Hi!
Could anyone help steer me towards a solution please?
Or tell me if its impossible (and why).
I am trying to put together a script of some kind which I can use to do a basic rebuild of my Archos 70 after I have done a Full Reinitialization. I like to mess around installing all sorts of stuff, but when done, it's nice to reset and go
back to a clean machine.
As it's not rooted (yet?) I generally rebuild manually which takes ages.
Although a relative newbie at Android/Linux, I have worked with scripting
on mainframes and in the Windoze arena for many years.
The scripting requirement is quite simple, namely to install packages one by one from the SD card. Also to copy back Bookmarks, launcher setting etc
I am happy to work in any language which will work, but to date have just been trying with .SL (Bash?) scripts which run quite happily from within the SL4A environment or according to my theory, should work also from Android natively.
I envisage the script residing on the SD card and when invoked installing my launcher, Dolphin Browser, various other apps and games, then copying back the settings which I have saved (also by script) before the Initialisation.
Trouble is, I can find no simple samples which help. When I try, I can 'cp' stuff about and echo messages etc, but when I try to install, I don't really know where to start. I have tried just the name of the app package
'/sdcard/sdcard/packagename.apk', it replies 'permission denied' and if I try 'sudo package.apk', it says 'not found'.
I am assuming that the 'permission denied' is a good sign because it understands what I'm trying to do at least. But if I am allowed to do it myself, then surely my script should be allowed to do it?
I am quite happy messing around myself. But if anyone has any pointers
(sample scripts, which language/environment to use, etc.) I would be most grateful.
Sorry if this is covered elsewhere. I have searched but was unable to find much which helped. I am continuing the search!
Thanks in anticipation!
1. All normal installed Apps are installed in /data/app as the apk
2. Local/private data comes into /data/data/name.of.the.package
Both directories are ony accessible with root.
Hell again,
Thanks for your reply fzelle, but I'm not sure as to whether I may have explained it properly.
I am running 'Quick System Info' which is great, and it has a function to backup all the installed apps to a directory you can get at without root access. From there I have copied them onto the SD card.
I am not just trying to copy them into the working directory.
If I click on an app, it lets me install it without any problem.
I am trying to automate that part of the process, and I need the name of the software which does the installation, and how to actually give it the parameters for it to do the install. Although a Linux newbie, I don't really understand why, if I am allowed to install apps myself,
a script that I run should not be allowed to install them also?
Anyone got any ideas please?
Oops! - Sorry for that unfortunate typo at the beginning of my last post. Please read as 'Hello'!
No, i didn't understand you wrong.
You want to automate the installation of your std programs, and that normaly doesn't only include the apk but also the private Data.
And if you manually want to install this, you need root to be able to write in /data/data
If you just want to Backup/Install the apps, use appSaver from the market.
That has allready everything you need, and doesn't need root.
fzelle said:
1. All normal installed Apps are installed in /data/app as the apk
2. Local/private data comes into /data/data/name.of.the.package
Both directories are ony accessible with root.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not entirely true.
I have some SSH tunnels set up on my rooted phone that use keys and a shell script to launch them, all set up with Better Terminal Emulator. The key and script files are located under /data/data/com.magicandroidapps.bettertempro/home. I wanted to use the same keys and script on my A70, so I copied the files from my phone to the same directory on my A70 using the terminal command line. Although you can't browse to the app folders under /data/data/, there is some ability to copy stuff into them. I guess the trick is knowing what and to where.
I've not used appsaver, but Astro will also let you back up and reinstall your apps all at once.
Hi there,
I have an HTC Evo 3d, running LeeDroid's ROM from very early days. To be honest, never really messed about with it much, but had noticed it added a 'Secure' box to SMS.
Now, i don't 'think' i ever set a password for this, however it keeps asking for one, and i cannot access my secure messages. So, i was wondering if anyone knows if there is a way i can reset this password, or somehow backup the messages so they are not lost, then maybe reinstall something, and start from scratch, but WITHOUT losing the messages within?
I have had a look on both this site, and Google, however so far have been unable to find the correct answer, as not sure i'm even asking the right questions, lol!
Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction!
Thanks.
R0N4LD said:
Hi there,
I have an HTC Evo 3d, running LeeDroid's ROM from very early days. To be honest, never really messed about with it much, but had noticed it added a 'Secure' box to SMS.
Now, i don't 'think' i ever set a password for this, however it keeps asking for one, and i cannot access my secure messages. So, i was wondering if anyone knows if there is a way i can reset this password, or somehow backup the messages so they are not lost, then maybe reinstall something, and start from scratch, but WITHOUT losing the messages within?
I have had a look on both this site, and Google, however so far have been unable to find the correct answer, as not sure i'm even asking the right questions, lol!
Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction!
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried your carrier password? Like on Sprint usually my default password is 1) the last 4 of my phone number (most likely) or 2) my voicemail password. Start with one of those.
Hello there, I know that this an old thread but just in case anyone is still interested in this I found out some information(the hard way). First of, if you aren't rooted then there is little than you can do apart from cry and try to guess the password. Trust me, I've tried alternatives and even though both the password and secure box messages are stored in plain text, the directories they are in are inaccessible without root access. Unfortunately rooting your device deletes all messages and there is NO way to backup the secure box messages. If you do have root access then carry on reading.
I'm yet to find out where the secure box messages database is but the password is stored on plain text in this file "/data/data/com.android.mms/shared_prefs/com.android.mms.categoryInfo.xml" either read it or delete the file to reassert the password. Deleting the file will not affect the secure box messages in anyway.
Stefan3 said:
Hello there, I know that this an old thread but just in case anyone is still interested in this I found out some information(the hard way). First of, if you aren't rooted then there is little than you can do apart from cry and try to guess the password. Trust me, I've tried alternatives and even though both the password and secure box messages are stored in plain text, the directories they are in are inaccessible without root access. Unfortunately rooting your device deletes all messages and there is NO way to backup the secure box messages. If you do have root access then carry on reading.
I'm yet to find out where the secure box messages database is but the password is stored on plain text in this file "/data/data/com.android.mms/shared_prefs/com.android.mms.categoryInfo.xml" either read it or delete the file to reassert the password. Deleting the file will not affect the secure box messages in anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you very much for your assistance. Can you explain I. Detail how to get to that file? I put that link in the search bar (internal storage) and it won't pull anything up. I'm not super savy when it comes to stuff like this. Do you mind helping me out?
Stefan3 said:
Hello there, I know that this an old thread but just in case anyone is still interested in this I found out some information(the hard way). First of, if you aren't rooted then there is little than you can do apart from cry and try to guess the password. Trust me, I've tried alternatives and even though both the password and secure box messages are stored in plain text, the directories they are in are inaccessible without root access. Unfortunately rooting your device deletes all messages and there is NO way to backup the secure box messages. If you do have root access then carry on reading.
I'm yet to find out where the secure box messages database is but the password is stored on plain text in this file "/data/data/com.android.mms/shared_prefs/com.android.mms.categoryInfo.xml" either read it or delete the file to reassert the password. Deleting the file will not affect the secure box messages in anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks a bunch!!!
If you haven't rooted your device and don't remember setting the password for the secure box, you can try the same password you have for your HTC account. It worked for me, thankfully.
Stefan3 said:
Hello there, I know that this an old thread but just in case anyone is still interested in this I found out some information(the hard way). First of, if you aren't rooted then there is little than you can do apart from cry and try to guess the password. Trust me, I've tried alternatives and even though both the password and secure box messages are stored in plain text, the directories they are in are inaccessible without root access. Unfortunately rooting your device deletes all messages and there is NO way to backup the secure box messages. If you do have root access then carry on reading.
I'm yet to find out where the secure box messages database is but the password is stored on plain text in this file "/data/data/com.android.mms/shared_prefs/com.android.mms.categoryInfo.xml" either read it or delete the file to reassert the password. Deleting the file will not affect the secure box messages in anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks it worked for me 100%
Stefan3 said:
Hello there, I know that this an old thread but just in case anyone is still interested in this I found out some information(the hard way). First of, if you aren't rooted then there is little than you can do apart from cry and try to guess the password. Trust me, I've tried alternatives and even though both the password and secure box messages are stored in plain text, the directories they are in are inaccessible without root access. Unfortunately rooting your device deletes all messages and there is NO way to backup the secure box messages. If you do have root access then carry on reading.
I'm yet to find out where the secure box messages database is but the password is stored on plain text in this file "/data/data/com.android.mms/shared_prefs/com.android.mms.categoryInfo.xml" either read it or delete the file to reassert the password. Deleting the file will not affect the secure box messages in anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so much for the password file location. I was able to recover the secure box password for a Desire 500 using this info without having root.
Here's what I did:
* Backup com.android.mms
Code:
adb backup -f backup.ab com.android.mms
* Extract the resulting backup.ab to backup.tar using Android Backup Extractor (can't post link, so search GitHub for it - author nelenkov)
Code:
java -jar abe.jar unpack backup.ab backup.tar
one could also use dd if available
Code:
dd if=backup.ab bs=1 skip=24|openssl zlib -d > backup.tar
* Find com.android.mms.categoryInfo.xml in apps/com.android.mms/sp directory of extracted .tar
help
positivew said:
Thank you so much for the password file location. I was able to recover the secure box password for a Desire 500 using this info without having root.
Here's what I did:
* Backup com.android.mms
Code:
adb backup -f backup.ab com.android.mms
* Extract the resulting backup.ab to backup.tar using Android Backup Extractor (can't post link, so search GitHub for it - author nelenkov)
Code:
java -jar abe.jar unpack backup.ab backup.tar
one could also use dd if available
Code:
dd if=backup.ab bs=1 skip=24|openssl zlib -d > backup.tar
* Find com.android.mms.categoryInfo.xml in apps/com.android.mms/sp directory of extracted .tar
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hey, i am new in these stuffs, can you please provide a better tutorial of what you did and how you did, i am also not having root and also i am not having the secure box password.
Hello!
positivew said:
Thank you so much for the password file location. I was able to recover the secure box password for a Desire 500 using this info without having root.
Here's what I did:
* Backup com.android.mms
Code:
adb backup -f backup.ab com.android.mms
* Extract the resulting backup.ab to backup.tar using Android Backup Extractor (can't post link, so search GitHub for it - author nelenkov)
Code:
java -jar abe.jar unpack backup.ab backup.tar
one could also use dd if available
Code:
dd if=backup.ab bs=1 skip=24|openssl zlib -d > backup.tar
* Find com.android.mms.categoryInfo.xml in apps/com.android.mms/sp directory of extracted .tar
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
positivew, thanks for your contribution! I got really excited when you mentioned there is a way to access the information without being rooted, but I am encountering some trouble when trying to backup com.android.mms through adb. Initially the process seems to be working fine, but the resulting backup only appears as a 1kb file. When I subsequently unpack to tar, the file shows no information. Certain posts online indicate that this might be due to com.android.mms being a system file and thus inaccessible unless you are rooted. Could you please detail the process you used a little further, I would be very grateful!
for HTC users - solution is a bit differrent
briggsjoshua said:
positivew, thanks for your contribution! I got really excited when you mentioned there is a way to access the information without being rooted, but I am encountering some trouble when trying to backup com.android.mms through adb. Initially the process seems to be working fine, but the resulting backup only appears as a 1kb file. When I subsequently unpack to tar, the file shows no information. Certain posts online indicate that this might be due to com.android.mms being a system file and thus inaccessible unless you are rooted. Could you please detail the process you used a little further, I would be very grateful!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you've got same issue as I do, then first you need to figure out the exact name of your messaging app. To do this, one could install "App extractor" from the market, and extract the Messaging application. File name .apk will be the package name, which for HTC Sense goes like this:
Code:
com.htc.sense.mms
and NOT
Code:
com.android.mms
Then, do the backup as suggested above, using
Code:
adb backup -f somenameofyourbackup.ab com.htc.sense.mms
You should get .ab file of around 8 to 12kb, depends on your message file.
Than just use whatever method for extraction you prefer (I used dd on ubuntu, but not the openssl version, rather python one)
Code:
dd if=yourbackupfile.ab bs=1 skip=24 | python -c "import zlib,sys;sys.stdout.write(zlib.decompress(sys.stdin.read()))" | tar -xvf
make sure to set correct path to yourbackupfile.ab (or place it in the home directory)
Then you should get folder app/com.htc.sense.mms/sp/ and here the file com.htc.sense.mms.categoryInfo.xml where the password is stored in plaintext.
Voila
Worked Like A Charm!
Many thanks. Recovered my password on my HTC One (M7)
Please help, I cant find the ./data/data only ./data - I use x-plore file manager
I didn't search too thoroughly for the answer to this question, but I can't imagine that I'm the first asking it:
In fiddling around with adb backup and the Android Backup Extractor, I noticed that all it really seems to do is pull the Shared Preferences, Internal Storage, and SQLite Databases from every /data/data/<app>/ directory and unnecessarily box and encrypt them together (if you've encrypted your phone like I do) into a tight little package. Worse, it seems not to catch everything (like com.android.providers.contacts where your address book lives). If I simply run
Code:
adb pull /data/data localBackup
I get all of the SP, IS and SQLDBs - with the caches - from all of the apps, but with the benefit of it not being stuck in an over-wrapt file and knowing that I've gotten every app. My phone is rooted but does one need root access to do this from ADB?
I have two questions:
What advantage does adb backup have over adb pull /data/data? The latter seems much safer (as in it's easier to check if it's been done properly) and restore (simply push the pulled data back into its folder)
What user settings and/or information is not included in /data/data, aside from the obvious data on the /sdcard? Put another way, would a copy of /data/data and /sdcard be a sufficient backup of all of my phone's data? (notwithstanding needing to reinstall the original APKs and ROM)
We are a large urban school district located in southern California that will be soon be distributing approximately 11,000 android tablets to our first grade classrooms. The biggest challenge we’ve had with this project so far is coming up with a way to quickly and reliably clone the devices with all the apps and settings. The approach we’ve been attempting to take is the same as how we would handle PC’s by creating a master image that then gets copied to all the other devices.
Our first attempt at doing this was by using adb backup/restore. This process was less than ideal as it didn’t copy all the settings/preferences that we wanted and still required a lot of manual configuration to get the devices in to our ideal state. The bigger problem we had here was that sometimes it would just hang during the restore. Most of the time it did work but we’ve run in to this restore problem enough that we need something more reliable.
So our current cloning method is using Clockworkmod Recovery. Basically we flash CWM on to the device, make our backup, copy that backup to the destination devices and restore it with CWM. Seems to work great. And it copies everything on the devices so there’s virtually no manual configuration that needs to be done.
However there’s a few caveats with this process. At first we found that it was also cloning the MAC address which of course caused havoc on our wireless network. Through a whole lot of trial and error I found that if I delete /data/nvram/RestoreFlag from the data backup tar the MAC address no longer gets cloned. Thought we were good, but…
The next problem we found when attempting to enroll the devices in to our MDM system. They end up replacing each other because they all show the same UDID and GUID. The MDM app is installed in the backup image but we are waiting until after it is restored to complete the enrollment. I’m not sure if the UDID and GUID is something specific to the MDM or if that’s a global Android thing.
So does anyone know if there something else I can delete from the backup to prevent this? This also raises the question, are there any other items in a CWM backup that should not be copied between devices? Or is there a better method we could use to clones the devices?
The device we are currently using is a Lenovo A1000 (MTK MT8317). After creating the backup I’ve been removing the system and cache tars entirely and only the file mentioned above from within the data tar. So the only parts that get restored are data and boot. Any suggestions are welcome.
ttttttttttttttttt said:
We are a large urban school district located in southern California that will be soon be distributing approximately 11,000 android tablets to our first grade classrooms. The biggest challenge we’ve had with this project so far is coming up with a way to quickly and reliably clone the devices with all the apps and settings. The approach we’ve been attempting to take is the same as how we would handle PC’s by creating a master image that then gets copied to all the other devices.
Our first attempt at doing this was by using adb backup/restore. This process was less than ideal as it didn’t copy all the settings/preferences that we wanted and still required a lot of manual configuration to get the devices in to our ideal state. The bigger problem we had here was that sometimes it would just hang during the restore. Most of the time it did work but we’ve run in to this restore problem enough that we need something more reliable.
So our current cloning method is using Clockworkmod Recovery. Basically we flash CWM on to the device, make our backup, copy that backup to the destination devices and restore it with CWM. Seems to work great. And it copies everything on the devices so there’s virtually no manual configuration that needs to be done.
However there’s a few caveats with this process. At first we found that it was also cloning the MAC address which of course caused havoc on our wireless network. Through a whole lot of trial and error I found that if I delete /data/nvram/RestoreFlag from the data backup tar the MAC address no longer gets cloned. Thought we were good, but…
The next problem we found when attempting to enroll the devices in to our MDM system. They end up replacing each other because they all show the same UDID and GUID. The MDM app is installed in the backup image but we are waiting until after it is restored to complete the enrollment. I’m not sure if the UDID and GUID is something specific to the MDM or if that’s a global Android thing.
So does anyone know if there something else I can delete from the backup to prevent this? This also raises the question, are there any other items in a CWM backup that should not be copied between devices? Or is there a better method we could use to clones the devices?
The device we are currently using is a Lenovo A1000 (MTK MT8317). After creating the backup I’ve been removing the system and cache tars entirely and only the file mentioned above from within the data tar. So the only parts that get restored are data and boot. Any suggestions are welcome.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can try use adb from Android SDK but this method needs root
We did initially try adb but it was inconsistent during the restore phase. Sometimes it would just stop in the middle and never complete. Didn’t try it on a rooted device. So maybe that would have helped…
Anyhow I found the solution to my immediate problem. Figured out what our MDM vendor refers to as the UDID is really the Android_ID. So by deleting that row from the settings database in our master backup image it’ll generate a new one the first time the OS starts after restoring with CWM.
I’m still a little concerned we’re going to find other issues cause by this cloning method later on but I guess we’ll just have to roll with the punches as they come.
In case someone else ever needs to clone devices like this and in the interest of sharing here’s the basic steps we’re following.
1.) Setup the master device as you like with all the apps and settings.
2.) Install Clockworkmod Recovery on to the master device
3.) Boot into CWM Recovery
4.) Mount /data and connect to adb
5.) Delete /data/nvram/RestoreFlag (this step prevents duplication of MAC address)
6.) Using sqlite open the database (this prevents duplication of Android_ID): \data\data\com.android.providers.settings\databases\settings.db
execute: delete from secure where name='android_id';
7.) unmount /data
8.) Create a backup
9.) Boot the device back in to normal mode and copy the clockworkmod folder to your computer. This the backup image you’ll restore on the other devices.
10.) [OPTIONAL] I deleted the system and cache backup files from this folder and also removed them from the nandroid file. There didn’t seem to be anything in these we cared about so removing those speeds up the restore process.
Once you have the backup image here’s how to restore it on the other devices:
1.) Install CWM Recovery
2.) Copy the clockworkmod folder from your computer on to the device
3.) Boot in to CWM Recovery
4.) Restore the backup
5.) Reboot the device back in to normal mode
6.) [OPTIONAL] Complete MDM enrollment
Sorry for the thread grave dig, but thanks for posting info on how to do this. I have attempted cloning in the past and ran into similar issues. My question - is this process the same for Android Lollipop 5.0/5.1? I have some Lenovo K3 Notes I'd like to deploy and cloning would save a lot of time.
Haven’t had the need to do any devices running 5.x versions so can’t say for sure. I would imagine a similar process would work.
But I will provide a bit of an update. Our initial deployment of 11,000 Lenovo A1000 devices have been out in the field since February/March of 2014 and no trouble has come to light using this cloning method. These devices run 4.1.2
Sometime around May 2014 we did another round that was about 300 Lenovo A3000 devices. Don’t have one of these handy and I don’t remember the exact Android version but it was 4.x something.
Then starting in October 2014 we put out another 9000 or so Lenovo A3500 devices. These run 4.4.2
All around so far so good.
For the A3000 and A3500 there were two changes to the process. For step 5 in creating the backup I had to clear the entire nvram directory instead of just the one file. I don’t remember what exactly but there was something undesirable getting copied over. The result of clearing this directory is the first boot after the restore takes a little longer as each app runs through the “update” process at startup. The second change was I could not get CWM to backup and restore to/from the internal memory so instead did it from a micro-sd card. This ended up speeding up the restore process since we didn’t have to copy the backup to each device and instead just moved the sd card with the files already there.
this should be pinned in android dev
also sorry for grave digging? except this should be a maintained topic. why isnt this an ongoing thread?
Hi there,
I have been having endless headaches trying to backup FreeOTP so I can move on to something that has native import/export support and I cannot seem to get it right. I am able to get ADB to see the device, I am able to initiate a backup using `adb backup` but there's an odd behavior I'm noticing. First, upon requesting a backup, I get a prompt on my phone asking me if I want to authorize and if I want to type a password. If I leave the password field blank and hit backup, I get a 1KB .ab file. However, if I do type any password, I get nothing at all. In both cases, a small toast appears saying "Backup finished".
I tried to then use abe-all.jar to turn the .ab to a .tar, it spits out a 1kb .tar file, however extracting that tar files gives back nothing. I should be getting a manifest.xml file but I am getting nothing. So I am certain that something is not right in the backup process itself.
I can't deny the fact that I am starting to panic a bit as I have at least 8 different site's OTP tokens setup with FreeOTP and if anything happens to my phone I will have to go through a painful process of recovering them. This is precisely why I need to move away from FreeOTP.
Using Mac OS El Capitan and the OP7 is not rooted.
Greatly appreciate any help I can get with this.
I know this might come in late, but here's a link to an article that might help migrating from FreeOTP to FreeOTP+ (a.k.a FreeOTPPlus):
FreeOTP: Export Secrets and Migrate to FreeOTPPlus
Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com This article is about the android app(s) which can be used as 2FA, MFA with TOTP. The original FreeOTP app for android was developed by RedHat, but had no optio…
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