ADB Lessons?

[chrstdvd]

Someone told me that I needed to learn about Linux to better understand the android platform (or more specifically, ADB) . That lead to something else which led to something else and now I am studying the tutorials to learn JAVA. It turns out that if one wishes to write an application for the android platform, one does it in JAVA. I have Eclipse installed but it is useless in reality, unless I can code in the JAVA language.

Luckily, I have experience with Visual Basic from a purely novice point of view. But still, my knowledge of the concepts in Visual Basic for Applications are making it much easier to pick up on JAVA, especially using the notepad to write the code. Once I get the code writing concepts down, I can start using the Eclipse IDE to package test projects.

Only problem is that I can not remember what I wanted to know about ADB in the first place.

I do not want to learn JAVA or write an application or know how android works, I just can not for the life of me find a tutorial about ADB that gives instructions on the commands and how to use it competently to Flash, Delete, Uninstall, and manipulate what is on my phone.

Anyone out there that knows where such a thing exists?

 

[pc747]

We are working on something like that. We will keep you posted.

 

[christim]

The Android Debug Bridge ADB lets you access your Android phone from a Windows computer. The shell command makes use of linux commands so being able to navigate around Linux at its command promt vs its windowish graphical interface definitely helps. You'll be using commands you type to change directories, move files, copy files, etc.

Anyone else with some good ADB guides please feel free to add them to this thread and someone will get them added to this post, thanks!

1. http://www.droidforums.net/forum/hacking-help/30464-how-adb-why-i-love-adb-commands-3-a.html
2. http://www.droidforums.net/forum/blackdroid/37287-adb-auto-partition-droidswap-how-guides.html

 

[chrstdvd]

The Android Debug Bridge ADB lets you access your Android phone from a Windows computer. The shell command makes use of linux commands so being able to navigate around Linux at its command promt vs its windowish graphical interface definitely helps. You'll be using commands you type to change directories, move files, copy files, etc.

Anyone else with some good ADB guides please feel free to add them to this thread and someone will get them added to this post, thanks!

1. http://www.droidforums.net/forum/hacking-help/30464-how-adb-why-i-love-adb-commands-3-a.html
2. http://www.droidforums.net/forum/blackdroid/37287-adb-auto-partition-droidswap-how-guides.html

Well thanks. It was that first link that sent me off into my quest in the first place. First I do not understand "Mount", "Remount". What is getting mounted to what or remounted.

I think when I use the "shell" command that I am using ADB to communicate instructions to my phone. Not sure though.

I need a baby guide, so I can understand what I am doing, in case I want to tinker on my own and not follow directions that I do not understand the "why" about.

 

[christim]

In this command:

mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system

You are making the /system folder, and the contents within, Read Writable. Once done messing with files you will then make it be Read Only again
It is that file structure (everything within /system) that you are remounting as read-only or as writeable.

mount -o remount,ro -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system

These commands are Linux commands, and you are typing them from Windows, in the shell program you installed via the Android SDK.

"remount" is a script, or a file, that contains the above command. Rather than typing out and running the whole command you run a file that goes and runs the command. You can view/edit these script files with a text editor. They are similar to Window's Batch files: Batch file - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The "baby guide" will be self created. If you don't understand a term you can either ask someone or search for it on the internet. That way you can find things like these below:
http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-hacks/12830-mtdblock3-vs-mtdblock4-stop-using-mtdblock3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_%28Unix%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAFFS
http://www.linfo.org/create_shell_1.html

 

[chrstdvd]

Well Chrstim, I thanks for the above info and links. I have spent the past few days studying those links and a few hundred more plus googeling all over the place trying to get a grip.

This link lists the files that are in System/bin:
ADB Shell Command Reference - Android Wiki

This link (and many others) list and enplane the Linux Shell commands but many in the first list are not in the second but by the time I figure out the ones that are, maybe I will find out what the non listed ones in System/bin are for.
http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/cmd/

I have been able to write a script file that only uses the echo command. It is dumb but it gets you used to pushing and pulling files into System/bin and using the chmod command and ./blabla to run my little script. Ha!

I occasionally screw up and get my command window full of junk and I wanted to write a script that would cls. But there is in clear in adb, so I figured I could write a script to exit, cls, and adb shell. That did not work either. I know, the shell is only for the phone/emulator.

I downloaded Win32vi to write scripts in, but I read it is not the best program to use, if you actually learn what you are doing, so I am looking for another good vi clone. I bet you could just use notepad, but by the time I understood the #!/bin/sh I had already downloaded Winvi from being frustrated; plus, I had to look at another script file I downloaded from one of my searches on this site to figure it out. The example I had was !#/bin/bash and I substituted shell for bash. Then I saw the download first line and saw sh, so I checked and sure enough it is in /bin.

Anyway thanks, and I will keep ya posted, especially if I actually do something.