can i access dumpsys file from android

Question

i am developing a tracker application for which i need to know which application is starting the hardware (by using pid) e.g camera or gps. This information is logged into dumpsys file in android. I want to access this file in my application ,do some analysis on it and extract the required information. i can access this file through adb but when the same commands i run form my java coding permission denied error occurs. i have also added android.permission.dump in my manifest file still error.

Answer 1

Unfortunately "android.permission.DUMP" is only granted to system apps.

Unless you sign your application with system signature and use system shared user id (android:sharedUserId="android.uid.system") in your manifest, you won't be able to get the permission.

What you could do is to redirect dumpsys output manually to an external storage and examine the file with FileInputStream and BufferedReader

ex: dumpsys > /sdcard/my_dump.txt

in your .java class:

FileInputStream fis     = new FileInputStream("/sdcard/my_dump.txt");
BufferedReader  bfr     = new BufferedReader (new InputStreamReader(fis));
StringBuilder   builder = new StringBuilder  ();
String          line    = "";

while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
    builder.append(line);
    Log.i("TEST", line);
}

You can check the builder with

String whateverYouAreLookingFor = "camera";
if (builder.toString().contains(whateverYouAreLookingFor)) {
    //do something
}

I know it's not the best solution but you can still get something out of it.

Hope you find your solution, cheers.