I'm accustomed to running scripts on boot in Linux, but I'm not sure how to do this in Android. I'd like to start my SSH daemon on start, so I'll always be able to connect. How can I run an arbitrary script on Android boot? It'd be preferable to do this outside of Dalvik.
While looking around my Android filesystem, I found that it did, in fact have a /etc/init.d/
directory. After peeking around in there, I found /etc/init.d/20userinit
with the following lines:
if [ -e /data/local/userinit.sh ];
then
log -p -i -t userinit "Executing /data/local/userinit.sh";
busybux chmod +x /data/local/userinit.sh;
logwrapper /system/bin/sh /data/local/userinit.sh;
setprop cm.userinit.active 1;
fi;
This being, of course, exactly what I needed, I wrote the following script on my computer then pushed it to my device:
#!/system/bin/sh
dropbear -s -g
(pushed to device via scp userinit.sh phone:/data/local/userinit.sh
, mind you :] )
Rebooted the device, then ran ps | grep "[d]ropbear"
, and sure enough, it's running. Coolness!
-
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – Firelord♦ Oct 22 '19 at 8:22
-
it seams lineageos comes with a
90userinit
exatcly like that. Thanks a lot for the hint! – eusoubrasileiro Mar 30 at 17:49 -
/data/init.sh
runs at boot, if you have root you can edit it as you like. Be careful ;)
Edit: Apparently you might need to shoehorn the edited script into the boot image as well. Info on how to do that here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=443994
-
1Yeah, I can't seem to find this file on my Nexus One running CM7-RC1. I'll see if a
find / -name "init.sh"
turns anything up. Are there any other scripts that run on boot? – Naftuli Kay Mar 2 '11 at 21:32 -
1You should have an
/etc/init.rc
which starts the shell. It should call init.sh but if it doesn't you can just make it call your own script. – Matthew Read Mar 2 '11 at 21:40 -
Unfortunately, I don't have that script either, but I did find a solution. – Naftuli Kay Mar 2 '11 at 21:49
-
3What version of Android is it ? 4.3 does have
/data
but no/data/init/.sh
or/etc/init.rc
. Grep does not find any interesting instance of the stringinit
in/etc
(even recursive). – Stéphane Gourichon Dec 7 '13 at 18:32 -
Look to /etc/
directory. Usually it is placed in /system/
partition which you can mount as RW:
$ ls -l /etc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Jan 1 2009 /etc -> /system/etc
$ su
$ mount -o remount,rw /system
$ chmod o+w /system/etc # for "adb push"
Some above steps may be replaces with:
$ adb root
$ adb remount
and later remount RO:
$ chmod o-w /system/etc
$ mount -o remount,ro /system
Now your task to find executable or *rc
file which you modify to achieve your goal:
$ find /etc -type f -perm +110
$ find /etc -name "*rc"
$ find /etc -name "init*"
$ grep -R /data /etc
$ grep -R /system /etc
Google about each candidate to get know how this file was used.
Good candidate for including custom scripts are lines from:
$ grep service /init*.rc
As each device unique you may need to do own guess about search criteria...
For example I found /etc/mkshrc
which used by Korn shell. I update this file to extend PATH
env var and now each time I do adb shell
I have Busybox symlinks in my PATH!
See also hard way (if you have no luck with finding magic file): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9768103/make-persistent-changes-to-init-rc
-
But isn't it getting overriden every boot ? I think the /etc folder is part of cpio which is ramdisk. – ransh Dec 18 '16 at 17:09
-
1@ransh this is not the case at least in: 8.1.0_r60 where
/system
issystem.img
, and/etc
is a symlink into/system
. – Ciro Santilli新疆棉花TRUMP BAN BAD Jan 31 '19 at 10:48
I tried all these methods and none of them worked for me. What worked however was based on lord-ralf-adolf's answer here How to run a script on boot in CM12.1?
basically, find the file
/system/etc/install-recovery.sh
and add the following line at the beginning
/data/init.sh &
then
touch /data/init.sh
chmod 755 /data/init.sh
Done!
You can now put whatever you want in /data/init.sh
and it will run on startup.
If the file /system/etc/install-recovery.sh
is not in your system then this answer won't work for you. Don't bother creating it.
-
3Actually, I have a system where
/system/etc/install-recovery.sh
was not present, but it is still executed on boot if present, so it's worth checking. – jcaron Aug 8 '18 at 22:25 -
If you have magisk installed you can place the .sh to:
/sbin/.magisk/img/.core/service.d/
or to
/sbin/.magisk/img/.core/post-fs-data.d/
Don't forget to make it executable: chmod +x your-script.sh
.
More info: https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk/blob/master/docs/guides.md#boot-scripts
Things were simple before Android 5 when SELinux wasn't enforcing
. You could put your code in any script or replace a binary with script which was executed with root privileges on boot. Another method was to define a custom init
service specifically to batch execute scripts from some directory.
Based on these approaches custom ROM developers introduced different pseudo-init.d
phenomenon like /etc/init.d/
, /etc/install-recovery.sh
, /etc/init.qcom.post_boot.sh
, /system/bin/debuggerd
, /data/init.sh
, /data/local/userinit.sh
, /data/local/init.d/
etc.
However a process running with UID 0
but in a restricted SELinux context is quite helpless. A service started in init.rc
file with u:r:init:s0
context can't even execute a shell script from /system/bin/
, so SELinux policy needs to be patched to inject an unrestricted context e.g. Magisk defines u:r:magisk:s0
. After that it's possible to run a script directly as init
service or from init.d
-like directory.
For details see How to run an executable on boot and keep it running?
Simple way (working):
Prepare your post boot commands in a script, say /system/xbin/post-boot (set exec perm)
Add the above custom script path at the end of /system/etc/init.qcom.post_boot.sh
Eg:
echo /system/xbin/post-boot >> /system/etc/init.qcom.post_boot.sh
Done!
(If you can't find the qcom post_boot (Qualcomm devices), look for any post_boot scripts)