Development testers for Anbox

[Ingo]

Maybe this is useful feedback

These are the apps that work for me with anbox on Fairphone 2

• CatLog
• Onleihe
• Spotify
• Threema (Polling instead of Push notifications)
• WhatsApp (probably also polling)
• my banking app

But please take note: I haven't tested those in depth and am not using them on my daily driver, so maybe some problems went unnoticed so far.

What didn't work

• AdAway (needs root)
• Bücherhallen (doesn't run without gapps; managing wish list works)
• car2go (doesn't run without gapps)
• DB Navigator (crashes immediately on start)
• Drive Now (doesn't run without gapps)
• Firefox (looks as if it works, but web pages are rendered entirely black)
• iButtons (simply doesn't start)
• Real Drum (simply doesn't start)
• Stadtrad (doesn't run without gapps)
• vlc (upper third of screen remains black, the app window seems shifted down and lower part is not visible)

[rocky58]

@ingo also Telegram works

[marc_aurel]

@ingo Thanks for your recommendation. The installation did work, but then a system update of UBports has detroyed my Fairphone. No, problem, it is a developer device. I was able to recover my Fairphone and install Anbox abein with the android tools as described on the documentation page: https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/userguide/dailyuse/anbox.html

I could mange to install FDroid from a download and then Yalp Store within FDroid. Running Yalp Store seems to be to abitious. Yalp Store crashes while logging into the Play Store. So, in general Anbox is working on my Fairphone.

Sometimes the interaction with Android apps is liettle bit tricky because of the missing back navigation button on the system level. Alien Davlik adds a navigation bar with a back button. Maybe this could be an approach for Anbox either. The disadvantage would be a smaller screen.

[marc_aurel]

I payed around with Google apps to check the system integration. It seems, that Anbox is completely isolated.

Does someone know, where I can find the storage for Anbox? I try to import an adressbook export in the related Android App.

[greentree]

@pawlinski try to use test image (anbox-boot-$CODENAME-test.img)

[frapie]

Hiya i just wanted to leave a link here. I accidentally started another thread. If you read into this link you'll find the instructions on how i installed Anbox on an OPO. So far successful. I just need some time to 'play' with it now to see where it is at and what can be done with it: https://forums.ubports.com/topic/2202/anbox-for-opo/7

[BodoW]

@marc_aurel Storage is in ~/anbox-data/data/media/0/

[marc_aurel]

@bodow Thanks for the clear advice. Unfortunately I'm struggling with accessing the storage for Anbox.

I tried to copy my address-book to the Anbox container:

adb push contacts.vcf /home/phablet/anbox-data/data/media/0/
adb: error: failed to copy 'contacts.vcf' to '/home/phablet/anbox-data/data/media/0/': remote Permission denied
contacts.vcf: 0 files pushed. 142.5 MB/s (720808 bytes in 0.005s)

I also can't access the media directory. I only can list the content of the data directory, but I can't switch to a subordinated directory.

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~/anbox-data/data$ sudo ls -l
[sudo] password for phablet: 
total 5136
drwx------  2 root   root             4096 Dec 13 18:20 adb
drwxrwxr-x  2 system system           4096 Dec 13 18:20 anr
...
drwxrwx---  4   1023          1023    4096 Dec 13 18:20 media
...
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~/anbox-data/data$ cd media
bash: cd: media: Permission denied
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~/anbox-data/data$ sudo cd media
sudo: cd: command not found
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~/anbox-data/data$ 

I have a similar problem if I use the file manage on the device. But I also tried an adb push command within the device without success.

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~/Downloads$ adb push contacts.vcf /data/sdcard/Download
failed to copy 'contacts.vcf' to '/data/sdcard/Download': secure_mkdirs failed: Permission denied

Some idea?

[matteo]

@marc_aurel just my 2 cents here. Did you try, before to navigate into the anbox folder, to type sudo su and gaining the root access?
Second hint: you could try to move first your contacts file to an accessible folder, as for example Documents or Downloads, with adb push from your PC and then, from the terminal on your PC, you could type phablet-shell instead of adb shell, since I found out the latter has some limitations in writing on the phone partition. In the end, you could just copy your file, maybe better with root privilege, to /home/phablet/anbox-data/data/media/0/ using the cp or mv command.

[Ingo]

Someone suggested the following somewhere

mkdir -p /home/phablet/AnboxHome
sudo chmod -R 777 /home/phablet/anbox-data/data/media/0
sudo mount --bind /home/phablet/anbox-data/data/media/0 /home/phablet/AnboxHome

But with the clear hint that making things 777 generally is not a good idea.
Of course the minimal way would be just the second line. The other are just there to have an easier/shorter path.

[BodoW]

@marc_aurel You're right. Sorry, I didn't have a shell open when I was writing my response and didn't remember that you had to "sudo su" or "sudo -i" first (as @matteo mentioned). I'd prefer this way as I would have a bad feeling about 777ing a directory permanently.
Besides that: Does it work now?

[marc_aurel]

@bodow Thanks for the advice. The following approach works:

sudo su
cp contacts.vcf /home/phablet/anbox-data/data/media/0/contacts.vcf

I resume. The system integration of Anbox seems to be very limited. The apps are shown in the app scope and the apps have hardware access with network and storage. I think, that's it.

It's possible to copy files with adb shell, but this is not for an average consumer.

It seems there is not service or data sharing. I haven't tested notifications, yet.

[Guy]

hi, i was trying use anbox on my nexus 5 device, and got /bin/bash: pm: command not found error, do you know this?

# install command
➜  Downloads adb install MobileAssistant_1.apk
[100%] /data/local/tmp/MobileAssistant_1.apk
/bin/bash: pm: command not found

# adb shell infos
root@ubuntu-phablet:~# dpkg -l | grep anbox
ii  anbox                                                8+0~20180916133012.39~1.gbpe34b59                            armhf        Container-based approach to boot a full Android system on a regular GNU/Linux system
ii  anbox-common                                         8+0~20180916133012.39~1.gbpe34b59                            all          Common files necessary for Anbox
ii  anbox-ubuntu-touch                                   8+0~20180916133012.39~1.gbpe34b59                            all          Files necessary for Ubuntu touch
root@ubuntu-phablet:~# dpkg -l | grep android-tools-adb
ii  android-tools-adb                                    5.1.1r36+git20160323+ubports1+0~20181125103222.6~1.gbpc708bb armhf        Android Debug Bridge CLI tool
ii  android-tools-adbd                                   5.1.1r36+git20160323+ubports1+0~20181125103222.6~1.gbpc708bb armhf        Android Debug Bridge Phone Daemon
root@ubuntu-phablet:~# anbox-tool status
Kernel: OK
System: OK
Enabled: YES
Running: YES

[Ingo]

Are you executing adb install MobileAssistant_1.apk on your PC? That would explain the pm: command not found.
You have to transfer the apk to the phone and do adb install ... there (assuming you have installed adb on the phone first; which by the output of dpkg is the case).
Basically this: https://forums.ubports.com/post/14834

[Guy]

@ingo thanks for the reply, I have install the apk successed

[kuailexs]

@mariogrip Excuse me. How can I build this ：http://cdimage.ubports.com/anbox-images/android-armhf-64binder.img ?
I followed this step ： https://github.com/ubports/anbox/blob/xenial/docs/build-android.md and lunch anbox_armv7a_neon-userdebug
Using my built android.img can't work.
I still have a question, why use android-armhf-64binder.img instead of android-armhf-32binder.img

[kuailexs]

@mariogrip Excuse me. Can you share your local anbox project to build android-armhf-64binder.img ?
when i use https://github.com/ubports/anbox to build , There are a few differences：anbox-init.sh 、anboxd 、 netd

[kuailexs]

I want to test some of the applications we rely on. like : qq、weixin、etc.

[kuailexs]

for my building , network cat not work

[Ingo]

I case anyone wants to run the Anbox AppManager by tapping on an icon, here is my .desktop file to do that:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Anbox AppManager
Exec=/usr/bin/anbox launch --package=org.anbox.appmgr --component=org.anbox.appmgr.AppViewActivity
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=/home/phablet/.local/share/applications/anbox_logo.png
X-Ubuntu-Touch=true

Save this as /home/phablet/.local/share/applications/anbox_appmgr.desktop

The logo is this one: https://docs.anbox.io/_static/logo.png
I saved it as anbox_logo.png on the phone in /home/phablet/.local/share/applications/