Since we cant actually get root permissions in appsupport, the next best thing would be Shizuku. I thought some of the users here would be interested, especially after the 4.6.0.12 update. Since I mainly use Shizuku for aurora store to automatically install apps without the need to confirm install/update for each and every app over and over (not to be confused with automatic updates). I also use it (with FreezeYou! from F-droid) to freeze some apps that stay active in the background and never respect the setting to be disabled in the background.
I have found this list of apps utilizing Shizuku if anyone’s interested. Many of them are cosmetic and related to Android UI, but, few others we can use in Appsupport.
Normally, (if an android device is not rooted) Shizuku needs to be started after every reboot with adb. Luckily for us we have a system.img that could be easily unpacked.
So,
1-Install Shizuku (available in Aurora store)
From my experience, one should open the app once for the rest to work.
A script then could be found: /home/defaultuser/android_storage/Android/data/moe.shizuku.privileged.api/start.sh
This script activates shiziku - If you’re satisfied with manually activating it after every appsupport reboot/start : devel-su appsupport-attach /system/bin/sh /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/moe.shizuku.privileged.api/start.sh
(most probably chmod +x is needed, can’t remember ).
2- To make it permanent, I have created a service(shizuku.rc) that activates the Shiziku start.sh script whenever appsupport is started:
service runapp /system/bin/start.sh class main
seclabel u:r:su:s0 user root group root
oneshot
on property:dev.bootcomplete=1
start runapp
3- Unpacked system.img:
placed shizuku.rc in /system/etc/init
chmod 644 shizuku.rc
placed start.sh in /system/bin . Not sure if granting it executable permissions is necessary, but thats what I did anyway.
Since this process has to be repeated each time Appsupport gets updated, I’ve made a simple script. It unpacks system.img and repacks it keeping the original one as backup. I put the 2 files needed (start.sh & shizuku.rc) in my working directory and execute as root. Note that squashfs-tools & lzip(??-depending on the version of squashfs-tools installed I suppose) should be already installed.
Edit :
& for clarification:
Added missing step (chmod 644 shizuku.rc) & uploaded the corrected script again to Mega
squashfs-tools from Jolla’s repo doesn’t work for this purpose.
I’m not sure what exactly @NettoHikari is talking about(regarding uid) but if you have a 64bit device and faced an error, check his post below
I’ll post the correct script here
#!/bin/sh
set -e
WORK_DIR="/home/defaultuser/work"
echo "Stoping appsupport..."
systemctl stop aliendalvik
sleep 4
echo "Checking if system.img exists..."
if [ ! -f "$WORK_DIR/origsystem.img" ]; then
echo "copying system.img..."
cp /opt/appsupport/system.img "$WORK_DIR/origsystem.img"
echo "system.img copied"
else
echo "system.img already exists, skipping copy"
fi
echo "extracting system.img..."
unsquashfs "$WORK_DIR/origsystem.img"
cp "$WORK_DIR/start.sh" squashfs-root/system/bin/
chmod +x "$WORK_DIR/squashfs-root/system/bin/start.sh"
echo "start.sh copied and permission set"
cp "$WORK_DIR/shizuku.rc" squashfs-root/system/etc/init
chmod 644 "$WORK_DIR/squashfs-root/system/etc/init/shizuku.rc"
echo "shizuku.rc copied and permission set"
echo "building new system.img..."
mksquashfs "$WORK_DIR/squashfs-root" "$WORK_DIR/system.img" -comp lz4 -Xhc -noappend -no-exports -no-duplicates -no->
echo "Cleaning up..."
rm -r -f "$WORK_DIR/squashfs-root"
echo "new system.img built"
while true; do
read -p "Do you wish to replace the old system.img in /opt/appsupport with the new one? (yes/no): " yn
case $yn in
[Yy]* )
echo "Replacing old system.img in /opt/appsupport..."
mv "$WORK_DIR/system.img" /opt/appsupport
break;;
[Nn]* )
echo "Operation cancelled. The new system.img will not be moved."
break;;
* )
echo "Please answer yes or no.";;
esac
done
Just tried to get it to work using your script, but it unfortunately results in an error:
Stoping appsupport...
Checking if system.img exists...
system.img already exists, skipping copy
extracting system.img...
Filesystem uses lz4 compression, this is unsupported by this version
Decompressors available:
gzip
lzo
xz
lzma
Thanks. Installed the aarch64 version and your script ran without issues. However, shizuku doesn’t seem to be executed when appsupport starts up. When attaching to appsupport, I can see that all files are where they belong.
Is there a way to check logs in appsupport? Could it be because all things that are copied into the image are in the end owned by “overflowuid”?
On my aarch64 install, there seems to be some kind of uid / gid matching issue or whatever. I had to modify the installation script a bit, as UID and GID 50000 seem to be mapped to appsupport-root. Also, shizuku.rc must have a permission mask of 644 in order to have it executed on startup.
install.sh
#!/bin/sh
set -e
WORK_DIR="/home/defaultuser/work"
echo "Stopping appsupport..."
systemctl stop aliendalvik
sleep 4
echo "Checking if system.img exists..."
if [ ! -f "$WORK_DIR/origsystem.img" ]; then
echo "Copying system.img..."
cp /opt/appsupport/system.img "$WORK_DIR/origsystem.img"
echo "system.img copied"
else
echo "system.img already exists, skipping copy"
fi
echo "Extracting system.img..."
unsquashfs "$WORK_DIR/origsystem.img"
echo "Copying start.sh..."
cp "$WORK_DIR/start.sh" squashfs-root/system/bin/
chmod +x "squashfs-root/system/bin/start.sh"
chown 500000:500000 "squashfs-root/system/bin/start.sh"
echo "start.sh copied and permissions set"
echo "Copying shizuku.rc..."
cp "$WORK_DIR/shizuku.rc" squashfs-root/system/etc/init
chmod 644 "squashfs-root/system/etc/init/shizuku.rc"
chown 500000:500000 "squashfs-root/system/etc/init/shizuku.rc"
echo "shizuku.rc copied and ownership set"
echo "Building new system.img..."
mksquashfs "$WORK_DIR/squashfs-root" "$WORK_DIR/system.img" -comp lz4 -Xhc -noappend -no-exports -no-duplicates -no-fragments
echo "Cleaning up..."
rm -r -f "$WORK_DIR/squashfs-root"
echo "new system.img built"
while true; do
read -p "Do you wish to replace the old system.img in /opt/appsupport with the new one? (yes/no): " yn
case $yn in
[Yy]* )
echo "Replacing old system.img in /opt/appsupport..."
mv "$WORK_DIR/system.img" /opt/appsupport
break;;
[Nn]* )
echo "Operation cancelled. The new system.img will not be moved."
break;;
* )
echo "Please answer yes or no.";;
esac
done
Another thing that may or may not have relevance is the formatting of shizuku.rc. All other *.rc files only have 4 spaces indentation.
shizuku.rc
service runapp /system/bin/start.sh class main
seclabel u:r:su:s0 user root group root
oneshot
on property:dev.bootcomplete=1
start runapp
start.sh was fine from the get-go, I think. Gonna include it in my post anyway.
start.sh
#!/system/bin/sh
SOURCE_PATH="/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/moe.shizuku.privileged.api/starter"
STARTER_PATH="/data/local/tmp/shizuku_starter"
echo "info: start.sh begin"
recreate_tmp() {
echo "info: /data/local/tmp is possible broken, recreating..."
rm -rf /data/local/tmp
mkdir -p /data/local/tmp
}
broken_tmp() {
echo "fatal: /data/local/tmp is broken, please try reboot the device or manually recreate it..."
exit 1
}
if [ -f "$SOURCE_PATH" ]; then
echo "info: attempt to copy starter from $SOURCE_PATH to $STARTER_PATH"
rm -f $STARTER_PATH
cp "$SOURCE_PATH" $STARTER_PATH
res=$?
if [ $res -ne 0 ]; then
recreate_tmp
cp "$SOURCE_PATH" $STARTER_PATH
res=$?
if [ $res -ne 0 ]; then
broken_tmp
fi
fi
chmod 700 $STARTER_PATH
chown 2000 $STARTER_PATH
chgrp 2000 $STARTER_PATH
fi
if [ -f $STARTER_PATH ]; then
echo "info: exec $STARTER_PATH"
$STARTER_PATH "$1"
result=$?
if [ ${result} -ne 0 ]; then
echo "info: shizuku_starter exit with non-zero value $result"
else
echo "info: shizuku_starter exit with 0"
fi
else
echo "Starter file not exist, please open Shizuku and try again."
fi
So, installation instructions are:
Turn on SSH in developer options
Connect via SSH or use the inbuilt terminal app (if you like pain)
Create the work folder: mkdir work
Enter the folder: cd work
Create the script files from above
Make install.sh executable: chmod +x install.sh
Download the right squashfs-tools package for aarch64 from here, right now, that would be: curl -O https://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/30/Everything/aarch64/os/Packages/s/squashfs-tools-4.3-16.fc28.aarch64.rpm
I believe you are absolutely right. I have made this file some time ago and I just use the same file over and over after updates. I forgot about it.
However, regarding the uid thing, I cant say. I never did that and it just worked. I have a 32bit XA2 though, maybe its different on 64bit…
Anyways, thanks for clarifying and explaining your process glad it worked eventually.
I’ve been trying to find out why Shizuku didn’t work for a couple of days now (while executing from app shortcut in AppSupport).
Can someone give a simple explanation to a semi-n00b user as to why Shizuku is required to be executed via script from sfos terminal with su rights, and not by directly executing the app via AppSupport like any android app (just like any other un-rooted android device)?
glad it worked eventually.