[APP][2.2+][24 Jul - v0.11] CommandCenter the power of shell without the terminal

Have you ever dreamed of an app to execute your favorite shell commands, whether it is for collection dmesg/logcat/dumpsys or set kernel parameters.

Well here comes CommandCenter, a generic app for grouping all your favorite commands.

CommandCenter is free with ads and can be downloaded from the Google Play (please be patient, it takes a while to update as I just published)
It is also open source and your can check my repo to inspect / review the code.

If you are a kernel developer you may want to provide a tool for your users to run certain commands without havint to maintain an app for that; if yes just submit a Command Set and have your users download it.

If you are a poweruser there are commands that you use all the time, wither from adb shell or in the terminal. Make one or multiple Command Set and enjoy the comfort of an Android app and the power of your favorite commands.

From version 0.10 a Locale / Tasker Plugin was added to execute command from actions.



How it works
The command sets are stored of the sdcard in the app's private folder /sdcard/Android/data/com.asksven.commandcenter/files in the form of json files. On load the files are parsed and each file (Command Set) shown as a tab.

A single click on a Command displays its details, a long click pops up a dialog from where you can run the command (this is configurable in the preferences).

A command has two parts:
- the command to be executed itself: it may contain a variable and in that case a popup will ask for the value to be used
- an optional command to retrieve a status: if a status can be read it will be displayed

CommandCenter comes with two pre-configured Command Sets:
- general commands for logging / diagnosis
- a few command for Fracisco Franco's awsome GN kernel

Want to contribute?
If you want to create and distribute command set just drop me a PM. I would be happy to give you more details about the syntax of the command sets and there is a section in this thread to list authored Command Sets. I may also add some to the Market app.

Caution
Always check the command's before running them. CommandCenter support 'su' command and you should know what you do as those could harm your phone. I will not take any responsibility for any dammage caused by command run using CommandCenter

Contact
You can contact me here (PM, this thread) or on twitter

Release Notes

v0.11.0 2012-07-24
Major fix: added synchronization to avoid freeze conditions
#24: "refresh" reads changes on command collections from the external storage
#26, #27, #28: different error conditions from reports

v0.10.1 2012-05-06
#15: samples scripts were being re-created on every start instead of once at first install
#14: FC when turning to portrait
#16: FC when number of result lines for a command < 5
#17: Various FC conditions from google play logs
#21: error in one script should not cause the other not to load

v0.9.0 2012-03-10
Solved stability issues (threaded processing)
Tablet support
#8: new command dialog layout

v0.8.0 2012-02-24
#4 Popup menu was called "edit"
#5 added support for user defined and editable commands
#6 added support for commands returning data

v0.7.2 2012-02-12
#2: dumpsys missing su, and logcat files have zero-length
#3: A few issues with backward compat to Android 2.1/2.2 fixed

v0.7.1 2012-02-11
#1: fixed Android 2.1 compatibility issue

v0.7 2012-02-11 Initial release

Command Sets

If you want to create command set for CommandCenter please read this

FAQ

For future use

V0.7.1

Fixed a minor issue with Android 2.1 (getExternalFilesDir does not exist on Eclair)

harpo1 said:

When I try and dump logcat radio or logcat it creates the file but it's blank. Also when I dump alarms the file reads Permission Denial: can't dump AlarmManager from pid=5637, uid=10128. ComandCenter never ask for SU Permissions. I ran the dump alarms with su permission from the terminal and it worked fine. HTC Inspire running ICS.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Ok the alarm dump is fixed, it was a definition error in the command set (dumpsys did not require su).
Testing the other commands now on rooted and unrooted device

V0.7.2

Fix-Release is rolling out, see post #2 for release notes.

I did quite a lot of testing on 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 and 4 devices with and without root and I hope the fixes work for everyone.

It's time to collect some feature requests and build some use cases. Do you guys have suggestions for feature or know a kernel dev who has no time to write a sexy "settings" app. I'd be happy to provide the command sets while finalizing the schema aiming at making it public for contributors

short/y said:

Should it be possible to add or modify the command sets? I don't seem to be able to do either. In Edit mode, my soft keyboard never open and I don't see any option to create a new command set. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right place?

This is on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus running a rooted AOSP ICS.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

In fact the is no way of editing the commands from within the app. I have been thinking about that a lot and the functionality itselt is not the problem (it occurs to me that the popup menu is named "edit" and this is of course not correct).
The reason I did not provide edition of commands within the app is that I want to offer a distribution channel for authors to update their command sets. Those updates would overwrite the local changes.
What you can do to edit the commands is edit the json files located on the sdcard in Android/data/com.asksven.commandcenter/files (one file per command set).

Do you feel the need to have "local" commands as well that could be edited from the app and stored in a local database?

short/y said:

Yes, I'd like to have that. I can think of a few I'd like to have NOW as opposed to waiting for someone to come up with them

Code:

df -h /sdcard
df -h
ls -lrt /mnt/sdcard | tail
ls -lrt /sdcard/Download | tail
ping www.google.com
ifconfig lte_rmnet1
netstat -rn
netstat -l
netstat | grep CLOSE
uptime

And probably few others that I could come up with once I really thought about it. Why not have "protected" command sets which are updated thru the app or Market and "user" or, as you call them, "local"?

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

One question about those commands: some of them return results that will not fit on one line and so would not fit in the space reserved for the status (lower line in the list).
How would you like to display the result?
- as a popup when running the command
- as a multi line status field 'growing' when required and updating automatically

pp1276 said:

First of all, thanks for develop another great application.
I concur that having the possibility to add commands is really a 'must have'. Of course, if we are thinking about to create commands, this means all of us have already a terminal app installed to run them, but the purpose of this app is to make life easier for having our favorite commands ready to execute. Many of these commands are possibly a small subset of common ones, but even with that, I probably prefer to redirect the output to a diffferent place that abother user using the same command. So having a 'user tab' to be able to add, edit and delete commands (also maybe copy a command from other tab) will be very useful.

Anyway, congrats for comming up with this useful app.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I am convinced: https://github.com/asksven/CommandCenter/issues/5