Get Apk file from Market

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benzo

Senior Member
Oct 16, 2008
384
43
Rome
When i download and install an App from the Android Market where the Apk installation file is temporary placed? Which path?

tnx in advance
 

mopodo

Senior Member
Aug 16, 2009
142
51
the apk's are stored at /data/app and /data/app-private after you installed the app and will be removed if you uninstall it.
 

benzo

Senior Member
Oct 16, 2008
384
43
Rome
Tnx for the answer mopodo, but if i hard reset the device, can i will use theese files to reinstall them?

i'm sorry for my bad english...
 

benzo

Senior Member
Oct 16, 2008
384
43
Rome
So which is the temp path of the downloaded apk from market?
i want to grab them...
 

mopodo

Senior Member
Aug 16, 2009
142
51
No, you can make a backup to your SD card with apps like MyBackup or Backup For Root Users.

of course you can.
you just have to copy them to your sdcard or pc an install them again, with «adb install something.apk» or «Astro File Manager» (or a similar file managerapp)

a hard reset will delete everything on «/data»
 
A

AdrianK

Guest
If you have root copy the contents of both folders to your SD card.

mkdir /sdcard/apps
cp /data/app/* /sdcard/apps
cp /data/app-private/* /sdcard/apps

Then after you wipe (I've never heard anyone call it a 'hard reset' before) you can use an app like Astore or ApkInstaller to reinstall them.

If you don't have root then not only will you not be able to read app-private, but your ROM wont have busybox so you wont be able to bash in those commands. In that case use an app like Astro or AppManager to copy non-private apks to the sdcard, but for private apps you'll have to redownload them (without being charged of course.)


No, you can make a backup to your SD card with apps like MyBackup or Backup For Root Users.

Only if they're non-private (reside in /app, private being /app-private).
 

askwhy

Senior Member
Jun 26, 2009
220
0
When I run the following from an adb shell, with or without SU root:

cp /data/app/* <my location on sd>

I always get:

cp: permission denied

In fact, no matter how or where I cp from or to, and no matter what I am trying to copy, even if I leave all arguments blank, I still get "cp: permission denied" -- I have busybox installed in /system/xbin from /data/local and as far as I can tell it installed ok. Phone is a rooted Sprint hero 1.56.651.2 running stock ROM.

I have also tried to 'adb pull /data/app' and it always find 0 files. None of this is a big deal for me, however, as I am just trying to backup a bunch of apks for free apps in case versions change too much. Mostly just curious...

Any ideas?

EDIT: Both Astro and AppManager handled the (non-private) apk backups fine -- so I have no real need for the cp method to work, but I am still wondering why it will not -- is it the adb shell? must I use a terminal emulator from on the phone instead? something else? Anyways, if I really want to pursue it, perhaps I should take it to a busybox thread at this point...

EDIT2: It appears as if the 'cp' command as I was running it wasn't getting passed through busybox (not sure why). From what I can piece together reading other threads, it seems that if you have installed busybox on top of a ROM that doesn't already have it (like stock, after rooting and recovery setup) than you must prefix commands with 'busybox' when entered, as in 'busybox cp /data/app/* <my location>' and it does work for me that way. Still cannot seem to copy /data/app-private which I thought having root access would allow -- I guess I just don't understand nearly enough about busybox implementation, linux permissions, and, well, linux in general.
 
Last edited:

karunadheera

Member
Oct 1, 2009
28
1
Just try the following command.

busybox cp /data/app/* /sdcard/<your backup loc>

When I run the following from an adb shell, with or without SU root:

cp /data/app/* <my location on sd>

I always get:

cp: permission denied

In fact, no matter how or where I cp from or to, and no matter what I am trying to copy, even if I leave all arguments blank, I still get "cp: permission denied" -- I have busybox installed in /system/xbin from /data/local and as far as I can tell it installed ok. Phone is a rooted Sprint hero 1.56.651.2 running stock ROM.

I have also tried to 'adb pull /data/app' and it always find 0 files. None of this is a big deal for me, however, as I am just trying to backup a bunch of apks for free apps in case versions change too much. Mostly just curious...

Any ideas?

EDIT: Both Astro and AppManager handled the (non-private) apk backups fine -- so I have no real need for the cp method to work, but I am still wondering why it will not -- is it the adb shell? must I use a terminal emulator from on the phone instead? something else? Anyways, if I really want to pursue it, perhaps I should take it to a busybox thread at this point...

EDIT2: It appears as if the 'cp' command as I was running it wasn't getting passed through busybox (not sure why). From what I can piece together reading other threads, it seems that if you have installed busybox on top of a ROM that doesn't already have it (like stock, after rooting and recovery setup) than you must prefix commands with 'busybox' when entered, as in 'busybox cp /data/app/* <my location>' and it does work for me that way. Still cannot seem to copy /data/app-private which I thought having root access would allow -- I guess I just don't understand nearly enough about busybox implementation, linux permissions, and, well, linux in general.