What does 'adb shell start/stop' do?

Issue

Question

What do adb shell start and adb shell stop actually do?

Description

I think they call /system/bin/start and /system/bin/stop. But these two executables don't give any clue about what they do. When tested on a real device, I found the zygote process is started and stopped. So these two commands seem to control the Android runtime (which corresponds to the yellow and blue parts in the figure below).

But what exact processes/services are started/stopped with these two commands?

Solution

Run this on your device

grep ^service /init*rc

Answered By - Alex P.