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adb on the NW-A55 — fast iteration + RE access

The Cinder dev channel enables adb at boot (build.sh dev → cinder_home_install.upg). The binary adds adb to the USB gadget composite and starts adbd, guarded and best-effort (main.cpp deferred_up), touching no boot-critical files. The stable channel never enables adb. With adb up, the flash→unplug→read-log loop shrinks to seconds, and the device becomes directly inspectable for RE.

1. One-time setup

Windows side (recommended first — no passthrough games)

  1. Install platform-tools: winget install Google.PlatformTools (or unzip from developer.android.com). adb version in PowerShell to confirm.
  2. Flash the dev channel (tools/flash.sh install from WSL, or the usual UPG route).
  3. Reboot the device with USB connected, wait ~20 s for cinder-home's deferred bring-up, then: 
    adb devices        # expect one device (Sony VID 054C); "unauthorized" won't appear —
                   # this old adbd has no auth prompt
adb shell          # root shell (the device runs everything as root)
  4. If adb devices is empty: Device Manager → the Walkman's ADB interface may need the generic "Android ADB Interface" driver (Google USB driver, "have disk" install). MTP still works alongside — the composite is mtp,adb / mass_storage,adb.

WSL2 side (two options)

Option A — talk to the Windows adb server (zero drivers in WSL, preferred):

sudo apt install -y android-tools-adb            # client only
# Point the WSL client at the Windows host's adb server (start it on Windows once: adb start-server)
export ADB_SERVER_SOCKET=tcp:$(ip route show default | awk '{print $3}'):5037
adb devices

Caveat: the Windows server must allow remote connections: start it as adb -a nodaemon server (or adb kill-server; adb -a start-server) on Windows, and allow port 5037 on the Windows firewall for the WSL subnet. Add the export to ~/.bashrc.

Option B — usbipd passthrough (native USB in WSL; also what flash.sh MSC mode uses):

# Windows admin PowerShell
winget install usbipd
usbipd list                    # find the Walkman BUSID (VID 054C)
usbipd bind --busid <BUSID>
usbipd attach --wsl --busid <BUSID>
# WSL
lsusb          # Sony device present
adb devices

Re-run usbipd attach after every replug/reboot (or usbipd attach --wsl --auto-attach). Note: while attached to WSL, Windows loses the device (MTP/adb there) until usbipd detach.

2. Fast iteration loop (no UPG reflash)

The installed binary lives at /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-home; appmgr launches it via /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinderhome-launch.sh under the name HgrmMediaPlayerApp. To swap in a fresh build:

bash cinder-home/build.sh dev
adb push cinder-home/dist/dev/cinder-home /contents/cinder-home.new
adb shell 'mount -o remount,rw /system &&
           cp /contents/cinder-home.new /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-home.tmp &&
           cmp /contents/cinder-home.new /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-home.tmp &&
           mv /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-home.tmp /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-home &&
           sync && mount -o remount,ro /system && reboot'

Atomic (temp → verify → mv), same pattern as the installer. Reboot, don't kill: the launcher's bad-boot counter treats a dying cinder-home as a crash — NEVER kill -9 the running app to "restart" it (standing rule), reboot instead.

Logs, live:

adb shell tail -f /contents/cinderhome.log      # our stdout/stderr redirect
adb shell 'tail -f /tmp/cinder_msc.log'         # while USB-MSC mode is active

First-boot health check after a swap: screen paints, adb shell ps | grep cinder, log free of GUARD recoveries.

3. RE access the log-file loop can't give you

# Pull the REAL library DB (verifies cinder-db's schema + the images/art table shapes):
adb pull /db/MTPDB.dat artifacts/device_pull/MTPDB.dat

# Pull any Sony lib fresh from the running device (vs our extracted rootfs):
adb pull /system/vendor/sony/lib/libPlayerServiceClientUtil.so artifacts/device_pull/

# Observe the stock services live:
adb shell getprop | grep -iE 'usb|sony'         # gadget mode, platform props
adb shell 'cat /sys/class/android_usb/android0/functions'
adb shell 'cat /proc/asound/card0/pcm*p/sub0/status'   # which ALSA device is RUNNING
adb shell ps | grep hagoromo                    # the service host processes

# PlayStatus offset mapping (cinder-probe --discover) without a flash cycle:
adb push cinder-home/dist/dev/cinder-probe /contents/
adb shell 'LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/system/vendor/sony/lib:/system/lib:/usr/lib \
  /system/vendor/unknown321/bin/cinder-probe --discover'   # NOT /contents — that is noexec

Pulling /db/MTPDB.dat is the highest-value first step: it closes the album-art open question (does images.bmpfile point at real files, or is art at value+dataoffset?) with sqlite3 MTPDB.dat 'SELECT bmpfile,value,dataoffset,datasize FROM images LIMIT 5'.

4. Safety notes

  • adb shell is root with no auth on this device — leave the stable channel (no adb) on it when you're not actively developing.
  • /system is normally read-only; always remount ro after writing, always sync.
  • Don't adb push directly over the installed binary while it's running (text file busy / torn write) — the temp→cmp→mv pattern above avoids both.
  • The wbrt eMMC backup remains the recovery of last resort; adb changes nothing there.