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I have an iPhone 4 and I wanted to copy all my text messages off of it.

Is there a utility to do this under Ubuntu?
Or is there a way to access them through the file menu/cmd line?

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The text messages are stored in a database file (probably SQLite), probably encrypted too, so you'd have to somehow do a backup of the device and troll through the files to find it. – Randolph West Jan 24 '11 at 23:45
sigh =/ that sounds like a pain.. I saw something about a OSx tool that will rip apart the binary a backup creates.. not too keen on doing that. Do you have an Idea where to find that SQLite db on the device? – madmaze Jan 24 '11 at 23:48
1  
Not without jailbreaking the device. – Randolph West Jan 25 '11 at 0:46

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

I ended up using DiskAid.
It works great, but it cost me ~10$ and did everything I needed it to do.
Though I am still interested in a free way of doing this, without jailbreaking it.

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from http://maketecheasier.com/how-to-copy-files-tofrom-your-iphone/2008/09/05

In any platforms, as long as you have a FTP program, you can easily transfer files to/from the iPhone via OpenSSH.

On you iPhone, go to Cydia. Tap on Section on the bottom pane and scroll to Networking->OpenSSH. Tap on the Install button to install it.

On your desktop, open up your FTP program (it doesn’t matter which one you use. For me, I used Filezilla because it is free and easy to use).

On Filezilla, go to File->Site Manager

On the left, click New Site

Rename the site to ‘iPhone‘

On the right, enter the following:

Host: Your iPhone IP address Servertype: SFTP – SSH File Transfer Protocol Logontype: Normal User: root Password: alpine

Click ‘Connect‘

You will be shown a confirmation message asking if you will accept key exchange / connection with the device with the iPhone’s address. You’ll need to click OK for it to connect.

Connected mode:

Once connected, you will see the familiar Explorer-like navigation structure. Simply drag and drop the files to and forth the iPhone.

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This would require @madmaze to jailbreak his iPhone. In principle, this is not necessarily "wrong", but it does open him up to potential problems in the future. – Randolph West Jan 25 '11 at 0:45
thanks, but as @Randolph mentions my iPhone is not jailbroken and since its a work phone I will not be able to do so either. – madmaze Jan 25 '11 at 3:07

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