Database Develop

so i have a lot of questions

so to start off, ill say i know absolutly nothing about linux, but i managed to root and flash modacos custom rom to my phone. i have no idea what any of the commands i used to do it mean, or how to use any of them to do anything else (other than removing a bunch of the crap that sprint puts on the phone, i managed to do that with the help of one of the other threads on here). anyways, ive got that done and am wondering what to do now. i came from a titan and am used to when im done flashing things, everything is totally different. like going from stock rom to having m2d and it being super sweet. with the new rom it seems like there isnt a lot of new stuff going on or a lot of changes. wifi tether works amazingly though. anyways, im done with the pointless ranting and heres what im trying to figure out....
1. are all of my contacts really saved to gmail? like all of the stuff from all of them? so if i hard reset, and just sign into my gmail account, will it reload all of my contacts? im used to pim backup and knowing that its all gonna be there after im done doing stuff (ive never used gmail before and am not sure how it works)
2. if i do a hard reset, do i need to redo everything like root and re-flash the custom rom or will all of that stay intact? will all of the sprint garbage like nascar be back on there after doing the cmd propmt remove of it or will i have to do that again? im not nessicarily worried about the apps that i have installed already so im not worried about that at all, i can find them later.
3. is there anything usefull that i can do with root that will increase performance or anything. like i said earlier, i dont know anything about linux , so is there like a list of comands somewhere to look through that might help me out?
4. does a2sd see your programs and automatically move them to the sd with the proper formatting of the sd card? i did the fat32, ext2 and swap. since i didnt know if it moved them over, i manually uninstalled everything and reinstalled them. after uninstalling everything i had 104 free and after reinstall i had 101.
5. would it be benificial to go ahead and do a hard reset, if the sprint crap is back on on all of that other **** that can be erased is back, get rid of that, and start from scratch to install all of my stuff i want. i dl a lot of **** that i uninstalled before. i hear linux is really good at installing and uninstalling things, but if ive dl'ed 75 things then uninstallled them, is there gonna be any garbage left on my phone from it? i know there was a lot of garbage left on the sd before i formated. actually, there was **** on there (on the sd) from progs i dl'ed and uninstalled awhile ago, even after formating so im thinging a hard reset would be helpful.
im sure ill have a lot more questions about this whole linux/android stuff sooo.....if people are trying to be helpful and help me out that would be awesome. if your going to be an asshole and blast me for my nubbish questions, dont bother.
thanks in advance
ix3u

The super-custom ROMS are on their way, they just take some time (we only got root this past weekend afterall!)
1.) Some contacts are saved to your phone, but I believe the default is to save it to gmail. You can check by going into the People App, click menu->View and the numbers should show you how much is on google and how many are on your phone.
2.) I'm afraid I'm not sure on a hard reset...I use Nandroid and if all else fails, the RUU to recover (Nandroid is just a snapshot in time...it will be however it was when you backed it up when you restore....while the RUU puts it back to true "factory", as if you just pulled it out of the box).
3.) There's a few things you can do to the UI settings that can increase performance, but the real performance gains are pending the release of the CDMA Kernel by HTC for us to play with and port some of the performance changes that were done to the GSM Kernel (Google for Teknologic's Kernel 1.8...it's included in MoDaCo 2.9). Teknologic kept a very good changelog and site describing some of the things he did and why.
4.) I have no experience with A2SD, but there's a bunch of threads about it...hopefully one of them will have teh answer you seek?
5.) I suppose a hard reset couldn't hurt...it would certainly rule a lot of things out when troubleshooting. I download a lot of apps too only to find I didn't like them enough to keep them and removed them. From what I can tell, it does clean up the application files pretty thoroughly on the OS partitions...the SD card I believe most apps leave alone on uninstall just to be careful not to delete too much because the SD card is designed for people to access and drop files onto, whereas the OS is meant to be managed by the OS...so it's just being careful to leave data on the SD card to play it safe rather than risk deleting someone's favorite picture of their kid or something.
Xda has been one of the more gentle forums I've seen in a long time. You're in good hands here. Hopefully some of that info was useful...if not, someone else will likely be along shortly to give better/more complete answers. ^_^

Help all apps lost

Recently I have not been able to connect to 3G(HSDPA) and I tried rebooting a few times without luck. (Stock N1 2.1 -> 2.2 Froyo RC)
So, I did a factory reset. Before you go "moron thats why you are missing all your apps!", I watched in Google IO a person saying "if you have ever upgraded your android phone, you know there is no need to re-download all your apps, because the data is all in our server"
And, in the (supposedly not public) Android Market Website accessed from a PC, you can login and see all the android devices you have and all the apps you have installed in each.
So after reading the warning messages, I went ahead and reset it. After logging back onto my google account, guess what? All my apps are gone.
At first, I was okay with it, I have way too many useless stuffs anyway. Then I went to Market, wondering if I can view my "downloads" list, to my surprise my download list is empty except showing one app i purchased and 3 "default" apps that already came installed in Froyo.
I went back to Settings>Privacy>
and I see these two options:
Backup my settings
Automatic Restore (Restore applications' data from backup when they are installed)
I mean, am I misunderstanding something or missing some info here? I thought from my understanding, if say I buy a brand new Nexus One, and log onto my account, the least I should be able to do is log onto market and see what have i previously downloaded on my OLD DEVICE, right?
I have re-downloaded all the apps I need, I just wanna know if this feature (as the way I understand it) exists.
Thanks guys.

that auto download of apps thing from Google IO is supposed to be a Gingerbread feature for android 3.0

lol i surely missed the "Gingerbread" note and i feel like a complete idiot now
nevertheless, thank you so much for the reply, at least we know it will come !

Actually you're both wrong. The saved downloads list has been a feature since 1.6, it just never works correctly. Usually saving only purchased apps and a few free ones. The auto-restore is a Froyo feature and worked almost perfectly for me when I upgraded [it installed all the ones it remembered but because of the aforementioned bugginess of the save list, I had to restore about 20% manually with Titanium Backup]. The other new feature that was announced at I/O was data restore. This too is a Froyo feature, but like apps to SD, it is an API which must be implemented by the individual app developers. The data restore feature is fully functional in the OS right now, it just has nothing to restore because it needs the apps to tell it what to save. Within a couple weeks of the official Froyo rollout I think you can expect to see most active developers implement the 2.2 APIs in their apps.

Captivate boots slow, issues. How to troubleshoot?

So, a little history...
I'm on my 2nd Captivate (unrelated issue). The boot problems didn't arise until I restored my data onto it. The first time I tried restoring system data along with my apps (which I figured was safe since I was going from 2.1 stock to the same) but that had lots of issues. So I did a factory reset, and started over. This time I just restored apps and their data, and a few specific pieces of system data (contacts, wifi APs, etc). That worked better. But later I got too aggressive with what system apps I "froze" (using Titanium Backup), and it got into boot loops I couldn't break out of. So I did another factory reset.
This time, first I carefully froze only apps I was to confirm were safe to freeze. I didn't proceed restoring my apps until I was done freezing and ensured it was booting fine. I then restored all my apps (and their data). The problem is now that it takes forever to boot... in fact, it'll go into a boot loop if I just leave it be. It seems the only way I can gain access is to try and unlock it before it's done booting, clear any "Force close" errors (sometimes takes a few tries) and given enough attempts, I can get in. But the boot takes an unbelievable amount of time, and even with my original apps is many times longer than before on my previous Captivate. Once I fuss my way in, it seems mostly fine, but something is obviously wrong and I want to get it straightened out.
Aside from doing another factory reset, and reinstalling all my apps (which takes like a day without troubleshooting after each, since batch restores in TB don't seem to work well on the Captivate so I have to do them one by one), I'm hoping there's a way to troubleshoot it in its current state and try to fix the problem surgically versus erasing and starting over. I looked at the logcat logs but got in over my head... there are so many errors and warnings and I don't know what's normal and what isn't... too many to know where to begin with searching Google.
So... advice? What tools are available? Even the logcat doesn't seem to kick in until the boot is mostly done, so I'm not sure if it can catch the problem while it's happening. One frustrating thing about Android is that is seems to have no "safe mode" or other diagnostic boot or full logging where you can methodically look at what's happening and experiment with the config. If this was a Windows, Linux or FreeBSD box I'd be in my element and able to get to the bottom of this, but on Android I feel even more crippled, locked-out and helpless than even on Windows. Urgh.
There's got to be a better way to troubleshoot and fix than endless random factory resets. This is something us anti-Windows people scold PC makers for, with all their use of "Restore CDs" for every minor and trivial software issue.
Thanks!

I can't help but think you are still disabling some essential system apps. Either that or one of your apps is causing major problems. Please list what you have frozen in tibu. Btw, the batch function works fine and is what most people on here use.
Also, what is force closing after you restore your apps.

newter55 said:
I can't help but think you are still disabling some essential system apps. Either that or one of your apps is causing major problems. Please list what you have frozen in tibu. Btw, the batch function works fine and is what most people on here use.
Also, what is force closing after you restore your apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all, thanks for taking a stab at this.
My frozen apps are:
* AllShare
* AT&T FamilyMap
* AT&T Hot Spots
* AT&T Maps
* AT&T Music
* AT&T Navigator
* AT&T Radio
* Daily Briefing
* Days
* Instant Messaging
* Media Hub
* Mini Diary
* Mobile Banking
* Mobile Video
* MobiTV
* Where
* Write and Go
* YPmobile
I also tried removing my MicroSD card, as well as switching back to Touchwiz (from LauncherPro). Didn't help.
Yeah the batch problem in TB is very frustrating. I'm using the pay/donate version so I'm missing out on a feature I paid for. I've been exchanging emails with Joel (the author) and we haven't figured it out yet. Batch backups work fine. Batch uninstalls also work fine (update: phone just spontaneously rebooted after about 50 or so uninstalls in a batch). It's the batch restores that seem to choke it. It's not corrupt backup files... a verify runs fine, and I can individually restore the same handful of apps one by one that will choke and hang/reboot the Captivate if attempted to restore in a batch.
The FC error I get is on boot-up, as I try to unlock the screen prior to the boot finishing. I often see "Process system is not responding".
I have aLogcat installed, if that's any use. A few questions about that:
- What's the best logging level to view on? In other words, do I care about "Warnings"?
- What errors are common, harmless, and safe to ignore?
Currently I've tried uninstalling everything down to just a few core apps. Certainly boots fine now, but I get plenty of warnings and errors in logcat.

Are u restoring just the user installed apps+data, or system apps too? Or restoring system stuff like contacts data, accounts prefs, etc?

diablo009 said:
Are u restoring just the user installed apps+data, or system apps too? Or restoring system stuff like contacts data, accounts prefs, etc?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did not do a "restore system data" or any batch/bulk option in TB that restored all system data. As I recall, the only system data I restored a-la-carte (by selecting the individual item from the TB list) were:
Accounts
Bluetooth pairints
Bookmarks
Calendar
Contacts
Wi-Fi Access Points
These were all items in green in TB. I don't believe I restored anything else. Possibilities I suppose are wallpaper settings, "Country, Launguage, Time Zone"... but I definitely would not have restored anything not green.
Are these items safe? Is there any system data definitely not safe to restore? I have to wonder though, if "system data" is unsafe to even restore to the same stock OS version... why back it up at all?
I'm not a long distance from doing yet another factory reset I suppose, if it must come to that. But I'd love a way a bit more analytical/exacting to try and troubleshoot this other than "reinstall one app, reboot, see what happens" as that will take me a week to get back to where I was. I also suspect it's not just one single app that would suddenly show a huge difference after installing, but instead might be the cumulative errors from several apps and knowing how to identify that and clean them up would be useful.

Using adb logcat you can view what is occurring while the phone is booting and possibly see where it is hanging or what is causing the slow boot times. I have seen problems from restoring data such as accounts and contacts with titanium backup but does not seem that it should be an issue when using the same system though I have very little experience with the stock firmware. I know it is not an answer to your question but it seems that you are wanting to remove all the att/Samsung BS so why not flash a rom that does this as well as much more?
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

Thanks for the tip about adb. I've actually not needed adb for anything yet so I've never set it up or used it. I wasn't aware that the service would be active early enough on the phone's boot process to allow it to log boot logs... nor was I even aware it could do this. I'll definitely check out how to set this up... however, if you have a free second and can point me in the right direction (FAQ, instructions, etc) it'd certainly be appreciated otherwise I'll search around and try to find it.
I could probably find other ways to restore contacts and could set my accounts up again manually but I really doubt that's the cause and the other ways are sort of a pain and imperfect. Since neither of us is really convinced that'd be it I won't bother yet until/unless you really suspect it.
I wondered how long it'd take before someone would suggest a custom ROM, this being XDA and all. Short version is I'm not really sold on the concept, as they are all based on the buggy beta leaked ROM, or 2.2 ROMs from other devices that have been hacked up to sort of work as well as possible on the Captivate. All seem to have issues... enough that I'm not really left feeling confident about them. Seems every release unleashes new issues despite addressing old ones, and all seem to have at least a handful of gremlin items that just don't work quite right. Don't have a warm fuzzy feeling, and I still feel like Samsung is going to release an official 2.2 for the Captivate within the next month or so, so I'm interested to see what comes of that. If nothing else, it'll give a better baseline for custom 2.2 ROMs. Then there's the 2.3 being worked on... now that might be interesting.
I don't really think my issue here is related to me running 2.1.

On my phone so it is a pita to search and add a link for you but search for android sdk and you will find what you need to get adb up and running.
And as far as the rom issue goes..it is your phone and I respect your concerns I just had to ask

I would think its media hub that slows it down. It will search your SD cards on every boot. I would start there first.

smokestack76 said:
I would think its media hub that slows it down. It will search your SD cards on every boot. I would start there first.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's one of the apps I've frozen though.

For me the longest process while booting is the stupid media scanner upon bootup. Takes FOREVER for the phone to finally "boot" all the way up.
Been looking for a way to disable it (not really lol) and only have it scan manually to see if the boot time will improve. I'd start searching there.
Also - from what I've read nothing you did should have affected the phone. BUT - if your using Google for your Calendar and Contacts.. and they all get synced up to Google? Why bother doing the restore for those? After you sign up with the Market they get pulled back down to your phone automagically

It's definitely more than just the media scanner. I watch that. When everything is loaded up, it actually reboots in a loop unless intercept the FC. The media scanner will rerun over and over each time... far more than the standard two times.
And I use Google Calendar for my events, but I keep my contacts locally on my phone.

So what is the FC again?
Yep.. my media scanner will run at least 3 times before it stops checking everything.
Very frustrating that the software does this EVERY time I boot back into my phone - you'd think a programmer would put a check to see if it had run before or make it user configurable to scan when you want it to.

avgjoegeek said:
So what is the FC again?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
See my second post (reply #3):
"Process system is not responding"

LOL sorry not enough coffee and a lil' guy that decided to wake up at 4a.m. = not a good mix.
Well.. did the ol' wise search of Google and came up with:
Might be a permissions issue. Easiest way to fix it is to run ROM Manager and have it fix permisions.
Run the command yourself in ADB:
Code:
Open terminal and
>su
$mount -a
$fix_permissions -r
The -r is optional, but necessary if you find orphaned apps (the app not found please reinstall message)
And reboot. That may help.
And it was also stated that you might have an errant widget/application causing the issue as well. That will be fun trying to figure out what it is.

And.. from my non-dev/non-professional experience - I have checked the logs on my phone and do see a large number of warnings on the phone - but never hindered performance.
So.. 99% of the time you can probably ignore them.
But back to the FC issue - I would try doing a restore of your apps/data again (I read where you have it back down to the "core) and then run the permission script or have ROM Manager do it for you and see if it returns.

Just an update that I think the "fix permissions" thing solved most (but perhaps not all) of my issues. Thanks so much for the tip. I've been reinstalling apps in batches and it's much better, although I see it getting bogged-down bit by bit and I can't pin down what or why.
Thing is, the apps I'm installing in these later rounds/batches shouldn't be resident all the time, shouldn't be auto-loading, and don't come up in things like Startup Cleaner or Advanced Task Killer. Nor do the various process monitors I've tried seem to have the granularity/ability to catch them while they're happening.
So things are better, but I still have some issues without a suitable means to diagnose. I don't get why just having more apps installed, but not running, should affect boot time so much. Hmm...
An inability to troubleshoot certainly rains on my love-affair with Android... not that I'm jumping to another platform anytime soon, but I really want this to work well (as well as be a good salesman to friends and family who often turn to me to show off quality technology).

Painfully slow for a while... problem or time to upgrade?

Hi,
I did check other threads but I couldn't find anything directly related to this. I run my Galaxy S on an official firmware and don't have any mod installed. Well, aside from having it rooted.Firmware version is 2.3.6 xxjw4.
For a few months now, I feel the phone is getting slower and slower but now is becoming ridiculous. I mean, too many times it might take up to 5 seconds just to unlock the screen or get into the contact list. I have very few apps installed and I think I make a light use of it... basically, I use it as a phone, I use the calendar for appointments and I browse the internet. That's pretty much it. I use the full Opera browser though, and that's a heavy one. I also know about the need to sometimes unmount the SD card.
So anyway, my question is this... might it be the case that this phone is getting old and its hardware can't cope like it used to with its software? Or could it be some other problem that I don't even know how to ask about or check?
Cheers!

Maybe its time for you to flash a custom ics/jb rom? For ics , i recommend SlimIcs: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1488096

Mongopusher42 said:
Maybe its time for you to flash a custom ics/jb rom? For ics , i recommend SlimIcs: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1488096
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
At the beginning when I started to have this phone, I was using stock rom, I could not cope either with the tendency of this phone to micro-freeze and developpers brought a tweak called "lagfix" it saved the world for this phone... no more freeze due to non efficient memory management.
Now it's standard on any custom rom, so yes... go for a custom rom.

Badzoo said:
At the beginning when I started to have this phone, I was using stock rom, I could not cope either with the tendency of this phone to micro-freeze and developpers brought a tweak called "lagfix" it saved the world for this phone... no more freeze due to non efficient memory management.
Now it's standard on any custom rom, so yes... go for a custom rom.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thas wassup

Thanks guys and I'm sorry to acknowledged your answers so late... I thought I had set it to instant notification but I apparently didn't!
Yes, I remember the lag-fix thing, it did wonders for this phone.
I'll try the custom rom because this is just getting insane... just today it took me a good full minute to go from checking emails to get out of there to get into my contact list and return a missing call. I would go with a Galaxy III but the thing is a bit huge and second it's still at a novelty price. I'm sure I can get one much cheaper in a couple of months.
Well, thanks so much once more and I'll let you know how it goes! :good:

Done, much, much faster!! But the interface looks ... Nothing is familiar anymore, have to go through it all over again :laugh:

Kutusov said:
Done, much, much faster!! But the interface looks ... Nothing is familiar anymore, have to go through it all over again :laugh:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
try this MIUI v4 the interface is much easy.

Samtan4326 said:
try this MIUI v4 the interface is much easy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, currently I had to revert to a xxjw4 as somehow all my contacts wouldn't be backed up. Strange thing really as it started by showing up the right names on my contact log but they would be replaced by just the numbers. I made several attempts to restore those via Titanium Backup Pro but they wouldn't stick. Couldn't find any reference to this anywhere except a single post on a forum by someone complaining about the same problem and the answer was that those with be retrieved by Google sync. Not in my case...
I haven't given up yet but for now I do need those for work so I had to go back. Funny thing is that it's no longer lagging as it was, maybe because of all the wiping data and system and cache I had to go through.

Kutusov said:
Well, currently I had to revert to a xxjw4 as somehow all my contacts wouldn't be backed up. Strange thing really as it started by showing up the right names on my contact log but they would be replaced by just the numbers. I made several attempts to restore those via Titanium Backup Pro but they wouldn't stick. Couldn't find any reference to this anywhere except a single post on a forum by someone complaining about the same problem and the answer was that those with be retrieved by Google sync. Not in my case...
I haven't given up yet but for now I do need those for work so I had to go back. Funny thing is that it's no longer lagging as it was, maybe because of all the wiping data and system and cache I had to go through.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you backup your contacts try using file explorer to restore back by click on the xxx.vcf file, the contacts will restore back after you select the vcf file , good luck.

Samtan4326 said:
if you backup your contacts try using file explorer to restore back by click on the xxx.vcf file, the contacts will restore back after you select the vcf file , good luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah, so that's the file, thanks!! It kept asking me for a vcard on the SD card which didn't made much sense I'll have to try it during the weekend, even after rolling back I've spent the day with all those little problems you forget about fixing, like trying to take calls while driving and the phone not recognizing the bluetooth earpiece...

Moving to custom rom
I too had 2.3.6 xxjw4 on my SGS GT-I9000. Changing to a custom rom has given my phone a new lease of life! I moved to RemICS-UX, which is an ICS rom (perhaps not suitable for yourself as bluetooth not functional and development has moved on to Remics-JB, a jelly bean rom).
Beware of moving directly from stock to jelly bean custom rom. Many have run into trouble doing this. The wisdom from above is to move from stock to ICS before moving to a JB rom.
As for contacts, I previously set my phone to back up and sync my contacts to my Google account (Setting->Accounts & sync). Then, when the phone reboots after rom installation, Google syncs all my contacts back to my phone. Of course, I do nandroid, Titanium, and MyBackup backups - belt and braces!
Also don't forget to back up your efs folder with its imei details in it. Some people have lost their imei details when flashing, and this may save you the trouble of reflashing xxjw4 to recover it.

My phone is supposed to synch with my Google account and does it more often than I would wish! I feel it noticeably slows everything down when it's synhcing away. Even so, it was unable to get my contacts back. I'm really not sure what happened because when it booted up after recovery, I did had most of the right names on my contact log but a then they were replaced by the numbers only. Contact folder was always empty too...
BTW, where is the xxx.vcf located? Can't find it anywhere....

vcf backup
Kutusov said:
...snip...
BTW, where is the xxx.vcf located? Can't find it anywhere....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You create the vcf file prior to flashing. Go to Contacts->touch menu button->choose 'import/export'->choose 'export to storage'. You will be told the name of the vcf file and its location (in my own case 'mnt/sdcard/00001.vcf'. You can open the vcf file with a text editor and even make a backup on external card. To restore after flashing, go to Contacts->import/export->import from storage.

Oct-Al said:
You create the vcf file prior to flashing. Go to Contacts->touch menu button->choose 'import/export'->choose 'export to storage'. You will be told the name of the vcf file and its location (in my own case 'mnt/sdcard/00001.vcf'. You can open the vcf file with a text editor and even make a backup on external card. To restore after flashing, go to Contacts->import/export->import from storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right! :good: Just shows how much I know about this stuff
Quick update... re-read everything that was posted here and few other guides and tried to upgrade the ROM all over again during the weekend. I paid special attention to what you (Oct-Al) said about upgrading first to ICS from stock. I don't know the name of ROM but I've used the one that has a ICS333-2.0.1 and a gapps file. All went smoothly but, again, no contacts. The synch thing with Google doesn't work for me also. Synched everything to my account but nothing stays there. I probably have a lot of settings turned off as I tend to opt for maximum privacy and I even disabled that chat thing on my gmail acc.
But now that I know how to create the Vcard I'll give it another try. If all fails I guess I'll just have to fork up some money and get me the SIII although I think that phone is too big. Handled one the other day and it's great with youtube, browsing the internet, etc but carting that thing all day on your trousers' pocket shouldn't be all that nice...

Backup contacts database
Kutusov said:
Right! :good: Just shows how much I know about this stuff
Quick update... re-read everything that was posted here and few other guides and tried to upgrade the ROM all over again during the weekend. I paid special attention to what you (Oct-Al) said about upgrading first to ICS from stock. I don't know the name of ROM but I've used the one that has a ICS333-2.0.1 and a gapps file. All went smoothly but, again, no contacts. The synch thing with Google doesn't work for me also. Synched everything to my account but nothing stays there. I probably have a lot of settings turned off as I tend to opt for maximum privacy and I even disabled that chat thing on my gmail acc.
But now that I know how to create the Vcard I'll give it another try. If all fails I guess I'll just have to fork up some money and get me the SIII although I think that phone is too big. Handled one the other day and it's great with youtube, browsing the internet, etc but carting that thing all day on your trousers' pocket shouldn't be all that nice...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is another option! How confident are you with SQLite databases?
If you look in data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases you will find a database called 'contacts2.db' together with some other stuff. If you use Root Explorer (available from Play store - but not free) you can inspect the database with the internal SQLite viewer and confirm this is the database you want. Back up the folder and its contents before flashing.

Oct-Al said:
There is another option! How confident are you with SQLite databases?
If you look in data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases you will find a database called 'contacts2.db' together with some other stuff. If you use Root Explorer (available from Play store - but not free) you can inspect the database with the internal SQLite viewer and confirm this is the database you want. Back up the folder and its contents before flashing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Funny that posted this just now I was loggin in to give an update. :laugh:
So I've tried a couple more times and ended up with some problem with the external SD card that wouldn't mount and, stupid me, that's where I had the Vcard file.
Anyway, as I have all the files downloaded I'm pretty fast as trying different things now and I've just realized that all hell brakes lose AFTER I try to recover apps + data with Titanium Backup. Flashed CM9 as a pre-requisite to Slim Bean and everything was fine. I could even retrieve my contacts. But after running TB and rebooting I end up with a never ending sequence of failing processes like gmail, media, android something (they are so many and they pop up so fast I can't even read some of them).
So I'm now fairly confident I can do the upgrade but I'll have to do it in the old fashion (to me) way. I'll have to flash the ROM and then download apps by hand, one at a time.
I'm liking so much the looks and ways of Android 4.xx that there is no way I'm going to give up now :silly:

Well, all done now!!! Running Slim Bean 2.3.0 perfectly, with all the contacts. Everything seems fine, except for my calendar that I can't retrieve (there's always something). Not a big deal aside from the birthdays...
So thanks a lot to you all!! :good:

...well, final update...
I started to have a lot of stuff force closing after restoring a back-up from Titanium Backup. Stock Rom settings and data aparently don't go well with the custom Rom.
Anyway, now sorted... ordered myself an HTC One X :victory:

[Q] Trying hand at kitchen, some questions

I'm taking an existing rom and removing some bloatware i don't want to run. Since this will not be a published thing, i want to personalize it some.
Is there a way i can have it set to have me logged in to google, and other apps as soon as it flashes? Maybe install few select apps and their settings, like live wallpaper.
I use dropsync paid app to sync entire memory card, say i have to replace device suddenly. That would be one of a few apps i want to have login and settings restored so when i flash rom on a blank phone, it just starts syncing and putting things back where they were on old phone. Also gCloud backup and set it to restore backups?
I could also do full wipes and never really loose anything.
Thoughts, rants?