Life is grand

iPhone SMS woes

Firstly; Don’t sign up for Zyb using your iPhone number. It sent me an SMS which crashes the iPhone SMS app. I cannot read any other SMS either, the iPhone SMS app. simply crashes everytime it starts up. Very annoying.

Now this solution isn’t for everyone but I found that I can SSH into the iPhone and rm the /var/root/Library/SMS/sms.db file. That nukes all SMS but the SMS app. recreates the file and starts working again.

Interestingly I see it uses SQLite for its format. So one could possibly load it locally and remove just the offending SMS leaving the others intact.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 10:29 am and is filed under Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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IITQ 1 year ago 1 point
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The iPhone uses Linux?

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http://itisthequestion.blogspot.com

Paul Watson 1 year ago 1 point
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It runs a version of OS X.

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http://www.paulmwatson.com/

Anonymous 1 year ago 1 point
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I tried this but When i open the sms.db file with notpad i can see all messages since i got the phone but when i open the sms.db file with the Sqlite browser i only see the one i got back when i restored the phone.. I want to be able to restore all of them... Any Ideas????

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Francis 1 year ago 1 point
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You can use the following command at command prompt to open the sms.db using the sqlite. Put the Sqlite.exe and sms.db in the same folder and then open the command prompt and go to the folder.

after that consider now both the files are in C:\

in cmd prompt go to C:\

C:\sqlite3 sms.db

and press enter

then

sqlite> select * from message;

and press enter

it will show all your messages.

to delete the junk message. Look for the row number on the message list you got above after the select number and type this

sqlite> delete from message where rowid=;

thats all it will delete and it worked fine for me.

Francis.

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the chap 1 year ago 1 point
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well yes i was reading your solution to the sms problem and found it hard to believe that this was the only way to fix my phone(it sounded to complicated, prob only a "computer geek" would do) so i took matters into my own hands. So pretty much i restored my phone using the old firmware 1.0.2 and pretty much went through the unlocking process again..There is no need for SQ lite files.. After the process was done my texting worked fine along with every other function on the phone...hope this helps.

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Paul Watson 1 year ago 1 point
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Thanks "The Chap", that is an alternative solution. The problem is you loose any customisation you have made to your iPhone with that technique.

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http://www.paulmwatson.com/

Peter 1 year ago 1 point
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fixed it via stp download of sms.db from /Library/SMS on the iphone. then on the mac i edited the dB with Mesa SQLite. deleted the SMS entry with that caused the crash, then copied the sms.db file back to the iPhone without losing any other messages :)

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peeInMyPantz 1 year ago 1 point
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i installed mobileTerminal and Erica's Utilities (contain sqlite3)
this will allow me to enter into the terminal, run sqlite3 and remove the entry. useful if your iphone sms function crashes when you are out

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peeInMyPantz 1 year ago 1 point
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i installed mobileTerminal and Erica's Utilities (contain sqlite3)
this will allow me to enter into the terminal, run sqlite3 and remove the entry. useful if your iphone sms function crashes when you are out

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David L 1 year ago 1 point
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Hi
Could you explain in detail how to access mobileTerminal and run sqlite3 to delete the faulty smses?

Would appreciate if you could point me in the right direction.

Thank you!

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Terence 1 year ago 1 point
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Hi Peeinmypants,

Could you please explain how to use mobileTerminal ?

Thks.

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efen 12 months ago 1 point
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thanks francis, works great

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Zee 11 months ago 1 point
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what if I'm using windows how can i access the sms.db to run the sqlite

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RICKY 11 months ago 1 point
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hello.!
im new to the iphone. i have installed nothing on it so far coz i havnt gotten any time off from work to really play with the iphone.. today i received a weired sms and my sms application has started crashing....im freaking out...i have a windows based laptop and i dont know wut to do and how to fix this problem. can anyone help me with this and please guide me step by step as to what i have to do to undo this problem.!!

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Ammar Ayed 10 months ago 1 point
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what the effects if i remeove sms.db

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The tantrik 9 months ago 1 point
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Dear Paul,

deleting the sms.db file works only for the 1.1.1 firmware iPhone. I'd try the same thing on my 1.0.2 iPhone and couldn't resolve the alphanumeric sms issue.

Anyone with a solution to this problem?

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paulmwatson 9 months ago 1 point
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I was running 1.0.2 at the time this happened Tantrik, seemed to work fine.

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http://paulmwatson.com/journal/

nickg 7 months ago 1 point
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I just deleted SMS.db with mobile finder and now my SMS.app will open but when I send SMS it fails every time. Is there something I missed. Or what. I am pleased to be able to open SMS.app but was hoping to have a fully funtioning iPhone. Please advise

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iPhone SMS woes

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