adb remount permission denied, but able to access super user in shell -- android

Question

so, i'm trying to push some files to /system on android device (zte) I've rooted, connected with ADB,

adb remount -> I get permission denied adb shell su -> I'm able to access shell and create folders etc and edit filesystem

(but in shell I can't copy a file from my computer to device)

Any help please

Solution 1

In case anyone has the same problem in the future:

$ adb shell
$ su
# mount -o rw,remount /system

Both adb remount and adb root don't work on a production build without altering ro.secure, but you can still remount /system by opening a shell, asking for root permissions and typing the mount command.

Solution 2

emulator -writable-system

For people using an Emulator: Another possibility is that you need to start the emulator with -writable-system. That was the only thing that worked for me when using the standard emulator packaged with android studio with a 4.1 image. Check here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/41332316/4962858

Solution 3

Try

adb root
adb remount

to start the adb demon as root and ensure partitions are mounted in read-write mode (the essential part is adb root). After pushing, revoke root permissions again using:

adb unroot

Solution 4

Some newer builds require the following additional adb commands to be run first

adb root
adb disable-verity
adb reboot

Then

adb root
adb remount

Solution 5

you can use:

adb shell su -c "your command here"

only rooted devices with su works.

View more solutions

Comments

[MartinodF]

@Michael at which step are you getting the error? Is your phone rooted? What root app are you using (SuperSU, Superuser, ...)?

[Michael]

Step two, when I try to run "su" from the adb shell. Phone is rooted. I am using the Superuser app. Is there something I need to do to tell Superuser to allow adb root access?

[MartinodF]

Not that I know of! When you run "su" you should get a Superuser popup on the phone asking if you want to authorize it. Are you sure that Superuser is working fine and that it's not configured to block adb root?

[Michael]

Thanks, that was it! It was popping up a dialog, but I didn't see it before (screen brightness auto-dimmed so I didn't notice anything there). Apparently after a bit it would time out and fail.

[Matt Huggins]

I'm not able to run su on my Android device, I get: /system/bin/sh: su: not found. I guess it's cause my device is not rooted.

[MartinodF]

@Jayesh No, you need to be rooted to run su. That's pretty much the point of rooting ;)

[Jayesh]

ok, I have rooted device but I have some issue, My device is not being switched on and in offline mode id display in Eclipse device list (by connecting with usb cable in PC), but I cant push one font file(DroidSans.ttf) please read this android.stackexchange.com/questions/53699/…

[davejal]

a little bit of explanation along with your code might go a long way

[amitavk]

Getting a "remount failed: no such file or directory"

[Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com]

Yes, this removes the read-only option from QEMU's -drive option: android.stackexchange.com/questions/110927/… But note that it also points to a qcow2 overlay instead of the image itself, so you must then pass this option of future runs.

[noname]

I get mount: '/system' not in /proc/mounts on an emulator.

[user924]

adb root: device not found

[Kemal Tezer Dilsiz]

@BeanstheWizard they changed in API 29 I believe, it helped me to create a different emulator with older API (I used 25, android 7.0.0), that might help you.

[tigertang]

@Kemal Tezer Dilsiz In API 28, I also got this

[Kemal Tezer Dilsiz]

@tigertang I was able to do API 28 by launching emulator through cmd with --writable-system tag and then just using adb shell to go in and edit manually. I don't know if that'd work for your case. Good luck. I'm my case I only had to edit the hosts file

[tigertang]

You can delete the answer if you don't want to carry with so many downvotes

[tigertang]

@Kemal Tezer Dilsiz, that only works for your emulator, rather than the real device.

[Ash]

@KemalTezerDilsiz When I try to start my API 28 emulator using --writable-system, I get PANIC: Missing emulator engine program for 'x86' CPU. And I'm not even at the disco.

[user3738870]

@PrzemysławSienkiewicz Same here. Nothing works with the newest emulator.

[Michael Tolsma]

adb disable-verity gives me an error of error:closed. Any fix for this?

[Sebastian Diaz]

I doesn't work for me. After adb remount I get some writing data errors and finally a "remount failed".

[Mario Codes]

I also get mount: '/system' not in /proc/mounts with API 30, but it still works somehow when I connect to my database.

[HackRx]

Thanks man, it worked on android 11, IDK why they forgot to place the remount file under bin dir. :)

[JiTHiN]

Use the emulator from <path>/android-sdk/emulator/ instead of the one in <path>/android-sdk/tools/emulator

[Andron]

These are the only instructions I've found that work. Set up a new emulated Pixel 4a device w/ Android 12.0, and I was able to update the hosts to access a local development server running on Vagrant. Thank you! (If anyone's curious, because of how Vagrant works I used the same IP I have in my host machine's /etc/hosts file: 192.168.56.5.