textsecure-cli

textsecure-cli is a commandline interface for libtextsecure-java. It supports registering, verifying, sending and receiving messages. However receiving messages currently only works with a patched libtextsecure-java, because libtextsecure-java does not yet support registering for the websocket support. 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.

Usage

usage: textsecure-cli [-h] [-u USERNAME] [-v] {register,verify,send,quitGroup,updateGroup,receive} ...

• Register a number (with SMS verification)

    textsecure-cli -u USERNAME register
  

• Register a number (with voice verification)

    textsecure-cli -u USERNAME register -v
  

• Verify the number using the code received via SMS or voice

    textsecure-cli -u USERNAME verify CODE
  

• Send a message to one or more recipients

    textsecure-cli -u USERNAME send -m "This is a message" [RECIPIENT [RECIPIENT ...]] [-a [ATTACHMENT [ATTACHMENT ...]]]
  

• Pipe the message content from another process.

    uname -a | textsecure-cli -u USERNAME send [RECIPIENT [RECIPIENT ...]]
  

• Groups

• Create a group

     textsecure-cli -u USERNAME updateGroup -n "Group name" -m [MEMBER [MEMBER ...]]
  

• Update a group

     textsecure-cli -u USERNAME updateGroup -g GROUP_ID -n "New group name"
  

• Send a message to a group

     textsecure-cli -u USERNAME send -m "This is a message" -g GROUP_ID
  

DBus service

textsecure-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)).

• Run in daemon mode (dbus session bus)

      textsecure-cli -u USERNAME daemon
  

• Send a message via dbus

      textsecure-cli --dbus send -m "Message" [RECIPIENT [RECIPIENT ...]] [-a [ATTACHMENT [ATTACHMENT ...]]]
  

System bus

To run on the system bus you need to take some additional steps. It’s advisable to run textsecure-cli as a separate unix user, the following steps assume you created a user named textsecure. These steps, executed as root, should work on all distributions using systemd.

cp data/org.asamk.TextSecure.config /etc/dbus-1/system.d/
cp data/org.asamk.TextSecure.service /usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/
cp data/textsecure.service /etc/systemd/system/
sed -i -e "s|%dir%|<INSERT_INSTALL_PATH>|" -e "s|%number%|<INSERT_YOUR_NUMBER>|" /etc/systemd/system/textsecure.service
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable textsecure.service
systemctl reload dbus.service

Then just execute the send command from above, the service will be autostarted by dbus the first time it is requested.

Storage

The password and cryptographic keys are created when registering and stored in the current users home directory:

    $HOME/.config/textsecure/data/

Building

This project uses Gradle for building and maintaining dependencies.

1. Checkout the source somewhere on your filesystem with

    git clone https://github.com/AsamK/textsecure-cli.git
   

2. Execute Gradle:

    ./gradlew build
   

3. Create shell wrapper in build/install/textsecure-cli/bin:

    ./gradlew installDist
   

4. Create tar file in build/distributions:

    ./gradlew distTar
   

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.

License

This project uses libtextsecure-java from Open Whisper Systems:

https://github.com/WhisperSystems/libtextsecure-java

Licensed under the GPLv3: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html