diff doc/Nonfree-phones-user-data @ 808:ac527de89a0d

pcm-sms-decode documentation
author Mychaela Falconia <falcon@freecalypso.org>
date Sat, 27 Mar 2021 00:28:49 +0000
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+Using FreeCalypso tools to access user data on non-free phones
+==============================================================
+
+If you are using a Motorola C1xx or Pirelli DP-L10 phone as your daily driver,
+running its original proprietary fw for the lack of anything better, you can
+still use FreeCalypso tools to get to some of your user data, namely, your
+phonebook and your SMS store.  You can even do the same with a non-Calypso
+phone if you can move the SIM in and out of it.  This article tells you how to
+do such tricks.
+
+Phonebook howto
+===============
+
+Whenever you have to use a phone whose firmware is not fully liberated, you
+should always store your phonebook contacts on the SIM, rather than "on the
+phone".  SIM phonebook storage format is strictly defined by standard specs,
+leaving no room for proprietary firmwares to apply any wacky proprietary ideas
+of their own - OTOH, "on the phone" storage really means storing your data in
+proprietary fw data structures in only-Cthulhu-knows-what format.
+
+If you have your contacts stored in your SIM phonebook, you can manipulate the
+latter with FreeCalypso tools: you can dump your SIM phonebook and save it on
+your larger host computer, you can restore these backups back to the SIM, and
+you can freely edit your SIM phonebook.  If your phone is a supported Calypso
+model, you can perform all of these manipulations without removing your SIM -
+you only need to shut down the phone's regular fw for the duration of the
+operation, just like you would do for flashing with fc-loadtool.  The other way
+is to remove your SIM from the phone and stick it into a standalone smart card
+"reader" device - this path is totally independent of all phones.
+
+You will need to have both the present FC host tools package and the separate
+FC SIM tools package installed on your host machine.  See the instructions in
+the SIM-manipulation article for how to run fc-simint for the purpose of
+operating on a SIM card inside your Calypso phone.  Once you have landed at the
+simtool> prompt, see the doc/User-oriented-commands article in the fc-sim-tools
+repository for instructions on how to enter your PIN (if your SIM requires one)
+and how to manipulate your phonebooks.
+
+SMS storage howto
+=================
+
+Motorola's firmware always stores received SMS on the SIM, whereas sent SMS are
+stored in their FFS (flash file system, see Compal-FFS article) in their own
+proprietary format.  You can transfer your received SMS to your larger host
+computer for longer-term archival as follows:
+
+1) Shut down the phone's regular fw and run fc-simint to operate on the SIM;
+
+2) Once you are at the simtool> prompt, enter your PIN if your SIM requires one,
+   and then save the SIM SMS store to a Unix host file with the save-sms-bin
+   command, as explained in the doc/User-oriented-commands article in the
+   fc-sim-tools repository.  You can then issue an sms-erase-all command in the
+   same seesion to clean out the SIM SMS store.
+
+3) The files saved by the fc-simint/fc-simtool save-sms-bin command are binary,
+   but the message content can then be fully decoded to human-readable ASCII
+   (or ISO 8859-1 or UTF-8 if desired) with our pcm-sms-decode utility,
+   described later in this article.
+
+To retrieve your sent SMS from Compal's FFS, you will need to similarly shut
+down the phone's regular fw and read out the FFS sectors with fc-loadtool.  You
+can then use our tiffs utility to parse the FFS structure, but the format of the
+actual files used by Compal's proprietary fw implementation has not been studied
+in detail by the Mother, thus you will need to use your own brain cells for
+further decoding.
+
+If you use a Pirelli DP-L10 phone rather than Motorola C1xx, Pirelli's fw gives
+you the option of storing received SMS either on the SIM or "on the phone", the
+latter meaning Pirelli's FFS.  Sent SMS are always stored in Pirelli's FFS.
+
+If you use SIM storage for received SMS on your Pirelli phone, then the
+procedure for retrieving those SMS is the same as for Mot C1xx, as detailed
+above.  However, with this phone model, configuring the fw to store received SMS
+in its FFS ("on the phone") is generally preferable: Pirelli's fw maintains a
+file in its FFS (/pcm/SMS) whose binary format is exactly the same as the
+standards-defined format for storing SMS on the SIM, thus reading out /pcm/SMS
+with fc-fsio is just as good as reading out EF_SMS with fc-simint or fc-simtool,
+but is much more convenient: fc-fsio operates on the phone while its regular fw
+is running, whereas direct SIM manipulation with fc-simint requires shutting
+down the phone's regular fw.  Pirelli's fw also accesses its SMS store faster
+when FFS storage is used, rather than SIM.
+
+Decoding received SMS binary files with pcm-sms-decode
+======================================================
+
+Whether you have retrieved your SMS store from a SIM with fc-simint/fc-simtool
+save-sms-bin command or read out Pirelli's /pcm/SMS file with fc-fsio, the
+binary format is exactly the same: a bundle of 176-byte records directly abutted
+together, with each individual record having the standard format defined in GSM
+TS 11.11 and its successor 3GPP TS 51.011.  Looking at raw hex dumps won't be
+very helpful, as the reversed nibble format used for phone numbers and SC
+timestamps is not directly human-readable, and the message bodies will usually
+be in the form of packed septets - hence a special decoding program is needed.
+
+Our pcm-sms-decode utility does the needed job of reading these binary files and
+fully decoding them into human-readable ASCII, or ISO 8859-1 or UTF-8 if your
+host system supports such extended character sets and you have received SMS
+content that uses beyond-ASCII characters.  pcm-sms-decode was added to FC host
+tools suite in early 2020; it is based on and shares most of its code with our
+earlier sms-pdu-decode utility from 2018.  (The latter is meant for decoding SMS
+PDUs retrieved from FreeCalypso AT command modems with fcup-smdump.)
+
+pcm-sms-decode uses the same backslash escapes in its output and accepts the
+same -e, -u and -h options as sms-pdu-decode - please refer to the description
+of sms-pdu-decode in the User-phone-tools article for the details.
+
+By default, pcm-sms-decode numbers the records being decoded as 0 to N-1, where
+N is the total number of records in the binary file given to it (file size equal
+to N*176 bytes).  As of fc-host-tools-r15, newly added -s option causes it to
+number these same records as 1 to N instead.  The original 0-based record
+numbering was implemented when the tool was used solely to decode /pcm/SMS from
+Pirelli's fw (before the introduction of fc-simtool), but now that we have
+fc-simtool and fc-simint, and given that the SIM interface protocol and SIM file
+system definition use 1-based record numbers, we need to support the same
+convention in pcm-sms-decode for consistency.