Category: VirtualBox

Android 4.0 in VirtualBox

This information is a little hard to find on the Internet. This is how to install Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) in VirtualBox, in a "do it yourself" way (installing from an ISO image). There are some people who have made pre-installed VirtualBox images, but one problem you may run into going that route is that the Android serial number will match everybody else who's using the same image as you, since Android generates this number on its first boot.

Screenshot of my Android VM. Click for bigger version.

Getting an Android ISO

The folks at Android-x86 have been making x86 builds of the Android OS for quite a while now, and none of this would be possible without them. They have ISO images for various versions of Android available, but most of them don't work very well in VirtualBox. For example, their "eeepc" image for Android 4.0 has issues with the audio drivers and the network (it has no Ethernet support built in, etc.)

So this means using one of the Android-x86 images from there won't get you too far because audio and networking won't work. Fortunately, somebody has put together an ISO image that's been custom tailored to VirtualBox. I don't remember where I found this ISO image; if it's yours, leave me a comment and I'll edit this post. I found the ISO here: android-x86 VirtualBox/VMWare support (thanks @jakimfett!)

I have a copy of this ISO hosted here: android-x86-vm-20120130.iso (244MB). This ISO works much better.

Create a Virtual Machine

In VirtualBox, create a new machine for Android.

• Machine Name: "Android ICS" (you can name it anything you want)
• Machine Type: "Linux 2.6"
• Memory: I gave my VM 1024MB of memory.
• Hard Disk: I created a new 16GB VDI image that dynamically expands.

All the default settings worked fine for me. Here's what the defaults were on my system:

• Networking:
  • Type: NAT
  • Adaptor: "Intel Pro/1000 MT Desktop (82540EM)"
• Audio: Intel AC'97
• Storage Layout:
  • IDE Controller:
    • CD Device
  • SATA Controller:
    • Hard Disk

Update: In the comments, @Ni mentions this:

Make sure you add the SATA Controller if it does not appear, when you setup the virtual box and then add the ISO image and virtual disk image to this.

If you try and add the ISO image and virtual disk image to the IDE Controller this will not work at.

This information maybe useful to someone making this mistake.

It worked for me as listed above (IDE CD drive, SATA hard disk), but this is something to keep in mind if you have any issues booting the CD or installing it to disk.

Installation

Make sure the VM boots from the ISO image.

1. On the boot screen, select "Installation - Install Android-x86 to harddisk"
2. Choose "Create/Modify Partitions". This takes you into cfdisk.
   1. Choose "[New]"
   2. Choose "[Primary]"
   3. Press enter to accept the default partition size (mine was 17174.38)
   4. Choose "[Bootable]"
   5. Choose "[Write]"
   6. Type "yes" to confirm writing.
   7. Choose "[Quit]"
3. Choose to install on the sda1 device (Linux VBOX HARDDISK)
4. Choose to format the drive "ext3"
5. Pick "Yes" to confirm formatting.
6. Pick "Yes" when it asks to install the GRUB bootloader.
7. Pick "Yes" when it asks to mount /system as read-write (this will be important later to install the Google apps).
8. Create a fake SD card when it prompts. I made mine 2047MB (the maximum allowed).
9. Choose "<Reboot>"

Make sure you detach the ISO image from the virtual machine so that it will boot into the installed OS. If you see the "Installation" option again, it means you're booting from the ISO still!

Tips for Running Android

You'll want to disable mouse integration to be able to interact with the GUI at all. This can be done from choosing the "Machine" menu in the VM window and clicking "Disable Mouse Integration" -- or pressing HostKey+I.

The Escape key on your keyboard corresponds to the Back key in Android. The context menu key on your keyboard corresponds to the Menu button in Android (the context menu key is usually next to the right Windows key).

To power off the VM, press HostKey+H. This will cause Android to pop up the shutdown dialog that you'd expect on a real phone. You can also use the "Machine->Send Shutdown Signal" to do the same.

Install the Google Apps

You may notice that this Android VM doesn't include the Android Market, GMail, or Google Maps. These are some of the Google Apps and due to some licensing restrictions Android-x86 doesn't include them "out of the box".

On a real Android device that's been rooted and flashed with a custom ROM, you'd install the Google apps by flashing them in recovery mode. But you can't get into recovery mode on VirtualBox. Thus, the method for installing the Google Apps is kinda sketchy, but it works (and if you know of a better way, feel free to tell me).

You'll need a file with a name like "gapps-ics-20120304-signed.zip". These are the Google apps (the date part might be different). You can Google them, but I have a copy of them here to download too.

You don't really need the entire Google Apps file, actually. Just the "system" folder inside the zip file. Create a new tar file of the "system" folder so that it will be easy to get it into your Android device. I have a prepared "system.tar.gz" for you if you just want to use mine.

• GApps Download Links:
  • gapps-ics-20120304-signed.zip (52MB)
  • system.tar.gz (just the /system folder; 28MB)

The steps to install the Google Apps are as follows:

1. Download system.tar.gz to your Android VM somehow. I used the Web Browser app and downloaded it there. You could probably also use the Email app, or if you're really Android savvy, push it with the Android Debugger.
   • If Android tells you that there is no SD card so it can't download the Google Apps, that's because you skipped that step while first installing your Android system. The very last step of the installer asks if you'd like to create a virtual SD card partition, and you should've had it do that. If you didn't, the only easy solution I know of is to reinstall the OS.
2. Open the "Terminal Emulator" app in Android.
3. Enter these commands (note: don't type the $ or # symbols at the beginning of these lines. These symbols indicate the prompt.)

   $ cd /sdcard/Download
   $ tar -xzvf system.tar.gz
   $ su
   # cd /sdcard/Download
   # cp -rf system/* /system/

   Pay special attention to the cp -rf command. Make sure the slashes and *'s are in the right places.
4. Reboot the phone.

You should now see the Market app, GMail and the others in your app menu.

Note: in my experience, the Market app will be somewhat unstable. When you start the app, it will Force Quit after 10 or 15 seconds. However, if you're fast enough you should be able to quickly search for a specific app you'd like and begin the download process before Market crashes, and the app will continue to download and install regardless.

I imagine that the unorthodox way of installing the Google Apps might be partly to blame for the Market being unstable. The other Google apps seem to work fine though.

Custom Screen Resolutions

This is a tip I discovered somewhere a while back for getting custom resolutions to work in your Android VM (for example, to mimic the screen dimensions of the Galaxy Nexus phone, or just to run the VM at a higher resolution like 1024x768). I've found that you can use just about any arbitrary resolution you want, but when the resolution isn't a standard 4:3 one (like 1024x768), the VM seems to get somewhat laggy.

The general steps are as follows. Substitute 1024x768 with whatever resolution you want. You can add multiple video modes by changing "CustomVideoMode1" to be "CustomVideoMode2", etc.

1. In your Terminal or Command Prompt window on the host system, run this command:
   VBoxManage setextradata "Android ICS" "CustomVideoMode1" "1024x768x32"
   Substitute "Android ICS" with the name of your VM (but keep the quotes).
2. Start your Android VM, and when you see the bootloader screen:
   1. Press the "e" key to edit the boot arguments
   2. Press "e" again to edit the kernel boot line
   3. Add UVESA_MODE=1024x768 to the end of the boot arguments (make sure to hit Space first), and press Enter.
   4. Press "b" to boot.

There should theoretically be a way to edit the GRUB config file and add more boot options that have the custom resolutions already configured, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

No Warranty

Android is primarily an ARM architecture operating system and the x86 version isn't supported by Google. While a lot of apps will work in Android-x86, some may crash in weird ways. If you're an Android developer though, this can be pretty useful because Android-x86 will run a lot faster on your hardware than the standard emulator from the SDK does, so you can test your apps much more rapidly (the Android-x86 site has some documentation on how to connect ADB to your virtual machine).

Your mileage may vary.

Updates

To answer common questions that come up in the comments...

• Adobe Flash, Netflix, others... -- these apps won't work in Android-x86, because they aren't pure Java. They include C code that's compiled for the ARM processor found in most Android devices. They won't run on x86 processors.
• Apps that rotate your screen... -- apps that force the orientation into portrait mode (thus turning your screen sideways) can be dealt with by changing your VM's screen resolution to be taller than it is wide (i.e. 800x1280). The app will recognize the portrait resolution and not rotate. However, your VM may be laggy when it's not in a standard 4:3 resolution. Alternatively, find an app that forces/locks your orientation to one direction or another -- however, some apps misbehave when forced to use the wrong resolution and may not be usable.
• Don't expect a lot of apps to work -- for various reasons, apps that work on real Android devices may not function properly on Android-x86.
• Text messaging and phone calls won't work -- Your virtual machine is not a phone. It doesn't have a cellular connection to AT&T or Verizon or anybody. The standard texting apps like Messaging and Handcent SMS are useless on an Android VM (this also goes for most Android tablets that don't have cell connections). If you want to text from your VM, you might try using the Tablet Talk app, connect it with your actual cell phone, and text through that app. If you want to make phone calls, you might have luck with a Voice over IP app -- however, I can't guarantee your microphone and such will work with the VM, as I haven't tested it.

I'll update the list above as more common questions come in from the comments below.

VirtualBox Scale Mode

Updated: added pictures. Bumped the timestamp to make this post new again.

I don't know how I missed this, but apparently VirtualBox finally supports a "Scale Mode."

I've always wanted this feature. Why, you ask?

One easy example is for running an old operating system (older than Windows 2000) that isn't supported by VirtualBox, so that there are no Guest Additions for it. Guest Additions for supported OS's install extra drivers for the virtual machine, so that when you put VirtualBox into "Full Screen" mode, the guest OS will automatically increase its screen resolution to fit your display. When it can't do that, it will just display the screen at its literal resolution and put a black margin to fill in the extra space.

Here is an expertly Photoshopped demonstration of what I'm talking about. If you were running a Windows 3.1 virtual machine at an 800x600 screen resolution, and you put the VM full-screen, this is what it would look like on your 1366x768 monitor:

Another example: even on supported guests, running an older game like Starcraft (which runs in a resolution of 640x480) had this problem too: if the VM is running Full Screen and you start Starcraft... instead of the game's display stretching across your whole monitor, it stays at 640x480 pixels and is centered on the screen. This sucks.

So it seems VirtualBox has finally added Scale Mode (available in the "Machine" menu along side Full Screen and Seamless modes). There's one quirk to it, though: Scale Mode and Full Screen don't work together. On my system, going into Scale Mode put the virtual machine into a window on my screen. This window could be maximized, but it couldn't be made full screen. So that sorta sucks.

Luckily, my Linux window manager (xfwm4, the window manager of the XFCE desktop environment) supports putting any window full screen, whether the window wants it or not. This means the window decorations are taken away and the contents of the window are resized to fill the display. Success! I can now run full screen, scaled resolution guest operating systems.

Scale mode with xfwm4's full-screen option gives you a "native" experience.

Fedora 12 Final - Still No GNOME Shell in VirtualBox

As a follow-up to my GNOME Shell in VirtualBox experiment, I've tested it again with the final release of Fedora 12: Constantine.

With no 3D acceleration, the results are the same as before: a mostly black screen, can't really do very much with it. With VirtualBox's 3D acceleration enabled, it's similar to the result I had before... very frequently the majority of the desktop (besides a box around my desktop icons) and the whole shapes of windows have that "striped" blue texture all across them.

I say most of the time because it's sometimes possible to get a window to show its true contents and become usable by dragging it around and playing with it for a bit, but the effects usually don't last very long before the window loses its textures again. The scale effect of bringing up the main menu in GNOME Shell usually fscks up all windows you have open again.

But the reason for this particular blog entry is that I also decided to test Compiz Fusion inside VirtualBox, on Fedora 12, under the same conditions as the GNOME Shell. I couldn't do this before because the beta version of Fedora 12 had some dependency issues, and Compiz conflicted with GNOME Shell; they couldn't co-exist together.

In Fedora 12 they can co-exist, and the Desktop Effects GUI window gives options to select either Compiz or GNOME Shell. Anyway, here's a screenshot. This is a real screenshot of Fedora 12 running in VirtualBox with full desktop effects active, including the 3D Cube effect.

Compiz++, GNOME Shell--;

USB Sharing in VirtualBox (Fedora 11)

Update: The latest version of VirtualBox (3.0. has fixed this issue; USB should work out-of-the-box now in Fedora 11+ if your user belongs to the vboxusers group.

I remember that the ability to share USB devices with virtual machines used to be working "out-of-the-box" with VirtualBox and older versions of Fedora, but Fedora 11 complicates things a bit.

By default USB devices in virtual machines don't work; the menu lists all your USB devices as being greyed-out while the machine is running. It comes down to a permissions issue with the user you're logged on as. To fix:

1) Make sure your user belongs to the vboxusers group. Older versions of VirtualBox made this an absolute necessity (virtual machines wouldn't boot otherwise), but VirtualBox 3.0 seems to only create this group but not actually require your user to belong to it for the most part. Update: with current VirtualBox, this is all that's required; USB should be working after you do this and log out and back in. If not, continue reading.

2) Create a mount point directory for usbfs (I did mkdir /usbfs as root).

3) Edit /etc/fstab to add a line that mounts usbfs, giving the vboxusers group write permissions to the mount point. In my case vboxusers had a group ID of 501; check in /etc/group to see what your group's GID is:

# VirtualBox USB support
none  /usbfs  usbfs  rw,devgid=501,devmode=664 0 0

Change /usbfs to the mount point you created in step 2, and change 501 to the group ID of the vboxusers group.

Now, you can either reboot or run mount -a as root (to reload the data from /etc/fstab). If you had to add your user to the vboxusers group because it didn't already belong to the group, you'll need to log out and back in again.

And now your virtual machines can access the USB devices.