Support for Android Debug Bridge (adb)

[ln-12]

Hey, awesome project! I am using Windows 11 and WSL2 and tried to play around with ADB. Unfortunately, it does not seem to work at the moment. My current output is the following:

user@desktop:/mnt/c/Users/user$ lsusb
   Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
   Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2a70:4ee7 OnePlus AC2003
   Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
user@desktop:/mnt/c/Users/user$ adb devices -l
   List of devices attached
   * daemon not running; starting now at tcp:5037
   * daemon started successfully

user@desktop:/mnt/c/Users/user$

As you can see, my phone is available in WSL, but ADB does not see it. Do you have any idea if it might be a configuration issue or is it simply not currently supported?

[cjshearer]

I'll try this myself in a bit to see if it works for me. I've been handling this use case by running ADB in windows with socat to forward the Windows ADB traffic to WSL for a while, but I'd love for a more seamless experience.

[cjshearer]

Got it working. I had the wrong kernel version and needed to setup the udev rules:

1. Follow the instructions WSL support wiki:
   • before attaching your android device to WSL, be sure it is in USB debugging mode
   • if your kernel version is older than the one mentioned in the WSL support wiki, you can update by first shutting down WSL with wsl.exe --shutdown and update it with wsl.exe --update
   • don't worry about setting the udev rules just yet, we'll get to that in step 2

Your device should now be visible in WSL and should be in debug mode before continuing:

user@desktop:~/$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 18d1:4ee2 Google Inc. Nexus Device (debug)
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

2 . Follow these instructions to configure your udev rules for the device. EDIT: Also, I find I have to do the following for every boot of WSL (also, after every change to the udev rules):

1. Restart udev:
   1. sudo service udev restart
   2. sudo udevadm control --reload
2. Attach, or reattach the device to WSL (file transfer mode, usb debugging)

If I'm not missing anything, ADB should now be able to see your device:

user@desktop:~/$ adb devices
List of devices attached
09021FDD4003NW  device

[ln-12]

Thanks for your response, @cjshearer. Unfortunately, it won't work for me just yet. I set up everything like this:

$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2a70:4ee7 OnePlus AC2003
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

$ cat /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="2a70", ATTR{idProduct}=="4ee7", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev", SYMLINK+="android%n"

$ cat ~/.android/adb_usb.ini
0x2a70

$ groups
user adm dialout cdrom floppy sudo audio dip video plugdev netdev libvirt docker

$ ls -hasl /dev
total 4.0K
   0 drwxr-xr-x  9 root root     3.1K Nov  7 13:40 .
4.0K drwxr-xr-x 19 root root     4.0K Nov  7 13:40 ..
   0 crw-rw-rw-  1 root root  10, 235 Nov  7 13:40 autofs
   0 drwxr-xr-x  2 root root       40 Nov  7 13:40 block
   0 drwxr-xr-x  2 root root      140 Nov  7 13:40 bsg
   0 crw-rw-rw-  1 root root  10, 234 Nov  7 13:40 btrfs-control
   0 drwxr-xr-x  3 root root       60 Nov  7 13:40 bus
   0 crw-rw-rw-  1 root root   5,   1 Nov  7 13:40 console
   ...

As you can see, there is no /dev/androidN device, so it's no surprise that adb can't find it. Do you have any idea what I am missing now (I also rebooted and restarted the service multiple times)?

[cjshearer]

I tried to connect my device again this morning and ran into the same problem you did. I spent a couple hours trying to find the minimal set of instructions to connect my device (after having already followed the WSL Support instructions). Also, I switched to using these udev rules for android, although it did work for me before then.

I find I have to do the following for every boot of WSL (also, after every change to the udev rules):

1. Restart udev:
   1. sudo service udev restart
   2. sudo udevadm control --reload
2. Attach, or reattach the device to WSL, (be sure usb debugging is enabled). EDIT: if this doesn't work right away, try again for each USB mode. My LG v30 only works in charging mode, while my Pixel 5 only works in file transfer mode.

After which, the device is visible to ADB. Having done this once, I can unplug/plug my device back in and (after reattaching to WSL) it is still visible to ADB, so long as I don't restart WSL.

It seems rather silly that I need to restart the udev service every time, but looking around online I'm not the only one who has had problems with udev not triggering at the appropriate time. I don't really know how it works, so I can't speculate, but this is good enough for me. Besides, I was going to write a script that I can call from WSL to attach my pixel 5 anyway, so I'll just make restarting udev a part of that.

[ln-12]

@cjshearer Thanks for sharing! It works for me now too, althoug sometimes I have to run usbipd wsl attach --busid <ID> multiple times to actually attach the device.

Now the question is who is responsible for making the process a bit more user friendly. Is it related to usbipd, WSL or ADB?

[mangkoran]

Hello. I already follow the instruction to add udev rules, but adb devices still show nothing. My phone showed in lsusb tho:

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 18d1:4ee2 Google Inc. Nexus/Pixel Device (MTP + debug)

Edit: I am on ArchWSL, but there should be no difference. Output of some commands:

> sudo service udev restart
sudo: service: command not found
# should be systemctl alias, but then systemctl/systemd is not usable in WSL2

> sudo udevadm control --reload
Failed to send reload request: No such file or directory

Edit: service in Ubuntu. Note that this is out of topic, just FYI

Edit: At some point, adb devices managed to show my device. But then after I disconnect and reconnect my device, it wont show up

Edit: You may ignore above service and udevadm codeblocks/log, as they are irrelevant after I searched for a while

[mangkoran]

After further investigation, turns out I need to run adb start-server as sudo. Only after that I can see my device under adb devices. So it might be udev rules problem for me.

Aside from that, I can say that I have successfully connected my device to WSL2 adb. Good job devs!

[mangkoran]

I don't know if this is under the scope of this project, but I will put the context of my comment above: My device only detected under adb devices if I run adb start-server as sudo

~
> adb devices
* daemon not running; starting now at tcp:5037
* daemon started successfully
List of devices attached


~
> adb kill-server

~
> sudo adb devices
* daemon not running; starting now at tcp:5037
* daemon started successfully
List of devices attached
5950907f        device


~
> adb devices
List of devices attached
5950907f        device

As far as I know, running adb as root is not advised.

[dorssel]

WSL documentation has been updated with udev details. Closing.