Keep it up

Keep it up is a simple network monitoring app for Android.

It checks network services periodically by sending a ping, connecting to a specific port or downloading a site. It can also be used to ensure a connection with a timeout will be kept alive.

Features

Create multiple separate network tasks
One task monitors one network service at a specified interval
A task sends a specified number of pings, performs a specified number of connections attempts or downloads a file or a site
Successful and unsuccessful attempts are logged
Downloaded files can automatically be deleted after a successful download or be kept
Notifications can be sent on failure or an unsuccessful attempt
A network task can be restricted to WiFi connections, i.e. it does not perform any action on mobile networks with potentially limited download data
The configuration can be exported and imported as a JSON data file

Permissions

RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED for restarting running networks tasks on device boot
ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE for checking network accessibility
INTERNET for accessing the internet
WAKE_LOCK to keep the device awake while executing a task
FOREGROUND_SERVICE to start the foreground service for running tasks

Note

The app works best if you disable battery optimization. If battery optimization is active, network tasks execution may be unreliable especially for short intervals, i.e. they may trigger less often and the trigger time may not be exact. There is a link in the app leading to the Android battery settings for the app. Of course, with disabled battery optimization power consumption may be higher.

Installation

The app requires Android 5.0 (API level 21) and should run with all subsequent versions, however it's not tested with all versions and devices.

The preferred way is the installation from F-Droid:

From F-Droid the app will be updated automatically.

You can also download the files from here on Github. The releases are tagged. Please download one of the provided apk files. You have to allow the installation from unknown sources. With older Android versions (7.x and lower) you have to allow this globally in the security settings. With recent versions of Android this can be configured per app and you have to allow it for the file manager or browser that is used for installation.

Two apk files are provided:

keepitup-debug.apk and keepitup-release.apk

The debug variant contains debug information and provides some logging features in the system settings. The release variant is optimized and runs faster. It is recommended to use this version aside from development purposes.

Please keep in mind that the version here on Github is signed with a different key than the version on F-Droid. You will get an error if you try to install the Github version and the F-Droid version is already installed (and vice versa). You have to deinstall the app first to do that.

Signature

The apk files released here on Github are self signed. To verfiy the signature you can use the apksigner tool that comes with Android SDK:

apksigner verify --verbose --print-certs ./keepitup-debug.apk

apksigner verify --verbose --print-certs ./keepitup-release.apk

The output should include

Number of signers: 1
Signer #1 certificate DN: CN=Alwin Ibba, O=ibbaa
Signer #1 certificate SHA-256 digest: 8d006bf85e3d2d823939a107378358944178ed39e5ab534dbfa028f7cce1e3af
Signer #1 certificate SHA-1 digest: d65a046585d434c785fda70216cc0d892893dd3d
Signer #1 certificate MD5 digest: 711a19fc541a1c6c898bc866cd8d09e1
Signer #1 key algorithm: RSA
Signer #1 key size (bits): 2048
Signer #1 public key SHA-256 digest: 2acba358e06962a9cdb106a1b788f131a5cb8ab06180a9078e62a1be66fa0d65
Signer #1 public key SHA-1 digest: d8eeb46370f1ff2f0548d075319e07e90763117e
Signer #1 public key MD5 digest: 0020b7336f5edb8b3a82d62d7c239842

Build

Local

For the local build you need the Android SDK installed on your machine. It is recommended to install Android Studio. Gradle takes the SDK location from a file local.properties with the property sdk.dir=mylocation pointing to the location.

Call ./gradlew assemble to trigger the build.

The two output apk files are located under

./keepitupmain/build/outputs/apk/debug for the debug build variant and ./keepitupmain/build/outputs/apk/release for the release build variant.

The resulting release apk is named keepitup-release-unsigned.apk and is unsigned.

The resulting debug apk is named keepitup-debug.apk and is signed with the debug default key.

You can use the script ./signing.sh for signing the files, but some preparations are necessary (see below).

Docker

For the docker build you don't need any Android tools. Simply call ./docker_build.sh. The output directories are the same as for the local build. The docker build signs the files. You must provide a keystore (see below) or the build will fail.

The resulting release apk is named keepitup-release.apk and is signed with the provided key.

The resulting debug apk is named keepitup-debug.apk and is signed with the provided key.

The docker_build.sh script works for Linux. Docker must be installed of course. There is no script for Windows at the moment but it should not be difficult to create one.

Signing

You have to provide your own signing keys if you build Keep it up by yourself. The script ./signing.sh can be used for signing. The docker build calls this script after the build. The script calls the tool apksigner that ships with the Android SDK. Unfortunately the location of this tool is not fixed and does vary from version to version. So you have to provide the location on your machine in the environment variable BUILD_TOOLS_PATH. Usually apksigner is located under android-sdk/build-tools/version.

The docker build does use the apksigner tool that is provided with the container, so for the docker build it's not necessary to set BUILD_TOOLS_PATH.

Furthermore you need a keystore with proper keys for signing. You can create a keystore with the following command:

keytool -genkey -v -keystore keepitup.jks -alias keepitupkey -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -storepass keepitup -keypass keepitup -validity 20000

keytool ships with the Java JDK, not with the Android SDK.

The keystore file is named keepitup.jks with a key pair keepitupkey and the store and key password keepitup.

If you follow this naming convention and put the keepitup.jks in a directory named signing (the directory must reside in the project root), then the script ./signing.sh will find the signing information. Alternatively you can provide the information with the four environment variables

KEEPITUP_KEYSTORE_FILE for the path to the keystore file (default ./signing/keepitup.jks)
KEEPITUP_KEY_ALIAS for the key alias (default keepitupkey)
KEEPITUP_KEYSTORE_PASS for the keystore password (default keepitup)
KEEPITUP_KEY_PASS for the key password (default keepitup)

etlweather / keepitup