How to read out/ backup sms (using predecessor) -> sms gone but looks somewhere they are still available

[abcnorio]

Hello,

sorry for cross-posting on the old sms-messenger github repo, but assume I won't get an answer there: github issue but hope as the code base should be highly similar that someone can help me here:

Using the predecessor simple messenger: version 5.19.3

Yesterday all sms were gone from one second to another without warning (no update of android or anything else). However, searching for a term in the search bar shows those messages (where the search term can be found) but klicking on a message and nothing happens, ie. blank screen.

Trying to export leads to an empty file. Reopening the messenger and the search bar "thing" as outlined above is still possible. Thus, somewhere the messages must still be present.

Any idea where this is located and how I can extract that - with adb, or whatever? I am using *nix, so all that is no problem.

Any idea WHY this happened. Will switch now to the successor from fossifyorg but would be good to get those old messages.

Thanks!

[naveensingh]

Have you tried just switching to Fossify Messages? If your messages are still there in the android database (probably yes), they would show up in Fossify Messages, no need to export/import anything.

[naveensingh]

Have you tried any other apps than "Fossify Messages" and "Simple Messenger"? If not, it maybe worth a try.

is rooting (unlocking bootloader etc.) first deletes everything and sets it to zero, right? So this is no real option?

On most devices, yes. Your messages are most likely gone but if your messages contain very important information, you may try the following steps to extract whatever info you need:

I'm sharing these because you said "with adb, or whatever" so I'm assuming you can do "things".

adb backup -apk com.simplemobiletools.smsmessenger -f backup.ab

If the command works (it should) and you get a backup that isn't 0 bytes, there's no guarantee the messages will be there since we don't know exactly what has happened. Anyway, here's how you can extract the backup:

dd if=backup.ab bs=24 skip=1 | zlib-flate -uncompress | tar xf -

If this works, you should get a conversations.db file extracted into a path like ./apps/com.simplemobiletools.messenger/db/, however, there is no way to directly restore this file. You can open it in a SQLite Viewer and extract the important info or if you are able to code, write a script to "extract" the messages into a JSON file compatible with Fossify Messages' importer.

It's the best I can do, sorry.

[abcnorio]

Thanks a lot, as written earlier adb backup worked and the tar is there and the conversations.db as well. So it means to convert sqlite to json format and for json I have a look how Fossify Messenger outputs json? I am used to R, so that should be possible.

What are the other two files (looking into the db folder of the tarball)

conversations.db-shm
conversations.db-wal

?

They obvsiously contain information (messages?) as well, partly text, partly binary format (at least it looks like that).

PS: had a look, so the other two are part of the sqlite?

[naveensingh]

Welp, looks like I did not see your adb backup message when I wrote mine.

the other two are part of the sqlite?

You can ignore those two other files. You should examine the contents of the conversations.db using a SQLite Viewer first.

So it means to convert sqlite to json format and for json I have a look how Fossify Messenger outputs json?

See #42 (comment)

[abcnorio]

Thanks, will do that! Your help is very appreciated. R can read sqlite and for R everything's a list and can be handled as a table, and there should be some json output package as well. So maybe not so difficult at least for messages (and I have no attachments).

[abcnorio]

Can I ask another thing regarding the db? Looking into the conversations.db with sqlitebrowser it shows that all "gone messages" are in a table called "messages" whereas the trial to see whether it works at all (did that after all messages were "gone") is located in a table called "conversations".

Does this make sense? So everything is in "messages" but only one (=trial) in "conversations". Is there some hidden mode to switch in the app between "messages" and "conversations"? Looks like all could be reversed by moving the SMSs from the one table ("messages") into the other ("conversations") OR let the app switch back to "messages" mode.

Thanks!