# signal-cli
-signal-cli is a commandline interface for [libsignal-service-java](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/libsignal-service-java). It supports registering, verifying, sending and receiving messages. To be able to receive messages signal-cli uses a [patched libsignal-service-java](https://github.com/AsamK/libsignal-service-java), because libsignal-service-java [does not yet support registering for the websocket support](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/libsignal-service-java/pull/5) nor [provisioning as a slave device](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/libsignal-service-java/pull/21). For registering you need a phone number where you can receive SMS or incoming calls.
-It is primarily intended to be used on servers to notify admins of important events. For this use-case, it has a dbus interface, that can be used to send messages from any programming language that has dbus bindings.
+signal-cli is a commandline interface for the [Signal messenger](https://signal.org/).
+It supports registering, verifying, sending and receiving messages.
+signal-cli uses a [patched libsignal-service-java](https://github.com/Turasa/libsignal-service-java),
+extracted from the [Signal-Android source code](https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/tree/main/libsignal-service).
+For registering you need a phone number where you can receive SMS or incoming calls.
+
+signal-cli is primarily intended to be used on servers to notify admins of important events.
+For this use-case, it has a daemon mode with JSON-RPC interface ([man page](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/blob/master/man/signal-cli-jsonrpc.5.adoc))
+and D-BUS interface ([man page](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/blob/master/man/signal-cli-dbus.5.adoc)) .
+For the JSON-RPC interface there's also a simple [example client](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/tree/master/client), written in Rust.
+
+signal-cli needs to be kept up-to-date to keep up with Signal-Server changes.
+The official Signal clients expire after three months and then the Signal-Server can make incompatible changes.
+So signal-cli releases older than three months may not work correctly.
## Installation
-You can [build signal-cli](#building) yourself, or use the [provided binary files](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/releases/latest), which should work on Linux, macOS and Windows. For Arch Linux there is also a [package in AUR](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/signal-cli/). You need to have at least JRE 7 installed, to run signal-cli.
+You can [build signal-cli](#building) yourself or use
+the [provided binary files](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/releases/latest), which should work on Linux, macOS and
+Windows. There's also a [docker image and some Linux packages](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/wiki/Binary-distributions) provided by the community.
+
+System requirements:
+
+- at least Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 21
+- native library: libsignal-client
+
+ The native libs are bundled for x86_64 Linux (with recent enough glibc), Windows and MacOS. For other
+ systems/architectures
+ see: [Provide native lib for libsignal](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/wiki/Provide-native-lib-for-libsignal)
### Install system-wide on Linux
+
See [latest version](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/releases).
+
```sh
export VERSION=<latest version, format "x.y.z">
wget https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/releases/download/v"${VERSION}"/signal-cli-"${VERSION}".tar.gz
sudo ln -sf /opt/signal-cli-"${VERSION}"/bin/signal-cli /usr/local/bin/
```
-## Usage
-
-usage: signal-cli [-h] [-v] [--config CONFIG] [-u USERNAME | --dbus | --dbus-system] {link,addDevice,listDevices,removeDevice,register,verify,send,quitGroup,updateGroup,listIdentities,trust,receive,daemon} ...
-
-See also: [man page in asciidoc format](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/blob/master/man/signal-cli.1.txt)
-
-* Register a number (with SMS verification)
-
- signal-cli -u USERNAME register
-
-* Register a number (with voice verification)
-
- signal-cli -u USERNAME register -v
-
-* Verify the number using the code received via SMS or voice
-
- signal-cli -u USERNAME verify CODE
-
-* Send a message to one or more recipients
-
- signal-cli -u USERNAME send -m "This is a message" [RECIPIENT [RECIPIENT ...]] [-a [ATTACHMENT [ATTACHMENT ...]]]
-
-* Pipe the message content from another process.
-
- uname -a | signal-cli -u USERNAME send [RECIPIENT [RECIPIENT ...]]
-
-* Receive messages
-
- signal-cli -u USERNAME receive
-
-* Groups
+You can find further instructions on the Wiki:
- * Create a group
+- [Quickstart](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/wiki/Quickstart)
- signal-cli -u USERNAME updateGroup -n "Group name" -m [MEMBER [MEMBER ...]]
-
- * Update a group
-
- signal-cli -u USERNAME updateGroup -g GROUP_ID -n "New group name" -a "AVATAR_IMAGE_FILE"
-
- * Add member to a group
-
- signal-cli -u USERNAME updateGroup -g GROUP_ID -m "NEW_MEMBER"
-
- * Leave a group
-
- signal-cli -u USERNAME quitGroup -g GROUP_ID
-
- * Send a message to a group
-
- signal-cli -u USERNAME send -m "This is a message" -g GROUP_ID
-
-* Linking other devices (Provisioning)
+## Usage
- * Connect to another device
+For a complete usage overview please read
+the [man page](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/blob/master/man/signal-cli.1.adoc) and
+the [wiki](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/wiki).
- signal-cli link -n "optional device name"
-
- This shows a "tsdevice:/…" link, if you want to connect to another signal-cli instance, you can just use this link. If you want to link to and Android device, create a QR code with the link (e.g. with [qrencode](https://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/)) and scan that in the Signal Android app.
+Important: The ACCOUNT is your phone number in international format and must include the country calling code. Hence it
+should start with a "+" sign. (See [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_calling_codes) for a list
+of all country codes.)
- * Add another device
+* Register a number (with SMS verification)
- signal-cli -u USERNAME addDevice --uri "tsdevice:/…"
-
- The "tsdevice:/…" link is the one shown by the new signal-cli instance or contained in the QR code shown in Signal-Desktop or similar apps.
- Only the master device (that was registered directly, not linked) can add new devices.
+ signal-cli -a ACCOUNT register
- * Manage linked devices
+ You can register Signal using a landline number. In this case, you need to follow the procedure below:
+ * Attempt a SMS verification process first (`signal-cli -a ACCOUNT register`)
+ * You will get an error `400 (InvalidTransportModeException)`, this is normal
+ * Wait 60 seconds
+ * Attempt a voice call verification by adding the `--voice` switch and wait for the call:
- signal-cli -u USERNAME listDevices
+ ```sh
+ signal-cli -a ACCOUNT register --voice
+ ```
- signal-cli -u USERNAME removeDevice -d DEVICE_ID
+ Registering may require solving a CAPTCHA
+ challenge: [Registration with captcha](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/wiki/Registration-with-captcha)
-* Manage trusted keys
+* Verify the number using the code received via SMS or voice, optionally add `--pin PIN_CODE` if you've added a pin code
+ to your account
- * View all known keys
+ signal-cli -a ACCOUNT verify CODE
- signal-cli -u USERNAME listIdentities
+* Send a message
- * View known keys of one number
+ ```sh
+ signal-cli -a ACCOUNT send -m "This is a message" RECIPIENT
+ ```
- signal-cli -u USERNAME listIdentities -n NUMBER
+* Send a message to a username, usernames need to be prefixed with `u:`
- * Trust new key, after having verified it
+ ```sh
+ signal-cli -a ACCOUNT send -m "This is a message" u:USERNAME.000
+ ```
- signal-cli -u USERNAME trust -v FINGER_PRINT NUMBER
+* Pipe the message content from another process.
- * Trust new key, without having verified it. Only use this if you don't care about security
+ uname -a | signal-cli -a ACCOUNT send --message-from-stdin RECIPIENT
- signal-cli -u USERNAME trust -a NUMBER
+* Receive messages
-* Set configuration directory
+ signal-cli -a ACCOUNT receive
- signal-cli --config=/home/other_user/.config/signal
+**Hint**: The Signal protocol expects that incoming messages are regularly received (using `daemon` or `receive`
+command). This is required for the encryption to work efficiently and for getting updates to groups, expiration timer
+and other features.
- This is particularily useful in the case, when you would like to run the signal-cli tool as a different user as the one, that was used to register the account. You should make sure, that the caller has full read/write access to the given directory.
-
-## DBus service
+## Storage
-signal-cli can run in daemon mode and provides an experimental dbus interface.
-For dbus support you need jni/unix-java.so installed on your system (Debian: libunixsocket-java ArchLinux: libmatthew-unix-java (AUR)).
+The password and cryptographic keys are created when registering and stored in the current users home directory:
-* Run in daemon mode (dbus session bus)
+ $XDG_DATA_HOME/signal-cli/data/
+ $HOME/.local/share/signal-cli/data/
- signal-cli -u USERNAME daemon
+## Building
-* Send a message via dbus
+This project uses [Gradle](http://gradle.org) for building and maintaining dependencies. If you have a recent gradle
+version installed, you can replace `./gradlew` with `gradle` in the following steps.
- signal-cli --dbus send -m "Message" [RECIPIENT [RECIPIENT ...]] [-a [ATTACHMENT [ATTACHMENT ...]]]
+1. Checkout the source somewhere on your filesystem with
-### System bus
+ git clone https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli.git
-To run on the system bus you need to take some additional steps.
-It’s advisable to run signal-cli as a separate unix user, the following steps assume you created a user named *signal-cli*.
-These steps, executed as root, should work on all distributions using systemd.
+2. Execute Gradle:
-```bash
-cp data/org.asamk.Signal.conf /etc/dbus-1/system.d/
-cp data/org.asamk.Signal.service /usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/
-cp data/signal.service /etc/systemd/system/
-sed -i -e "s|%dir%|<INSERT_INSTALL_PATH>|" -e "s|%number%|<INSERT_YOUR_NUMBER>|" /etc/systemd/system/signal.service
-systemctl daemon-reload
-systemctl enable signal.service
-systemctl reload dbus.service
-```
+ ./gradlew build
-Make sure to use "--dbus-system" with the send command, the service will be autostarted by dbus the first time it is requested.
+ 2a. Create shell wrapper in *build/install/signal-cli/bin*:
-## Storage
+ ./gradlew installDist
-The password and cryptographic keys are created when registering and stored in the current users home directory:
+ 2b. Create tar file in *build/distributions*:
- $HOME/.config/signal/data/
+ ./gradlew distTar
-For legacy users, the old config directory is used as a fallback:
+ 2c. Create a fat tar file in *build/libs/signal-cli-fat*:
- $HOME/.config/textsecure/data/
+ ./gradlew fatJar
-## Building
+ 2d. Compile and run signal-cli:
-This project uses [Gradle](http://gradle.org) for building and maintaining
-dependencies. If you have a recent gradle version installed, you can replace `./gradlew` with `gradle` in the following steps.
+ ```sh
+ ./gradlew run --args="--help"
+ ```
-1. Checkout the source somewhere on your filesystem with
+### Building a native binary with GraalVM (EXPERIMENTAL)
- git clone https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli.git
+It is possible to build a native binary with [GraalVM](https://www.graalvm.org). This is still experimental and will not
+work in all situations.
+1. [Install GraalVM and setup the environment](https://www.graalvm.org/docs/getting-started/#install-graalvm)
2. Execute Gradle:
- ./gradlew build
-
-3. Create shell wrapper in *build/install/signal-cli/bin*:
-
- ./gradlew installDist
+ ./gradlew nativeCompile
-4. Create tar file in *build/distributions*:
+ The binary is available at *build/native/nativeCompile/signal-cli*
- ./gradlew distTar
+## FAQ and Troubleshooting
-## Troubleshooting
-If you use a version of the Oracle JRE and get an InvalidKeyException you need to enable unlimited strength crypto. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6481627/java-security-illegal-key-size-or-default-parameters for instructions.
+For frequently asked questions and issues have a look at the [wiki](https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/wiki/FAQ).
## License
git.nmode.ca / signal-cli / blobdiff
