How To Install Anbox on Ubuntu 19.10
I love the idea of being able to install PlayStore apps on Ubuntu but I'm getting errors installing Anbox. I'm interested in a step by step answer (that takes any trouble shooting into consideration) so a casual Ubuntu user like myself can benefit from a working solution.
This may be a duplicate of the following question but the difference is that I'm asking for an answer that is a how to for causal users of Ubuntu 19.10: possible duplicate
I've followed the installation instructions: here which then sent me here
TROUBLESHOOTING
Due to troubleshooting comments below it appears the tutorial is leading me to install both deb and snap installations. So I have split them to troubleshoot them seperately.
Install Through Deb:
Here I've installed Anbox through deb:
max@msi:~$ sudo apt-get install anbox
[sudo] password for max:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
bridge-utils libboost-log1.67.0 libboost-program-options1.67.0
libboost-regex1.67.0 liblxc-common liblxc1 libpam-cgfs libprotobuf-lite17
libsdl2-2.0-0 libsdl2-image-2.0-0 lxc lxc-utils lxcfs uidmap
Suggested packages:
ifupdown btrfs-tools lvm2 lxc-templates lxctl
The following NEW packages will be installed:
anbox bridge-utils libboost-log1.67.0 libboost-program-options1.67.0
libboost-regex1.67.0 liblxc-common liblxc1 libpam-cgfs libprotobuf-lite17
libsdl2-2.0-0 libsdl2-image-2.0-0 lxc lxc-utils lxcfs uidmap
0 upgraded, 15 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 3,844 kB of archives.
After this operation, 18.6 MB of additional disk space will be used.
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Get:13 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan/multiverse amd64 anbox amd64 0.0~git20190124-1 [651 kB]
Get:14 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan/universe amd64 libpam-cgfs amd64 3.0.4-0ubuntu1 [30.8 kB]
Get:15 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan/universe amd64 uidmap amd64 1:4.5-1.1ubuntu4 [65.7 kB]
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Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/lxc-net.service → /lib/systemd/system/lxc-net.service.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/lxc.service → /lib/systemd/system/lxc.service.
Setting up lxc dnsmasq configuration.
Setting up lxc (3.0.4-0ubuntu1) ...
Setting up liblxc-common (3.0.4-0ubuntu1) ...
Setting up anbox (0.0~git20190124-1) ...
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/anbox-container-manager.service → /lib/systemd/system/anbox-container-manager.service.
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.24-1ubuntu1) ...
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Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.30-0ubuntu2) ...
Processing triggers for systemd (242-7ubuntu3.7) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.7-3) ...
I rebooted at this point and attempted to run Anbox and found this error:
max@msi:~$ anbox session-manager
[ 2020-02-19 15:01:01] [session_manager.cpp:130@operator()] Failed to start as either binder or ashmem kernel drivers are not loaded
max@msi:~$
I was able to get past this error with the following:
I downloaded the anbox-modules here under by pressing the Clone/Download button:
I extracted and used Terminal to navigate to anbox-modules-master directory:
cd anbox-modules-master/
I ran these commands:
sudo cp anbox.conf /etc/modules-load.d/
sudo cp 99-anbox.rules /lib/udev/rules.d/
sudo cp -rT ashmem /usr/src/anbox-ashmem-1
sudo cp -rT binder /usr/src/anbox-binder-1
sudo dkms install anbox-ashmem/1
sudo dkms install anbox-binder/1
I loaded the modules here:
sudo modprobe ashmem_linux
sudo modprobe binder_linux
I verified things went okay with this command:
lsmod | grep -e ashmem_linux -e binder_linux
The output looks like this:
binder_linux 163840 0
ashmem_linux 20480 0
I verified with this command as well:
ls -alh /dev/binder /dev/ashmem
I got this output:
ls: cannot access '/dev/binder': No such file or directory
crw------- 1 root root 10, 55 Feb 19 15:54 /dev/ashmem
Now I'm not sure what to do at this point because anbox won't start:
max@msi:~/anbox-modules-master$ anbox session-manager
[ 2020-02-20 00:38:23] [session_manager.cpp:130@operator()] Failed to start as either binder or ashmem kernel drivers are not loaded
I have installed and tested the edge release from snap and it worked. Anbox from snap can be installed with the following command and run from the GUI applications:
sudo snap install --devmode --edge anbox
Important:
Please read and understand what an edge release mean before installing.
edge: for users wanting to closely track development.
Edge releases often include a moving stream of changes without QA or review promises and are typically built automatically by a CI process from an arbitrary source code snapshot. Often the CI will only publish after some sort of automatic QA passed, and code reviews remain a good practice, but these are project specific. Assume edge releases may break often.
Source