ScriptBasic Android

[John Spikowski]

How did you get the scriba file on to the data portion of your SD?

What does ls -l say? (owner / permission)

Once again. this is NOT a .apk package for Android. It is a Linux C based executable. Treat it like you were running under Ubuntu.

[kryton9]

John, I got a permission denied with ls -l

I probably have to root the phone, which is not something I want to do to get true root access. This is just the terminal emulator that I am running.
ls by itself works, just as a note.

I used 'dropbox' to get it to the phone. Then I used the 'astro' file manager to move it. Both are free apps.

[John Spikowski]

Look at your terminal program settings to see what permissions you are allowing and what shell is being used. If you can't even do a directory listing ls then what good is having a terminal program?

The option being used is a lower case "L" with ls.

If you look at my first post, I'm not in as root. (app-40 or 10040 under the emulator)

This might help.

It would be nice if you could put native binaries directly onto the SD card (either external or built-in) but you can't. Well, you can — but you won't be able to set execute permissions on them, which means they won't run. The SD card is mounted in such a way as to prohibit setting 'x' permissions. You can set execute permissions in the app storage area — that part of the filesystem that is rooted at /data/data. On an unrooted device you won't be able to create files just anywhere in this directory, because each app has its own security credentials — effectively each app runs as a different user. Only one directory under /data/data will be writeable by a specific app. Once you've found that directory, you can copy a binary into it, and run it at the terminal emulator prompt.

more ...

I noticed it is recommended to use this format for changing the file mode.

chmod 0777 ./scriba

[John Spikowski]

I can confirm that once I cd /data/data/jackpal.androidterm, I was able to use the shell command line utilities without permission errors. ScriptBasic shouldn't have any problems running native on unrooted Android devices.

Android Linux shell commands

[kryton9]

John, I tried tonight and failed. I took screenshots to document things.

My phone is HTC EVO 4G running Android 2.3.5
It is not rooted.

I tethered my phone via usb to my notebook.
I found the data directory under the android directory.
I then created a data sub directory in the data folder.
I copied scriba to that folder.

I then ran terminal emulator on my phone.
You can see my steps and hopefully my mistake.

I combined the 2 screenshots into one. You can see how I set things up folder wise on the sd card
and what I did in the terminal window.

Hope we can get this working, I think we are close.

[John Spikowski]

I then created a data sub directory in the data folder.

You should not have to create a data sub-directory of /data. It should already be present holding the data sub-directories for applications. You are almost blind and command line handicapped until you get into the /data/data/your_terminal_app directory.


More help ...

[kryton9]

John, I think the help they are giving is using adb instead of seeing the phones sdcard as an external drive as I have been trying.

I connected to the phone via adb, but have no luck in finding the directory for the terminal emulator or pushing the scriba file over as they mentioned.

The help they give is much like I see on many linux help forums, very cryptic.

Here is my adb transcript. As you can see I connected via adb to my phone, but I can't get to the folders as they wrote in their help.

C:\Users\Kent\Downloads\android root>adb devices
adb server is out of date. killing...
* daemon started successfully *
List of devices attached
HT17LHL10205 device


C:\Users\Kent\Downloads\android root>adb shell ls
adb server is out of date. killing...
* daemon started successfully *
app-cache
config
cache
sdcard
acct
mnt
vendor
etc
ueventd.supersonic.rc
ueventd.rc
ueventd.goldfish.rc
system
sys
shutdown.supersonic.rc
sbin
proc
init.supersonic.rc
init.rc
init.goldfish.rc
init
default.prop
data
cwkeys
bootcomplete.supersonic.rc
bootcomplete.rc
root
dev

C:\Users\Kent\Downloads\android root>adb shell cd data
adb server is out of date. killing...
* daemon started successfully *

C:\Users\Kent\Downloads\android root>adb shell ls
adb server is out of date. killing...
* daemon started successfully *
app-cache
config
cache
sdcard
acct
mnt
vendor
etc
ueventd.supersonic.rc
ueventd.rc
ueventd.goldfish.rc
system
sys
shutdown.supersonic.rc
sbin
proc
init.supersonic.rc
init.rc
init.goldfish.rc
init
default.prop
data
cwkeys
bootcomplete.supersonic.rc
bootcomplete.rc
root
dev

C:\Users\Kent\Downloads\android root>

I also just tried this John.

C:\Users\Kent\Downloads\android root>adb devices
adb server is out of date. killing...
* daemon started successfully *
List of devices attached
HT17LHL10205 device


C:\Users\Kent\Downloads\android root>adb push scriba /data/data/jackpal.androidterm
adb server is out of date. killing...
* daemon started successfully *
failed to copy 'scriba' to '/data/data/jackpal.androidterm/scriba': Permission denied

C:\Users\Kent\Downloads\android root>

Too me it looks like you need to root the phone. From reading the help they posted on the link you presented, it looks like they just assume it will work. I would like to see their adb logs of actually doing on an unrooted phone.

[John Spikowski]

Kent,

Have you installed the jackpal terminal emulator? Based on your last screenshot, you should put scriba in the following directory on your SD drive.

/Android/data/data/jackpal.androidterm

This is the only directroy Android Linux is going to allow you to chmod scriba to executable. Remember to use the ./scriba yourscript format.

After getting ScriptBasic running, you may want to take on the next norooted device adventure.

Using standard Linux utilities in a stock, non-rooted Android device

[kryton9]

John, yes I did get his terminal emulator from the google play market.
I am running Windows 7 on my notebook and not linux. Perhaps that is causing the problems, but adb should run the same on both I would think?

Can you ask your developers to just print their adb transcripts not from the emulator, but from a pc to an android non rooted cell phone as I have done.
In my case, I put the scriba file on my pc in the folder where my adb.exe file is. So it would be nice to see from start to finish.
From PC:
adb devices
adb push scriba

any other commands they might use for permissions etc.

Then from the Phone, running Terminal Emulator and getting scriba to run.

[John Spikowski]

Kent,

I think you're making this much harder then it needs to be.

1. Copy the scriba file to the /Android/data/data/jackpal.androidterm directory

2. In your jackpal terminal cd /Android/data/data/jackpal.androidterm

There is a chance that when in the jackpal terminal, /Android might be considered the device so cd /data/data/jackpal.androidterm may be the correct path to the terminal data directory.

3. chmod 755 scriba

4. ./scriba -v

That should display the version information.

What you use to move scriba from your PC to the correct directory on your Android device really doesn't matter.