Develop Reference

How can you reliably move files from android to windows pc?

I'm trying to set up a bash script that can move video files (.mp4) from my android phone to my windows PC (or more accurately, to an external SSD). The goal is to save time transferring files as I will be doing this multiple times a day in between other things, so I want to do it automatically.
I know that it's possible to use adb pull to move the files and then use adb shell to delete them on the phone afterwards, but I am worried that if adb pull fails, it might delete some of the video files. Hence, I am looking for a solution that checks if the files were transferred correctly before deleting them from the phone.

Check the exit status of the command and delete if there is not error
#!/bin/bash
file=/data/local/tmp/file1
if adb pull "$file"
then
adb shell rm "$file"
fi

Phone is rooted but can't pull files from /data/data folder

My phone Samsung Galaxy S5 mini is rooted. I'm trying to pull files from /data/data/myapp.package/ to folder on my PC.
adb pull /data/data/myapp.package E:\myapp\myapp.package
it gives me this error
adb: error: failed to copy '/data/data/myapp.package' to 'E:\myapp\myapp.package': Permission denied
I found many questions like mine but no answer solved my problem. Some suggested to execute this command adb root before pulling files. Some suggested to install adbd insecure app to enable root access. In fact after installing that app, phone disappeared from adb terminal. Both solution didn't work for me.
BTW, I can copy files using cp command from adb shell but I have to copy files to sdcard and then pull from sdcard. I'm looking for solution which allows me to copy files directly from /data/data/myapp.package to my PC
Any solution?

For your adb to be able to access /data/data directly (for adb pull), your adbd should be running as root - which can generally be done by adb root command.
adb root would not work on commercial devices like Samsung Galaxy S5 mini as commercial devices have ro.secure=1, i.e., the adbd can't be restarted as root due to a check of property called ro.secure. adbd insecure app circumvents this and restarts adbd in root mode to enable adb pull, etc. to work.
In short, if adbd insecure app doesn't work for you, it's not possible to do adb pull from /data/data in your existing ROM. It might be possible if you change the ROM / do some boot.img tweaks, but I would probably suggest trying latest version / different versions of adbd insecure app before going for ROM changes.
Read more on rooting here.

First you need to hit these two command from command line
adb root
adb remount
then
adb pull /data/data/myapp.package E:\myapp\myapp.package

This is my example pulling DB file from the root directory
adb -e shell "run-as com.example.project cp /data/data/com.example.project/databases/project.db /sdcard"
The key is run-as

Here's a one-liner that lets you pull a file without installing anything else and without having to copy it to a public location on the device to then pull it to your computer:
adb exec-out su -c cat /data/data/myapp.package/my_file.apk > my_file.apk
What this does:
adb exec-out runs a command and outputs the raw binary output
su -c runs the provided command as root
cat <file> prints out the file contents
> <file> redirects the output from adb (i.e. the raw file contents) to a local file.

How can I get a working adb shell on android when /system/bin/sh is missing?

I'm trying to build Android Jellybean from source for the Measy U2C HDMI stick. I've managed to build and install all the partitions (boot, kernel, misc, recovery, system...). The problem I'm having is that the system partition doesn't seem to be mounting. When I run
adb ls /system
I get the following output:
000041ed 00000400 51301410 .
000041c0 00000800 00000003 lost+found
000041ed 00000000 00000001 ..
I'd like to adb shell into the device and try to debug why the system partition is not mounting but adb wants there to be a working shell in /system/bin/sh.
$ adb shell
- exec '/system/bin/sh' failed: No such file or directory (2) -
My question is, how can I get adb to look elsewhere for the shell command so i can get this working? Or is there an alternate way to remote into the device and debug this? There is a busybox install at /sbin/busybox so if I can just invoke that somehow, I can figure this out.

"SHELL_COMMAND" appears to be hardcoded in adb/services.c an unofficial copy of which is browsable at
https://github.com/android/platform_system_core/blob/master/adb/services.c
Given that you are building from source you should be able to change this. But since you want to point it to a shorter path, you could also probably edit the binary and move up the terminating null.
Another approach to investigating your problem could be to see if you can get a working adb shell after booting to the recovery partition, and try manually mounting the problematic system partition there to see what errors result.
Still another idea would be to put something in the startup scripts which launches an alternate shell listening on something which you could forward a socket to using adb - I'm not thinking of an obvious reason why setting up adb forwards would depend on the device side shell, but I haven't verified that by experiment or examining the code.
If you wanted to get really clever, I believe that you could create a /system/bin containing a copy of sh on the root filesystem. My recollection is that you can mount a filesystem over a non-empty directory - not sure if there would be an issue with open file descriptors to that directory, such as for the running sh itself, but your mount is failing anyway, and you could try doing a manual mount elsewhere in order to debug that issue.

android : unable to run shell script(.sh) from my application

i am not able to run shell scripts from my application.only "ls -l" and echo commands respond.rest dont seem to do anything.not even "touch" command works.i tried creating a file in sdcard using touch command in my script..only the echo command worked.my shell script is in sdcard too

The sdcard is mounted with noexec. You will have to copy the scripts to the app's local data drive to execute.
You should be able to see the mounted permissions of all file-systems by logging into the phone (adb shell or whatever else) and typing mount

The rest of the commands like "cd" etc doesnot work in Android as it encounters lot of permission issues.
So the best solution is to trigger "script manager" or "terminal emulator" apps already available through your app.

Sending AT commands from Powershell script to Android phone via adb

I have a little script that I run in adb shell of Android phone (/system/etc directory), which enables to communicate with the modem by sending/receiving a single AT command.
The script itself, if run in adb shell, works OK. That's what it looks like:
cat /dev/pts/7 &
echo -e $1\\r > /dev/pts/7
Here's the output in adb shell:
# ./sendATCommand "at+cops?"
./sendATCommand "at+cops?"
#
+COPS: 0,0,"AT&T",6
OK
/dev/pts/7: invalid length
(need to press ENTER to return control to adb shell)
#
Now I want to invoke this script from a powershell script running on my PC, thus eventually controlling modem via AT commands, but nothing happens.
For example, the below powershell script will send the command at+cops? to check the operator to which mobile is registered to:
$adb = [IO.Path]::Combine([IO.Path]::Combine($Env:ANDROID, "platform-tools"), "adb.exe")
& $adb remount
$atCommand = "at+cops?"
& $adb shell /system/etc/sendATCommand $atCommand
The output may looks sometimes like +ATCMD (any residual [proprietary]AT command sitting in device buffer after bootup), or at+cops?(echo), or nothing at all, but
never +COPS: 0,0,"AT&T",6 which I expect. Could you help me figure out what's going on and how to possibly fix it? Ideally
I want to be able to execute at command, return control to powershell, and have output available for further processing.
I am also open to other solutions to implement same thing.
Would greatly appreciate your help. Thanks!

Not sure to answer your question, my phone is not an Android, but when I connect it via buetooth or USB to my computer a COM port is created. So I build an assembly tool on the top of .NET SerialPort class that allow, for example, to send SMS using the phone Modem.
I think it's usable in your case.