This doc will guide you through some of the features of ffx. For an overview
of the design and components of ffx, see the ffx overview.
Contacting the ffx team
If you discover possible bugs or have questions or suggestions, file a bug.
Prerequisites
To follow the examples in this doc, you'll need a Fuchsia device running. If you
don't have a physical device connected, you can use an emulator with networking
enabled by starting the emulator with the --net tap option.
To start an emulator with networking enabled but without graphical user
interface support,
run ffx emu start --net tap --headless.
For more information on configuring the emulator see, Start the Fuchsia emulator.
Your device must be running a core
product configuration
or a product configuration that extends core (such as workstation).
Optionally, you can run ffx log, which will provide some additional information
about the interactions between ffx and your Fuchsia target device.
Introduction
After following all the prerequisites, run the following in a terminal:
fx ffx help
This will list all of the available ffx subcommands. You'll see something
like:
Usage: ffx [-c <config>] [-e <env>] [-t <target>] [<command>] [<args>]
Fuchsia's developer tool
Options:
-c, --config override default configuration
-e, --env override default environment settings
-t, --target apply operations across single or multiple targets
--help display usage information
Commands:
component Discover and manage components
config View and switch default and user configurations
daemon Interact with/control the ffx daemon
diagnostic Run diagnostic tests on Fuchsia targets
docs View suite of docs for ffx and for Fuchsia
doctor Run common checks for the ffx tool and host environment
emulator Start and manage Fuchsia emulators
overnet Interact with the Overnet mesh
package Create and publish Fuchsia packages
sdk Modify or query the installed SDKs
target Interact with a target device or emulator
vendor Run partner plugins
version Print out ffx tool and daemon versions
You can use fx ffx help <subcommand> or fx ffx <subcommand> --help to see
more about any subcommand.
Interacting with target devices
In a terminal, run the following:
fx ffx target list
You'll see a list of devices that ffx has discovered. For example, with a
single emulator running, output looks like:
NAME SERIAL TYPE STATE ADDRS/IP RCS
fuchsia-emulator <unknown> Unknown Product [fe80::5054:ff:fe63:5e7a%4] N
RCS: Indicates whether there is a reachable instance of the Remote Control
Service (RCS) running on the device.
In order to get ffx to automatically connect to a device, you must either have
set the target's nodename to be the default target, or attempt to interact with the
device.
To set the target to be the default, run:
fx ffx target default set $NODENAME
If the default target has been set prior to starting the daemon, waiting a few seconds
should yield a change to the RCS status to show Y.
If the default target has been set after starting the daemon, attempting to interact with the target should be sufficient to kick off a connection, like the following
fx ffx component list
Then the next time you list targets you should see that an RCS connection
is active.
$ fx ffx target list
NAME SERIAL TYPE STATE ADDRS/IP RCS
fuchsia-emulator <unknown> Unknown Product [fe80::5054:ff:fe63:5e7a%4] Y
If a target has been set as default there will be a * next to it.
If you had ffx log running, you should also see something like the following in
the logs:
[00009.776170][28540][28542][remote-control, remote_control_bin] INFO: published remote control service to overnet
NOTE: if the RCS column remains N for an extended amount of time and you have
already set this target's nodename to target.default before initially starting
ffx, reach out to the ffx team.
On Default Targets
Above we covered setting the default target using the command
fx ffx target default set
It is also possible to set the default target on a per-command basis using the
--target flag like so.
fx ffx --target $NODENAME component list
Interacting with multiple devices
TODO: fill this out.
Controlling the state of target devices
You can use the target off and target reboot subcommands to power-off or
reboot a device, respectively.
Configuration
See documentation for the config command.
Interacting with Components
Selectors
Many ffx commands that use components take selectors as a parameter. You can read more about selectors and their syntax
in component selector documentation.
Inspecting the component topology
You can use the component select command to
* inspect services in the
component topology
* search for components that expose a service.
For example, the following command will display all services offered by legacy components :
$ fx ffx component select moniker 'core/appmgr:out:*'
core/appmgr
|
--out
|
--chromium.cast.ApplicationConfigManager
--fuchsia.bluetooth.avrcp.PeerManager
--fuchsia.bluetooth.avrcp.test.PeerManagerExt
--fuchsia.bluetooth.bredr.Profile
--fuchsia.bluetooth.control.Control
--fuchsia.bluetooth.gatt.Server
--fuchsia.bluetooth.le.Central
--fuchsia.bluetooth.le.Peripheral
--fuchsia.bluetooth.snoop.Snoop
--fuchsia.bluetooth.sys.Access
--fuchsia.bluetooth.sys.HostWatcher
--fuchsia.boot.Arguments
--fuchsia.boot.FactoryItems
--fuchsia.boot.Items
--fuchsia.boot.ReadOnlyLog
--fuchsia.boot.RootJobForInspect
--fuchsia.boot.RootResource
[truncated]
The following command will display all components that expose diagnostics:
fx ffx component select capability diagnostics
/bootstrap/archivist
/bootstrap/driver_manager
/bootstrap/fshost
/bootstrap/power_manager
/core/appmgr
/core/detect
/core/last_reboot
/core/log-stats
/core/pkg-cache
/core/sampler
/core/system-update-committer
Verifying a service is up
You can use the component knock command to verify that a service starts
successfully: knock will open a channel to the service and return success if
and only if the channel isn't closed.
The component framework will start the component that provides the service on-demand.
For example:
$ fx ffx component knock /core/appmgr fuchsia.hwinfo.P*
Success: service is up. Connected to 'core/appmgr:out:fuchsia.hwinfo.Product'.
$ fx ffx component knock /core/appmgr not.a.real.service
Failed to connect to service: NoMatchingServices
Running a CML component
ffx can run CML components in an isolated realm given their package URL. Currently, this isolated
realm provides the following capabilities:
fuchsia.logger.LogSinkprotocolfuchsia.process.Launcherprotocoltmpstoragedatastoragedevdirectory: the root device tree of the systembootdirectory: the full bootfs filesystem used by the system during bootup
CML components are run with the ffx component run subcommand. These components are automatically
destroyed when they stop.
Here's an example of running the Rust hello-world component. First, you'll need the hello-world package in your universe:
$ fx set <product>.<board> --with //examples/hello_world/rust:hello-world-rust && fx build
...
$ fx ffx component run fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/hello-world#meta/hello-world-rust.cm
URL: fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/hello-world#meta/hello-world-rust.cm
Moniker: /core/ffx-laboratory:hello-world-rust
Creating component instance...
...
$ fx ffx component show hello-world-rust
Moniker: /core/ffx-laboratory:hello-world-rust
URL: fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/hello-world#meta/hello-world-rust.cm
Type: v2 dynamic component
Execution State: Running
Job ID: 50775
Process ID: 50819
...
Running a CMX component
ffx can run CMX components on a device given their package URL and arguments.
CMX components are run with the ffx component run-legacy subcommand. stdout and stderr will
be streamed to the corresponding descriptor on the host terminal.
Here's an example of running the Dart hello-world component. First, you'll need the hello-world package in your universe:
$ fx set <product>.<board> --with //examples/hello_world && fx build
...
$ fx ffx component run-legacy fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/hello-world#meta/hello-world-dart.cmx
Hello, world!
Resolving connectivity issues
If you're experiencing problems communicating with a target device using ffx,
you can use the doctor command to diagnose and attempt to resolve them. If you
file a bug that involves a target device, we'll typically ask for the output
from ffx doctor to provide information about where the problem is.
doctor will attempt to communicate with the ffx daemon, killing
and restarting it if needed. If this is successful, it will attempt to SSH into
a target device and start the Remote Control Service.
If you try running ffx doctor under normal circumstances, you should see:
$ fx ffx doctor
Checking for a running daemon...none running.
Attempting to kill any zombie daemons...killed at least one daemon.
Starting a new daemon instance...success
Attempting to connect to the daemon. This may take a couple seconds...success
Attempting to communicate with the daemon...success
Attempting to list targets...success
Attempting to get an RCS connection...success
Attempting to communicate with RCS...success
SUCCESS. You should be able to run ffx commands now.
If doctor fails, it will try to suggest a resolution to the problem. It will
also provide a link to the Monorail component in which you can file a bug if you
persistently have problems. For example, if doctor is unable to start the RCS,
you would see the following:
$ fx ffx doctor
Checking for a running daemon...found
Attempting to connect to the daemon. This may take a couple seconds...success
Attempting to communicate with the daemon...success
Attempting to list targets...success
Attempting to get an RCS connection...success
Attempting to communicate with RCS...FAILED. Timed out.
Attempt 2 of 3
Attempting to list targets...success
Attempting to get an RCS connection...success
Attempting to communicate with RCS...FAILED. Timed out.
Attempt 3 of 3
Attempting to list targets...success
Attempting to get an RCS connection...success
Attempting to communicate with RCS...FAILED. Timed out.
Connecting to RCS failed after maximum attempts. To resolve this issue, try
rebooting your device. If this persists, please file a bug at the link below
and include 1) all output
above and 2) device syslog if available.Bug link: ...
Next steps
- Please provide feedback on this doc by reaching out to the ffx team!
- Learn how to extend
ffx.