Develop Reference

Phone is rooted but can't pull files from /data/data folder

My phone Samsung Galaxy S5 mini is rooted. I'm trying to pull files from /data/data/myapp.package/ to folder on my PC.
adb pull /data/data/myapp.package E:\myapp\myapp.package
it gives me this error
adb: error: failed to copy '/data/data/myapp.package' to 'E:\myapp\myapp.package': Permission denied
I found many questions like mine but no answer solved my problem. Some suggested to execute this command adb root before pulling files. Some suggested to install adbd insecure app to enable root access. In fact after installing that app, phone disappeared from adb terminal. Both solution didn't work for me.
BTW, I can copy files using cp command from adb shell but I have to copy files to sdcard and then pull from sdcard. I'm looking for solution which allows me to copy files directly from /data/data/myapp.package to my PC
Any solution?

For your adb to be able to access /data/data directly (for adb pull), your adbd should be running as root - which can generally be done by adb root command.
adb root would not work on commercial devices like Samsung Galaxy S5 mini as commercial devices have ro.secure=1, i.e., the adbd can't be restarted as root due to a check of property called ro.secure. adbd insecure app circumvents this and restarts adbd in root mode to enable adb pull, etc. to work.
In short, if adbd insecure app doesn't work for you, it's not possible to do adb pull from /data/data in your existing ROM. It might be possible if you change the ROM / do some boot.img tweaks, but I would probably suggest trying latest version / different versions of adbd insecure app before going for ROM changes.
Read more on rooting here.

First you need to hit these two command from command line
adb root
adb remount
then
adb pull /data/data/myapp.package E:\myapp\myapp.package

This is my example pulling DB file from the root directory
adb -e shell "run-as com.example.project cp /data/data/com.example.project/databases/project.db /sdcard"
The key is run-as

Here's a one-liner that lets you pull a file without installing anything else and without having to copy it to a public location on the device to then pull it to your computer:
adb exec-out su -c cat /data/data/myapp.package/my_file.apk > my_file.apk
What this does:
adb exec-out runs a command and outputs the raw binary output
su -c runs the provided command as root
cat <file> prints out the file contents
> <file> redirects the output from adb (i.e. the raw file contents) to a local file.

adb: error: remote object '/data/data/com.me.myproject' does not exist

1. Added adb path to ~/.bash_profile
export PATH="/Users/myname/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools:$PATH"
2. Logged in to emulator
adb -s emulator-5554 shell
3. changed permission of the app folder and parent folder
chmod 777 /data/data/com.me.myproject
chmod 777 /data/data
4. Still can not get stuff from outside. Why?
adb -s emulator-5554 pull /data/data/com.me.myproject

I had the same problem and I did this:
adb shell
run-as com.yourPackageName (not rooted device)
cp 'database/file_you_want.db' '/sdcard/file_you_want.db'
exit
exit (now you will be back to main terminal window)
adb pull /sdcard/xx.db

That's because your debugging Android device is not rooted.
If you have a physical rooted device or have an emulated device, try executing this before, to restart ADB in root mode. Then any command should work:
adb root

The reason is the file you wanted to copy needs root permission. It's better to copy the file to /mnt/sdcard/ where you have a right to interact with.
cp <file> /mnt/sdcard/
adb pull /mnt/sdcard/<file>

connect mobile to laptop then open adb console
a). cp msg-store.db /mnt/sdcard/ ==>inside /data/data/packagename/databases/
b). adb pull /mnt/sdcard/msg-store.db/ ===>This will stored in local computer.

prefixing the remote path with ./ or removing the leading / makes the whole difference for me ??? I guess because the system folder must be relative to root's home?
Darn it, those stupid Linux folks wasted my time again. I admit my whole life is about relative paths but this one got me good.
Make sure you use \ for your target file, stupid Bill G. also decided to go backwards with his slashes and that created a whole mess. :)
PS. What's even weirder both files in my examples were pulled (copied) to the BASH shell current folder NOT c:\
That's stupid or what :)
FAILS
adb -s 192.168.1.120:5555 pull /system/media/bootanimation.zip c:\boot1.zip
SUCCEEDS
adb -s 192.168.1.120:5555 pull ./system/media/bootanimation.zip c:\boot1.zip
SUCCEEDS
adb -s 192.168.1.120:5555 pull system/media/bootanimation.zip c:\boot1.zip

Copy folder from Android app to local Windows directory

I'm trying to use the Android Adb Command Prompt to copy a folder inside the app container to a local Windows folder. The device is running Android 5.1.1 and is not rooted.
adb pull or cp aren't working. How can I copy a folder?
The following approaches aren't working:
Approach 1
adb shell
adb pull /data/data/DroidSample.DroidSample/files/MetroLog/MetroLogs C:/temp/test
error: device not found
Inside the shell you can't see to do adb pull. See here.
Approach 2
DDMS can't access the data folder.
Approach 3
adb shell
run-as DroidSample.DroidSample
cp /files/MetroLog/MetroLogs/ C:/temp/test
cp: /files/MetroLog/MetroLogs/: No such file or directory
Approach 4
adb shell
run-as DroidSample.DroidSample
cp /data/data/DroidSample.DroidSample/files/MetroLog/MetroLogs/ C:/temp/test
cp: /data/data/DroidSample.DroidSample/files/MetroLog/MetroLogs is a directory (not copied).
This is also not working.
Approach 5
adb shell
run-as DroidSample.DroidSample
chmod 777 /files/MetroLog/MetroLogs
exit
exit
adb pull /data/data/DroidSample.DroidSample/files/MetroLog/MetroLogs C:/temp/test
adb shell run-as DroidSample.DroidSample
chmod 700 /files/MetroLog/Metrologs
remote object '/data/data/DroidSample.DroidSample/files/MetroLog/MetroLogs' does not exist
So also this isn't working.
Approach 6
adb shell
mkdir /sdcard/tmp
cp /data/data/DroidSample.DroidSample/files/MetroLog/MetroLogs /sdcard/tmp
cp: /data/data/DroidSample.DroidSample/files/MetroLog/MetroLogs: Permission denied
This is also not working.
Approach 7
The only thing which half work is this
adb exec-out run-as DroidSample.DroidSample cat "files/MetroLog/MetroLogs/Log - 20160509.log" > C:/temp/test/test.log
But here I don't get the original file and I also have to know the exact file name. Additionally, that I loose line breaks and I have to do this for each file. Not that what I want.
So I'm running out of ideas. How can I access the internal stored files and copy them over?

You have almost solved the problem. As the storage of this kind is secured, you need to do one additional step. You need to copy the file from secured location to sdcard of the device. And then you can copy it anywhere via usb or android pull. Here are the command sequence I executed successfully.
adb shell
run-as DroidSample.DroidSample
cd shared_prefs
cp DroidSample.DroidSample_preferences.xml /sdcard/DroidSample.DroidSample_preferences.xml
exit
exit
adb pull /sdcard/DroidSample.DroidSample_preferences.xml C:/test/
That's it.
And I really appreciate the way you posted your question. Best of luck.

You're trying to gain read access to /data partition on actual android device. Such thing is not possible without root access, even if the app folder is yours. For the reason that permissions to read /data partition are not granted and cannot be granted, unless you're using an emulator. On emulator, which by default is with admin privileges for developer, you can access the data partition to read and write. On actual device you cannot. Not with adb, not with DDMS.
So basically speaking, anything that requires access to those files under /data is not going to work. Whether you sue cp command or pull command. The moment your kernel reads the beginning of your path which starts with /data/... it says: Oops, no can do.

You are trying to access /data folder of android device which is not accessible in unrooted device.

Copying files in ADB shell with run-as

Is there a way to write a script that will copy files from an ADB shell using run-as?
The only way I know of to copy in the adb shell is using cat source > dest (edit: modern android versions have the cp command, which makes this question unnecessary), but I am only able to quote the greater-than sign one level deep - so my script can pass it to adb shell, but not to adb shell run-as.
For example, this works:
adb shell "cat source > dest"
But this does not:
adb shell run-as "cat source > dest"
Nor this:
adb shell "run-as cat source \> dest"
I even tried created a small script and uploading it to the device, but I can't seem to run the script from the adb shell - it tells me "permission denied". I can't chmod the script, either.
The reason I want to do this is to copy a file into an app's private storage area - specifically, I am using a script to modify shared preferences and put the modified preferences back. Only the app itself or root can write to the file I want, however.
The use case in this scenario is coping a file to a protected location on the device, not retrieving it; for retrieving, there are already good answers in this question.

The OP tried to combine the following 3 commands (that he had no problem executing one after another in the interactive shell session) into a single non-interactive command:
adb shell
run-as com.example.app
cat /sdcard/temp_prefs.xml > shared_prefs/com.example.app_preferences.xml
For simplicity let's start from within an interactive adb shell session. If we just try to combine the last two commands into a single line:
run-as com.example.app cat /sdcard/temp_prefs.xml > shared_prefs/com.example.app_preferences.xml
This would not work because of how shell redirection works - only the cat /sdcard/temp_prefs.xml part of the command would be run with com.example.app UID
Many people "know" to put the part of the command around redirection into quotes:
run-as com.example.app "cat /sdcard/temp_prefs.xml > shared_prefs/com.example.app_preferences.xml"
This does not work because the run-as command is not smart enough to parse the whole command. It expects an executable as the next parameter. The proper way to do it would be to use sh instead:
run-as com.example.app sh -c "cat /sdcard/temp_prefs.xml > shared_prefs/com.example.app_preferences.xml"
So can we just prepend adb shell to the command and be done with it? Not necessarily. By running the command from your PC you also add another local shell and its parser. Specific escape requirements would depend on your OS. In Linux or OSX (if your command does not already contain any ') it is easy to single-quote the whole command like so:
adb shell 'run-as com.example.app sh -c "cat /sdcard/temp_prefs.xml > shared_prefs/com.example.app_preferences.xml"'
But sometimes it is just easier to use an alternative solutions with (-out or less) quotes:
adb shell run-as com.example.app cp /sdcard/temp_prefs.xml shared_prefs/com.example.app_preferences.xml
Or if your device does not have the cp command:
adb shell run-as com.example.app dd if=/sdcard/temp_prefs.xml of=shared_prefs/com.example.app_preferences.xml
Also notice how I used shared_prefs/com.example.app_preferences.xml instead of full /data/data/com.example.app/shared_prefs/com.example.app_preferences.xml - normally inside of run-as command your current directory is the HOME dir of your package.

Following Chris Stratton's advice, the way I eventually got this to work was as follows (for copying shared preferences back to the device):
adb push shared_prefs.xml /sdcard/temp_prefs.xml
cat <<EOF | adb shell
run-as com.example.app
cat /sdcard/temp_prefs.xml > /data/data/com.example.app/shared_prefs/com.example.app_preferences.xml
exit
exit
EOF
Piping directly to adb shell run-as did not work, and I do not know why, but piping to adb shell does. The trick is to then call run-as from the interactive shell, and it continues to accept input from the pipe.
The HERE doc lets me easily embed the newlines to separate commands and in general just makes it readable; I did not have much luck with semicolons, but that might have been because of the way I was doing things. I believe it might work with other methods of piping multiple commands/newlines; I stopped the experiment once I finally got it to work.
The two exits are necessary to prevent a hanging shell (killable with CTRL-C); one for run-as, and the other for adb shell itself. Adb's shell doesn't respond to end-of-file very nicely, it seems.

you could just change the permission of the directory and then pull all the files out. but for me i was looking for just one shared preference file and i was able to get the data like this:
PACKAGE='com.mypackage.cool'
SHAREDPREF_FILE="${PACKAGE}_preferences.xml"
adb shell "run-as $PACKAGE cat /data/data/$PACKAGE/shared_prefs/$SHAREDPREF_FILE">$SHAREDPREF_FILE
now we have the data of the sharedpreference file stored in a file of the same name.

Using the latest adb (ADB v1.0.41 / Version 33.0.3) and a Play Store emulator image I experienced adb root not being granted. I also could not copy from /data/local/ or /storage/emulated/0/ due to not having permissions when run-as com.myapp.app
new_prefs_path="my_machine.xml"
config="$(cat $new_prefs_path)"
my_app_uri="com.myapp.app"
adb shell "run-as $my_app_uri sh -c 'echo \"$config\" > shared_prefs/on_android.xml'"
This fixes it for me as a bash script. It's made slightly more complicated by needing to be configurable for different apps and complex payloads.
We take a file (could be generated earlier in this script) and read it to a variable.
We then start shell, do run-as my app and run echo expanding the read file to a file in shared_prefs.

Cannot adb pull database even after chmod 777 on my device

I am unable to pull a the database from the device even after changing the permission. I have a rooted phone.
It used to work. I could pull before. For some unknown reason now I cannot.
The error I receive is
remote object '/data/data/com.thuptencho.transitbus/databases/ttc.db' does not exist
Does anybody know why this is happening?
Below is what I did in command window.
C:\users\thupten>adb shell
shell#android:/ $ su
su
root#android:/ # cd /data/data/com.thuptencho.transitbus/databases/
cd /data/data/com.thuptencho.transitbus/databases/
root#android:/data/data/com.thuptencho.transitbus/databases # ls
ls
ttc.db
ttc.db-journal
webview.db
webview.db-journal
webviewCookiesChromium.db
webviewCookiesChromiumPrivate.db
root#android:/data/data/com.thuptencho.transitbus/databases # chmod 755 ttc.db
5 ttc.db <
root#android:/data/data/com.thuptencho.transitbus/databases # chmod 777 ttc.db
7 ttc.db <
root#android:/data/data/com.thuptencho.transitbus/databases # exit
exit
shell#android:/ $ exit
exit
C:\users\thupten>adb pull /data/data/com.thuptencho.transitbus/databases/ttc.db
remote object '/data/data/com.thuptencho.transitbus/databases/ttc.db' does not exist

I using these commands to get data from /data/data folders, no changing permission required
adb kill-server
adb root

I figured it out.
I had to chmod the databases folder as well and then the file.

The problem is that you need permission not just to the file, but also to its parent directories.
(That permission should not be 777 though!)
Rather than trying to change the permission, what you probably want to do is get adb running as root if that is supported, (ie, if you have an engineering build, rather than an aftermarket "rooting" of a secured device) or else use your root access (or the app itself, or the stock run-as command if you have a debug apk) to copy the file of interest somewhere accessible and then adb pull the copy.

My preferred solution was:
Install Chainfire's adbd insecure app
From within the adbd insecure app, select "Enable Insecure adbd"
adb pull /data/data/com.package.name/databases/database.db
Caution - adb insecure means adb is running as root on your device.

for i in `adb shell ls /data/ -1`;do adb pull /data/$i data; done