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1This file tries to document all requests a client can make
2to the ADB server of an adbd daemon. See the OVERVIEW.TXT document
3to understand what's going on here.
4
5HOST SERVICES:
6
7host:version
8    Ask the ADB server for its internal version number.
9
10host:kill
11    Ask the ADB server to quit immediately. This is used when the
12    ADB client detects that an obsolete server is running after an
13    upgrade.
14
15host:devices
16host:devices-l
17    Ask to return the list of available Android devices and their
18    state. devices-l includes the device paths in the state.
19    After the OKAY, this is followed by a 4-byte hex len,
20    and a string that will be dumped as-is by the client, then
21    the connection is closed
22
23host:track-devices
24    This is a variant of host:devices which doesn't close the
25    connection. Instead, a new device list description is sent
26    each time a device is added/removed or the state of a given
27    device changes (hex4 + content). This allows tools like DDMS
28    to track the state of connected devices in real-time without
29    polling the server repeatedly.
30
31host:emulator:<port>
32    This is a special query that is sent to the ADB server when a
33    new emulator starts up. <port> is a decimal number corresponding
34    to the emulator's ADB control port, i.e. the TCP port that the
35    emulator will forward automatically to the adbd daemon running
36    in the emulator system.
37
38    This mechanism allows the ADB server to know when new emulator
39    instances start.
40
41host:transport:<serial-number>
42    Ask to switch the connection to the device/emulator identified by
43    <serial-number>. After the OKAY response, every client request will
44    be sent directly to the adbd daemon running on the device.
45    (Used to implement the -s option)
46
47host:transport-usb
48    Ask to switch the connection to one device connected through USB
49    to the host machine. This will fail if there are more than one such
50    devices. (Used to implement the -d convenience option)
51
52host:transport-local
53    Ask to switch the connection to one emulator connected through TCP.
54    This will fail if there is more than one such emulator instance
55    running. (Used to implement the -e convenience option)
56
57host:transport-any
58    Another host:transport variant. Ask to switch the connection to
59    either the device or emulator connect to/running on the host.
60    Will fail if there is more than one such device/emulator available.
61    (Used when neither -s, -d or -e are provided)
62
63host-serial:<serial-number>:<request>
64    This is a special form of query, where the 'host-serial:<serial-number>:'
65    prefix can be used to indicate that the client is asking the ADB server
66    for information related to a specific device. <request> can be in one
67    of the format described below.
68
69host-usb:<request>
70    A variant of host-serial used to target the single USB device connected
71    to the host. This will fail if there is none or more than one.
72
73host-local:<request>
74    A variant of host-serial used to target the single emulator instance
75    running on the host. This will fail if there is none or more than one.
76
77host:<request>
78    When asking for information related to a device, 'host:' can also be
79    interpreted as 'any single device or emulator connected to/running on
80    the host'.
81
82<host-prefix>:get-product
83    XXX
84
85<host-prefix>:get-serialno
86    Returns the serial number of the corresponding device/emulator.
87    Note that emulator serial numbers are of the form "emulator-5554"
88
89<host-prefix>:get-devpath
90    Returns the device path of the corresponding device/emulator.
91
92<host-prefix>:get-state
93    Returns the state of a given device as a string.
94
95<host-prefix>:forward:<local>;<remote>
96    Asks the ADB server to forward local connections from <local>
97    to the <remote> address on a given device.
98
99    There, <host-prefix> can be one of the
100    host-serial/host-usb/host-local/host prefixes as described previously
101    and indicates which device/emulator to target.
102
103    the format of <local> is one of:
104
105        tcp:<port>      -> TCP connection on localhost:<port>
106        local:<path>    -> Unix local domain socket on <path>
107
108    the format of <remote> is one of:
109
110        tcp:<port>      -> TCP localhost:<port> on device
111        local:<path>    -> Unix local domain socket on device
112        jdwp:<pid>      -> JDWP thread on VM process <pid>
113        vsock:<CID>:<port> -> vsock on the given CID and port
114
115    or even any one of the local services described below.
116
117<host-prefix>:forward:norebind:<local>;<remote>
118    Same as <host-prefix>:forward:<local>;<remote> except that it will
119    fail it there is already a forward connection from <local>.
120
121    Used to implement 'adb forward --no-rebind <local> <remote>'
122
123<host-prefix>:killforward:<local>
124    Remove any existing forward local connection from <local>.
125    This is used to implement 'adb forward --remove <local>'
126
127<host-prefix>:killforward-all
128    Remove all forward network connections.
129    This is used to implement 'adb forward --remove-all'.
130
131<host-prefix>:list-forward
132    List all existing forward connections from this server.
133    This returns something that looks like the following:
134
135       <hex4>: The length of the payload, as 4 hexadecimal chars.
136       <payload>: A series of lines of the following format:
137
138         <serial> " " <local> " " <remote> "\n"
139
140    Where <serial> is a device serial number.
141          <local>  is the host-specific endpoint (e.g. tcp:9000).
142          <remote> is the device-specific endpoint.
143
144    Used to implement 'adb forward --list'.
145
146LOCAL SERVICES:
147
148All the queries below assumed that you already switched the transport
149to a real device, or that you have used a query prefix as described
150above.
151
152shell:command arg1 arg2 ...
153    Run 'command arg1 arg2 ...' in a shell on the device, and return
154    its output and error streams. Note that arguments must be separated
155    by spaces. If an argument contains a space, it must be quoted with
156    double-quotes. Arguments cannot contain double quotes or things
157    will go very wrong.
158
159    Note that this is the non-interactive version of "adb shell"
160
161shell:
162    Start an interactive shell session on the device. Redirect
163    stdin/stdout/stderr as appropriate. Note that the ADB server uses
164    this to implement "adb shell", but will also cook the input before
165    sending it to the device (see interactive_shell() in commandline.c)
166
167remount:
168    Ask adbd to remount the device's filesystem in read-write mode,
169    instead of read-only. This is usually necessary before performing
170    an "adb sync" or "adb push" request.
171
172    This request may not succeed on certain builds which do not allow
173    that.
174
175tcp:<port>
176    Tries to connect to tcp port <port> on localhost.
177
178tcp:<port>:<server-name>
179    Tries to connect to tcp port <port> on machine <server-name> from
180    the device. This can be useful to debug some networking/proxy
181    issues that can only be revealed on the device itself.
182
183local:<path>
184    Tries to connect to a Unix domain socket <path> on the device
185
186localreserved:<path>
187localabstract:<path>
188localfilesystem:<path>
189    Variants of local:<path> that are used to access other Android
190    socket namespaces.
191
192framebuffer:
193    This service is used to send snapshots of the framebuffer to a client.
194    It requires sufficient privileges but works as follow:
195
196      After the OKAY, the service sends 16-byte binary structure
197      containing the following fields (little-endian format):
198
199            depth:   uint32_t:    framebuffer depth
200            size:    uint32_t:    framebuffer size in bytes
201            width:   uint32_t:    framebuffer width in pixels
202            height:  uint32_t:    framebuffer height in pixels
203
204      With the current implementation, depth is always 16, and
205      size is always width*height*2
206
207      Then, each time the client wants a snapshot, it should send
208      one byte through the channel, which will trigger the service
209      to send it 'size' bytes of framebuffer data.
210
211      If the adbd daemon doesn't have sufficient privileges to open
212      the framebuffer device, the connection is simply closed immediately.
213
214jdwp:<pid>
215    Connects to the JDWP thread running in the VM of process <pid>.
216
217track-jdwp
218    This is used to send the list of JDWP pids periodically to the client.
219    The format of the returned data is the following:
220
221        <hex4>:    the length of all content as a 4-char hexadecimal string
222        <content>: a series of ASCII lines of the following format:
223                        <pid> "\n"
224
225    This service is used by DDMS to know which debuggable processes are running
226    on the device/emulator.
227
228    Note that there is no single-shot service to retrieve the list only once.
229
230sync:
231    This starts the file synchronization service, used to implement "adb push"
232    and "adb pull". Since this service is pretty complex, it will be detailed
233    in a companion document named SYNC.TXT
234
235reverse:<forward-command>
236    This implements the 'adb reverse' feature, i.e. the ability to reverse
237    socket connections from a device to the host. <forward-command> is one
238    of the forwarding commands that are described above, as in:
239
240      list-forward
241      forward:<local>;<remote>
242      forward:norebind:<local>;<remote>
243      killforward-all
244      killforward:<local>
245
246    Note that in this case, <local> corresponds to the socket on the device
247    and <remote> corresponds to the socket on the host.
248
249    The output of reverse:list-forward is the same as host:list-forward
250    except that <serial> will be just 'host'.
251