To terminate the ADB server process, use the kill-server command. For example, to kill the server for a specific emulator instance, type

You can start the ADB server using the start-server command.

You can also use the start-server command to check whether the server is running.

You can copy files to the device using the push command, as follows:

For example, to copy the file Pic.jpg from the local hard drive to T-Mobile G1’s SD Card download directory, use the following command:

You can copy files from the device using the pull command, as follows:

For example, to copy the file Lion.jpg to the local hard drive from T-Mobile G1’s SD Card download directory, use the following command:

To install applications, first create an Android package (.apk) file, and then use the install command:

For example, to install the sample application Snake on the emulator, you could use the following command:

You can use the –r to reinstall the application package without overwriting its data. For example, you can now reinstall the Snake application without losing your data by using the following command:

To uninstall an Android application, you need to know the name of its package—

For example, to uninstall the Franglais application from the emulator, you can use the following command:

To display all LogCat logging information from the emulator instance, type

By default, the logging mode is set to brief. For example, the following is an Informational (I) log message (brief mode) from the tag AppLog from process ID 20054:

Another useful mode is the time mode, which includes the date and time the log message was invoked. To change the logging mode, use the –v flag and specify the format. For example, to change to time mode, use the following command:

The resulting log messages are formatted with the date and time, followed by the event severity, tag, process ID, and log message:

All the log information available through the LogCat tool can be overwhelmingly verbose. Most of the time a filter or two is required to sift out only the messages you want to view.

Filters are formatted tags and event priority pairs. The format for each filter is

For example, a filter to display Informational log messages (and higher priority messages including Warnings, Errors and Fatal messages) from log messages tagged with the string AppLog would look like this:

You can also use the asterisk (*), which means “all.” So if you use an asterisk on the Tag side of the filter, it means “All tags.” If you put it on the Event Priority side, it’s much like using the V priority—the lowest priority, so all messages display.

You can clear the log using the –c flag:

You can redirect log output to a file on the device using the –f flag. For example, to direct all informational logging messages (and those of higher priority) from the emulator to the file mylog.txt in the sdcard directory, you can use the following command:

Android has several different logs. By default, you look at the main log. However, an events log and a radio log also exist. You can connect to the other log buffers using the –b flag. For example, to connect to the event log to review events, type:

The radio log is similarly accessed as follows:

You can issue a single shell command without starting a shell session using the following command:

For example, to list all the files in the /sdcard/download directory on the emulator, type

Often you might want to issue more than one command. In this case, you might want to start a shell session. To do so, simply type

For example, to connect to a specific device instance by serial number and start a shell session, type

You can then issue commands. Ending your session is as easy as typing exit.

Stopping the emulator makes it stop responding, although it still displays on your development machine. To stop the emulator, you can issue the stop command within the ADB shell.

You can then restart the emulator using the start command:

You could also perform these commands from within a shell session, like this:

You can use the standard sqlite3 database tool from within the ADB shell. This tool allows you to inspect and interact directly with a SQLite database. For a thorough explanation of the sqlite3 tool, see Appendix D, “The SQLite Quick-Start Guide.”

You can use the Exerciser/Monkey tool from within the ADB shell to send random user events to a specific application. Think of it as handing your phone (or emulator) to a monkey (or a baby, or a baby monkey) and letting them push random keys, causing random events on the phone—events that can crash your application if it doesn’t handle them correctly. If your application crashes, the Monkey application stops and reports the error, making this a useful tool for quality assurance.

You can also install custom binaries on the emulator or device. For example, if you spend a lot of time working in the shell, you might want to install BusyBox, which is a free and useful set of command-line tools available under the GNU General Public License and has been called “The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux” (thanks, Wikipedia for that little fact). BusyBox provides a number of helpful and familiar UNIX utilities, all packaged in a single binary. Utilities like find and more. BusyBox provides many useful functions (although some of which might not apply or be permissible) on Android, such as the following:

All you need to do is install the binary (which is available online) using the following steps:

You can find out more about BusyBox at http://www.busybox.net.