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simplesshd/NOTES
Greg Alexander 52a7c6b070 todo
2014-12-17 20:55:58 -05:00

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December 6, 2014.
The idea is to make a proper ssh implementation for Android. Important
features:
* it should run happily without root (on a non-root port)
* it should be a regular android app requiring no special permissions,
and not requiring any 'magic' executable files
* should not rely on busybox
* preferably support sftp
* open source
The existing apps are either expensive, don't work, need root, or too
complicated, or a mix of all of the above. And none of them are open
source.
I figure I'll start with dropbear, which I will run through JNI instead
of putting it in its own binary (because making such a binary executable
is a bit of a hack).
So that's the plan........
December 14, 2014.
I got dropbear to compile under the Android NDK, so now it's time to work
on the Android side of it.
I need:
* a Service that can be started, stopped, and queried for whether it's
running or not
* a Thread to implement the Service's work (by calling into dropbear's
main()), which can also be stopped.
* a config UI with at least these choices:
- bool: start on boot (def: false)
- number: port number (def: 2222)
- string: path to authorized_keys file (def: /sdcard/ssh)
- string: name of default shell (def: /system/bin/sh -l)
- string: default path for HOME (def: /sdcard/ssh)
- button: start or (if it's running) stop
December 15, 2014.
Getting to the fun part. Process management...
To start sshd, it seems like I can startService(). Then in the Service's
onStartCommand(), call startForeground() so it won't be killed (return
START_STICKY too?).
The question is if dropbear's main() should run under a separate Thread,
or a separate Process. The trouble with a Thread is that it might be
hard to kill. The trouble with a process is that there is no way to
report back status (such as a failure to start sshd).
Connectbot starts a new process for its shell -- it really doesn't have a
choice because the shell binary isn't linked with Connectbot, and exec()
in a thread stinks. To stop it, it just closes stdin/stdout!!! So
zombies can (and do) linger.
I suppose dropbear could be in its own process if it had something like
stdin/stdout to communicate failure? Or it could just write error
messages to (i.e.) /sdcard/ssh/log. To stop the service, it would just
use kill().
I am curious how the main waiting-for-connections loop looks, but even if
it uses select(), I'm not sure how I would honor Thread.interrupt() or
whatever. It's not guaranteed to interrupt select(), and I'm not keen on
adding an arbitrary timeout/polling feature to it.
XXX - implement extra commandline for dropbear
XXX - implement start on boot
XXX - scp
XXX - zlib
XXX - rsync
XXX - draw icon and 1024x512 display image
XXX - document (ga.org/software/simplesshd/)
XXX - upload