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