cd into the external sd-card directory using adb shell

Question

I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (actually, many of them) and I need to regularly push some files inside the external physically removable SD card of my tablets.

Android handles internal and external storage as follows:

/storage
  ├ emulated/0/ /* this is the internal storage partition */
  └ 9102-ABF4 /* this is the external removable SD card partition */

I thought I could find this path by browsing to the folder which is not named /emulated inside /storage since the other one is the one I want.

I want, using device's shell through adb, to navigate to (using command cd) a directory that I don't know the path of (9102-ABF4 written above, located inside /storage/)

Answer 1

If your Android is 6 or above, and if your are connected through USB cable and your Android have USB debugging enabled, and if you have installed:

sudo apt install adb perl

put in a Linux terminal:

adb shell sm list-volumes public | perl -lane 'print $F[-1]')

This will show the micro SD card identification, example:

9102-ABF4

I made several scripts to automate send and receive files from Linux to Android and from Android to Linux:

https://github.com/wachin/adb-send-files

Answer 2

I don't believe adb shell supports tab completion. It makes reference to a directory in a command, but if you don't know the path you will need to use adb shell ls command to list the directory before using the path in an adb push command. For example, adb shell ls storage/9102-ABF4 will let you explore the external SD card that is on your device.

In terms of changing the working directory on your terminal, I don't believe you can do this because adb does not support interactive mode like nslookup. You are using a shell (adb shell) within a shell (bash, PowerShell, cmd, etc).