back to using sprint vvm cause i used youmail and everything is still forwarded there

apatcas said:
Hmm. i'm actually curious if anyone knows how to get back to using sprint vvm cause i used youmail and everything is still forwarded there
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i believe you dial *38 and it will disable the forwarding...

chavo2005 said:
i believe you dial *38 and it will disable the forwarding...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank you... been trying that for a while

Anyone know where the VVM files are stored??

Anyone able to help me out? I want to migrate my old VMMs to a 2.1 ROM, but have no way to transfer them or back them up!
thanks

oktanedroid said:
Anyone know where the VVM files are stored??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To my understanding, as a former sprint employee, all voicemail is stored server side at sprint. We would always tell customers that this is no way to back up. Sorry, but I hope that helps.

oktanedroid said:
Anyone able to help me out? I want to migrate my old VMMs to a 2.1 ROM, but have no way to transfer them or back them up!
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try using your sound recorder and see if that file is stored locally, should be. About the only way to back up your VM's

snip3rm00n said:
To my understanding, as a former sprint employee, all voicemail is stored server side at sprint. We would always tell customers that this is no way to back up. Sorry, but I hope that helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am certain the phone stores it locally somewhere. Because when you receive a voicemail, it needs to download to your phone before you can hear it.
Also, if you put the phone in Airplane mode, you can still listen to VMMs, proving it is stored locally.
What are some good locations to look for where these files are stored??

Okay, I finally figured it out.
You need root permissions to find it.
You can find it at:
/data/data/com.coremobility.app.vnotes
The individual voicemail files are stored as AMR files. You can open them with QuickTime player.
AMR (adaptive multi rate):
Compressed audio format developed by Ericsson; used by many 3G cell phones for voice recordings such as MMS messages; incorporates the Algebraic Code Excited Linear Prediction (ACELP) algorithm, which is designed to efficiently compress human speech audio.

Now it turns out the voicemail data is stored in an SQL database called "vnotes_db".
I used Firefox SQL viewer to open it up. The data fields show voicemail ID #, sender phone #, recipient, guid (?), time sent, time listened to, and some other data.
The voicemail ID is in decimal in the database, but the file numbers are called VN-xxx.AMR, where xxx is the hexadecimal equivalent of voicemail ID.
Does anyone who knows more about computers know of a way I can take this data and automagically convert cryptic filenames to something like "mm/dd/yy hh:mm phone#sender.AMR"?
Thanks

where is the db located on the phone, and do you know how to push the vm's back onto the phone, say after flashing to a new rom?
thanks for your work.
UPDATE:
i was able to just once to get access to the /data/data/com.coremobility.app.vnotes on my phone. within that, there are a couple of folders, one titled "files" and one titled "databases". i copied those to my computer, changed and updated the rom on my phone, and was able to copy those folders back and got my old vvm on my phone.
i used droid explorer to get them off my phone, but i am having some trouble accessing the /data folder with it now, so i will probably have to use adb to push the files.
hope this helps anyone looking to do this.

help with /data/data/com.coremobility.app.vnotes please
I'm try to copy all the voicemails to my computer so i can reflash my phone but i hvaen't been able to copy the files in /data/data/com.coremobility.app.vnotes
i've been able to copy files /data/data and i get the some folders transfered to my computer but not /data/data/com.coremobility.app.vnotes

help with /data/data/com.coremobility.app.vnotes
sorry didn't mean to hit submit....
here is what i've tried.
adb shell
su
i get
#
now i tried
mount -o remount,rw -t ( to be honest not really sure what this mean)
than tried
chmod 777 /data/data
chmod 777 /data/data/com.coremobility.app.vnotes/files
chmod 777 /data/data/com.coremobility.app.vnotes/database
( I think this is supposed to give me permission)
than i did
exit
exit (so went back to )
C:android/tools
from here i did
adb pull /data/data/com.coremobility.app.vnotes c:\voice
and i get filed to copy /data/data/com.coremobility.app.vnotes/files/blah.AMR to c:voice permission denied.
I would really appreciate any help. just trying to learn.... thanks

anyway, i found an easier way to back up vvm's. you do need an app from the market that you will have to pay for called root explorer. it allows you to browse your phone and copy/cut/paste files and folders, including the elusive /data/data folder.
all i did before loading up a new rom was to navigate to the /data/data/ folder and copy the /com.coremobility.app.vnotes folder onto my sdcard. i had a /backups folder so i just copied it there.
flashed a new rom, reinstalled root explorer, navigated back to the /data/data folder and then deleted /com.coremobility.app.vnotes off the phone. copied the backup from my sdcard to the /data/data folder on the phone. rebooted, and all of my old vvm's are on my "new" phone.
do not delete the backup off your sdcard until you verify they are all there. sometimes, you might have to copy each folder (there are four with com.coremobility.app.vnotes) one at a time to the right location.
i was using droid explorer initially to try, but i lost access to the /data/ folder on my phone. droid explorer is a great program to use while explorer the phone from windows, but i think it's still a little buggy.
good luck.

You don't need to pay for Root explorer.
There are two ways you can get VVMs off your handset:
1. Forward them to your email. Open each VVM you want to forward, hit menu, forward, and enter your email. It then sends to your email as a WAV attachment.
2. Tarball the entire directory and pull it off. Using adb shell, create a tarball of /data/data/com.coremobility.app.vnotes/* to /sdcard/whateveryouwant.tar then adb pull it off to your local drive. Inside are AMR files which are playable by Quicktime, and VLC player, and several other media players.

Won't Titanium Backup work? It stores the app and data. It's free! Just a thought.
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App

[TOOL][ICS][GB][FROYO] Extract contents of Samsung Memo App's Database to CSV File

Many people, including myself, enjoyed using the stock Memo application on Froyo and GB. Unfortunately, it relies on TouchWiz so it is pretty unlikely that it will ever be ported to ICS. There are a plethora of note-taking apps out there to replace it, but how do you get your data back?
You don't need a running version of Memo to do this, just a backup of your Memo.db database.
I've attached a couple of shell scripts that you can run either on your phone or `nix / Mac to help you out. Here is the plan:
extract-memos.sh will take the memo data in a copy of your Memo.db, add a new table with columns for human-readable modified and created dates, as well as color, and write out the result (all memos) in a CSV file. You should be able to read the CSV file in most spreadsheet programs and save the data or transform it as you might need for another use.
Code:
[email protected]:~/Documents/memo-export$ sh extract-memos.sh
Checking database: /sdcard/memo-extract/com.sec.android.app.memo/databases/Memo.db
Checking output directory: /sdcard/memo-extract
You may want to see if there is anything important in
/sdcard/memo-extract/com.sec.android.app.memo/shared_prefs/memo_shared_pref.xml
Data exported to
/sdcard/memo-extract/memo_20120714-100915.txt
Code:
[email protected]:~/Documents/memo-export$ cat /sdcard/memo-extract/memo_20120714-100915.txt
_id,title,content,color,modify_t,create_t,color_text,modify_datetime,create_datetime
1,20120712,"A yellow memo",1,1342138985041,1342138985041,Yellow,"2012-07-12 17:23:05","2012-07-12 17:23:05"
2,20120712,"A tan memo",2,1342139010315,1342139010315,Tan,"2012-07-12 17:23:30","2012-07-12 17:23:30"
3,20120712,"A green memo",3,1342139028326,1342139028326,Green,"2012-07-12 17:23:48","2012-07-12 17:23:48"
4,20120712,"A blue memo",4,1342139045894,1342139045894,Blue,"2012-07-12 17:24:05","2012-07-12 17:24:05"
5,20120712,"A pale blue memo",5,1342139064381,1342139064381,BlueGray,"2012-07-12 17:24:24","2012-07-12 17:24:24"
extract-memos.sh expects to find the database in /sdcard/memo-extract/com.sec.android.app.memo/databases
and will write the output in /sdcard/memo-extract
If you already have a copy of Memo.db (I suggest a copy, as the script adds a new table to the database), you can adjust the input and output directories using the environment variables dbdir and outdir.
If you're not command-line savvy, you might want to try creating a copy of Memo.db using extract-files.sh first. It will try, in order:
The GB location -- /data/data/com.sec.android.app.memo
ClockworkMod backups -- /sdcard/clockworkmod/backups
TitaniumBackup backups (default location only) -- /sdcard/TitaniumBackup
and, if successful, copy/extract into /sdcard/memo-extract
You likely need busybox on your phone to run these scripts on the phone. You will need root if you intend to copy from /data/data
To run them on the phone:
Copy the scripts to your phone; here I am assuming you saved them to /sdcard/
Get a shell started on the phone (adb shell, or a terminal emulator on the phone)
Change directory to where you have the scripts
# cd /sdcard/
Uncompress the files, if you haven't already
# gunzip extract-files.sh.gz
# gunzip extract-memos.sh.gz
Get a copy of Memo.db, either using your own approach, or
# sh extract-files.sh
Assuming that succeed, extract the memos into a CSV file
# sh extract-memos.sh
Thanks to m4xm4n for pushing me to make this available. If you find it helpful, please take the time to poke both our Thanks buttons.
If you have problems, please PM me and I'll try to resolve them.
Latest version is 2012-07-14

What is the warning about memo_shared_pref.xml? I don't even have the file!
I had some reasonably useless information about "check" this and that in my com.sec.android.app.memo/shared_prefs/memo_shared_pref.xml My instance of that file dates back to the first release of the phone. I didn't see it on a fresh GB-created version, so it might be Froyo cruft, or who knows. You probably should check this file to see if there is anything useful to you in it.​
My _id values aren't all there
Missing _id values are from the memos you have deleted.​
What are _id values?
They are an internal number that the Memo app used to keep track of your memos. You probably don't need them to import.​
What are the long numbers for modify_t and create_t?
Internal "unixtime" in milliseconds. If that sounded like gibberish, use the human-readable versions that are in your local timezone.​
The create/modify times seem off by several hours
Strangely, I have some memos that seem around eight hours off in the opposite way I would expect if they were in UTC. I don't know why.​

(reserved for information on importing into other apps)
There are a ton of note-taking apps out there. Right now, I haven't found any that can import the content, the created and modified dates both, and hopefully the color in a reasonable way. If I do, I'll post here how to get the data easily into that app.

Would you be able to post a new link to extract-memos.sh? I just tried clicking on the current one, and both only led to a page that said "410 Gone."

[Q] Possible to Assign Multiple Group ID's to an App (UID) in Android?

Hey guys, I've been searched for many hours trying to find a solution to this problem I'm having. Let me first explain what I'm trying to do and the reason for it.
Basically I have Dropbox setup to auto sync encrypted files to a folder on my sdcard, lets say:
/storage/sdcard1/encrypted_notes/
Then I have Cryptonite installed and have created an encfs mount in my data folder here:
/data/data/share.encrypted/
I've created the mount point there because simply put, I don't want my decrypted files on the sdcard accessible by every other app that has access to the entire sdcard.
At the moment, /data/data/share.encrypted is chowned by the uid & gid that is assigned to Cryptonite.
Now I want my note reading app to be able to access all files in that folder so my plan was to simple add the note reading apps' UID to the GID of Cryptonite.
That's what I've been searching google to figure out how to do, add a UID of an app to a GID of another app in android.
Sounds simple enough, but I have no idea how to do it. There is no "groupadd" command in android as far as I can tell, nor does busybox have this command.
Is there some other way to do do this?
Or even... some other way I can setup my system so the decrypted notes are still available by both apps and no other app?
Any help is really appreciated. Thanks

I thought I had something going, I managed to change the group owner of the notes folder
/data/data/share.encrypted/ to uid of the notes program and gid of cryptonite and successfully mounted
/storage/sdcard1/encrypted_notes/ into that directory using cryptonite, and on top of that was able to edit the files in the notes program only to discover two things.
Firstly, mounting that encrypted notes folder to the data folder uses the filesystem permissions of the encrypted_notes folder on the SD Card (obviously), something I didn't think of - basically making /data/data/share.encrypted/ world write/readable to any app that has access to SD Card.
So doesn't really help me in terms of keeping things secure.
So then I thought of a new idea, creating a separate partition ext4 on my SD Card, making *that* folder my encrypted notes sync folder owned by the notes program uid and cryptonite as group and instead mount that, until I then realized, I need a 3rd app to have r/w access to this encrypted notes folder... my notes syncing app - FolderSync -
So now I think I'm back to square one. The easiest way to do all of this that I can think of (on a Linux system) would be to add the 3 apps to a group and just have the folder r/w by that group (and therefore those 3 apps).
But after lots of continued research the past few days... I'm finding that Android is very very anti-this-idea in the fact that it really really doesn't like apps sharing data (except universally shared data on the SD Card) and I can't figure out a way to assign apps to additional groups beyond their initial group that is created just for them. :crying:
I found another similar discussion about the non-security of storing your cryptonite unencrypted notes on world readable sd card here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1561339
With the following two points which are my personal concern as well:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=25837127
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=26265852
I'm having a really difficult & frustrating time here.
Any thoughts anyone?

Can I extract sms messages from a complete physical memory dump?

So a while ago I grabbed a Motorola G2, made a complete physical memory dump to file “Full_Phone_Backup.image” I also have a .vhd which will not mount, but I remember very clearly extracting the contacts list from it.
I didn’t keep records of how I went about doing it, but I’m sure it was some busybox or cygwin and I’m very sure the file contains all the partitions. Don’t know what happened to .vhd, but I also can’t make a new one either, so bad luck I guess. Anyway, now I need to extract SMS messages from it, and so I turned to Foremost. With the following in a foremost-db.conf:
Code:
db n 4000000 \x53\x51\x4c\x69\x74\x65\x20\x66\x6f\x72\x6d\x61\x74\x20\x33\x00
I hoped to get a good rundown of the databases and extract from there. Now, I don’t need deleted messages or anything, I need to find the SMS messages that would be there as if the phone was on right now. Well, that and search them.
So, Foremost carved a whooping 36 GiB of .db files, which I think suggests that the file header is actually not for SQLite 3 file as much as for a part of SQLite3 file, and one file may contain many. Secondary evidence of that is that massive number of files contain the same data shifted a more or less uniform number of lines (like an entire block shifted 1k lines down across 10 files before it completely disappears).
Anyway, from the carved DB files I got meaningful e-mail messages, from the carved photos and videos, I got meaningful pictures (ones which would be on this phone), so I am sure data is there. Problem is, I could not find the messages I’m looking for. I was unable to find a single SMS message, I was unable to browse any of the recovered databases with sqlite database browsers, and the most useful thing I was able to do was to use Ransack in windows to search for relevant text in those recovered files.
What am I doing wrong that I’m not finding SMS messages or any relevant text in this mess?

KYKYLLIKA said:
So a while ago I grabbed a Motorola G2, made a complete physical memory dump to file “Full_Phone_Backup.image” I also have a .vhd which will not mount, but I remember very clearly extracting the contacts list from it.
I didn’t keep records of how I went about doing it, but I’m sure it was some busybox or cygwin and I’m very sure the file contains all the partitions. Don’t know what happened to .vhd, but I also can’t make a new one either, so bad luck I guess. Anyway, now I need to extract SMS messages from it, and so I turned to Foremost. With the following in a foremost-db.conf:
Code:
dbn 4000000\x53\x51\x4c\x69\x74\x65\x20\x66\x6f\x72\x6d\x61\x74\x20\x33\x00
I hoped to get a good rundown of the databases and extract from there. Now, I don’t need deleted messages or anything, I need to find the SMS messages that would be there as if the phone was on right now. Well, that and search them.
So, Foremost carved a whooping 36 GiB of .db files, which I think suggests that the file header is actually not for SQLite 3 file as much as for a part of SQLite3 file, and one file may contain many. Secondary evidence of that is that massive number of files contain the same data shifted a more or less uniform number of lines (like an entire block shifted 1k lines down across 10 files before it completely disappears).
Anyway, from the carved DB files I got meaningful e-mail messages, from the carved photos and videos, I got meaningful pictures (ones which would be on this phone), so I am sure data is there. Problem is, I could not find the messages I’m looking for. I was unable to find a single SMS message, I was unable to browse any of the recovered databases with sqlite database browsers, and the most useful thing I was able to do was to use Ransack in windows to search for relevant text in those recovered files.
What am I doing wrong that I’m not finding SMS messages or any relevant text in this mess?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can't get into the phone and use SMS backup app or PC to backup your SMS? Can you back them up to your Google account and then recover them from there?
There are several ways to recover SMS from a device, is this method the only one you've tried?
Are you recovering your SMS or someone else's?
Sent from my SM-S903VL using Tapatalk

KYKYLLIKA said:
So a while ago I grabbed a Motorola G2, made a complete physical memory dump to file “Full_Phone_Backup.image”
.
.
and I’m very sure the file contains all the partitions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How did you make this Backup.image? In my question over here I dreamt of something like 'dd if=/dev/sda of=/image.bak' for a really complete backup. Did you make your complete memory dump in such a way and would i be possible to write it back to the phone?
Thanks!

Droidriven said:
You can't get into the phone and use SMS backup app or PC to backup your SMS? Can you back them up to your Google account and then recover them from there?
There are several ways to recover SMS from a device, is this method the only one you've tried?
Are you recovering your SMS or someone else's?
Sent from my SM-S903VL using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is my sister’s phone. The backup is from 16 months back or so. I can’t go search the SMS it has now, because updates been around since then, including a new version of android, and all that. It does not have the old messages.
What I tried is a sqlite forensics utility called “sqlite forensics reporter”, but no luck with that either. Piriform recuva did not work, and I was unable to mount it as a virtual hard drive or find a part of it that I could mount as a virtual hard drive.
andy_ross said:
How did you make this Backup.image? In my question over here I dreamt of something like 'dd if=/dev/sda of=/image.bak' for a really complete backup. Did you make your complete memory dump in such a way and would i be possible to write it back to the phone?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is entirely possible. However, I cannot find the boot record in there or a partition table, which is very strange. I do remember dumping all the partitions in that file, though. It’s been over a year now, so details kind of gone fuzzy. I am sure I could write it back to a phone and use like that, but I don’t have a suitable surrogate phone or a virtual machine to try that on. I will not do it on the device itself, seeing as how it’s in use and all that. I just want to find the text of some messages.