Anbox in OTA-16 Release Candidate

AntiDroid · 25 Feb 2021, 08:23

Conclusion :
Everything required to install an instance of Anbox in a container on a OnePlus One Bacon (and a few other devices) is now installed but not active. It only appeared to be active for me because of residual .desktop files from previous Anbox tests.

One of the first things I noticed while testing OTA-16 Release Candidate on my OnePlus One Bacon is Anbox is installed already which for me is such a huge disappointment. I realize people are always asking for Anbox but it should be a choice rather than forced on UT users. One of the reasons I (And possibly many others) use UT is to not use Android. I do not want Android settings, clock, calendar and all the other things that get installed with Anbox.

I tried Anbox a few months ago just because I test everything and installing apps is a pain, they rarely worked, they ran poorly and you got way to much Android. Removing it was harder than installing it and it was still worth all the effort to remove. I have never come across a post praising Anbox or even really promoting it, just saying it is interesting proof of concept that needs a LOT of work.

How do we remove Anbox now that it is preinstalled? I have rolled back to stable and turned off automatically downloading updates to prevent updating until I can remove Anbox or stick with OTA-15 for the foreseeable future.

kugiigi · 25 Feb 2021, 10:43

@antidroid I have no OPO but I would assume it's the same with Nexus 5 which also has anbox. But from my understanding, anbox isn't really installed by default. It's the installer that's preinstalled.

AntiDroid · 25 Feb 2021, 11:15

@kugiigi Before now the OnePlus One was one of the officially supported devices for Anbox on UT but you had to install it manually. With this update you get Android Calendar, Android Clock, Android Settings all in the app menu which sure looks like when I had it installed to test it. There may have been others too I really didn't look any further.

Even if I wanted Anbox installed I would at least want all the minimal required parts of the Android system in a sub menu/launcher. I do not want 2 calendars, 2 clocks, 2 settings.

I would love to hear from anyone that uses Anbox and feels the opposite way. Maybe the selection of apps and games I tested was part of the problem.

If you use Anbox please let me know what device you are using it on, which apps you use, what functions in those apps work and how do they perform?

kugiigi · 25 Feb 2021, 11:23

@antidroid Oh, anbox apps show in the app drawer? Then anbox is indeed installed. If that is really the case then it's really not a good idea.

stanwood · 25 Feb 2021, 12:26

@antidroid You can try

anbox-tool disable

It should remove all Android stuffs on your screen

domubpkm · 25 Feb 2021, 12:55

@kugiigi said in Anbox in OTA-16 Release Candidate:

anbox apps show in the app drawer?

Not for the Volla or i don't see

stanwood · 25 Feb 2021, 12:57

@domubpkm Indeed, Volla is an arm64 device.
There's no official Anbox image for arm64 devices yet...

poVoq · 25 Feb 2021, 14:28

@domubpkm Neither on Nexus5 dev channel. Maybe I am missing something?

Lakotaubp · 25 Feb 2021, 15:04

@antidroid I have just stareted up my OPO can see nothing on Dev channel (2021-02-24). My RC only updates to version 93 which is to early. Can you see see something in System Settings like Libertine or is it as @kugiigi asked showing in App Drawer.

kugiigi · 25 Feb 2021, 16:01

@lakotaubp I see. I'm actually skeptical that it is indeed installed by default because if that's the case, there would have been a big announcement or discussion about it.

@AntiDroid Perhaps you already installed it yourself and wasn't able to remove/uninstall?

stanwood · 25 Feb 2021, 16:51

@kugiigi Normally, only Anbox image is included in (an few devices) OTA-16 rootfs, but is not supposed to be installed by default.

To install Anbox one should run:

anbox-tool install

But i'm not sure if we have to first run:

sudo mount -o rw,remount /

Indeed, I'm on the stable channel now, so I didn't test this yet....

dobey · 25 Feb 2021, 17:26

@antidroid said in Anbox in OTA-16 Release Candidate:

How do we remove Anbox now that it is preinstalled?

The image necessary to use Anbox is not preinstalled. Only the tool to download and update the image, and enable or disable anbox, is installed by default. As well as some devices having the kernel features enabled by default for Anbox to work.

You will not get any Android apps by default. You don't need to uninstall anything. If you don't want to use anbox, you simply do not need to install and enable it.

dobey · 25 Feb 2021, 17:27

@stanwood said in Anbox in OTA-16 Release Candidate:

But i'm not sure if we have to first run:

You do not. The point of the changes in OTA-16 is so that people do not have to mess with the rootfs to enable anbox.

AntiDroid · 25 Feb 2021, 18:43

Like i said i did have anbox installed months ago on OTA-13 or 14 and after testing i spent a long time finding how to remove it and doing everthing i thought was required to remove every last bit i could find.

Right now on the stable channel I have zero android icons in my app drawer. When i switch to the RC channel I end up with Android settings, Android clock, Android calander and possibly others imediately after booting into the version I get installed from the RC channel.

It could be a bug from having it installed previously but that would be bad too. It would mean you can not actually remove it. I have reflashed this phone without wiping the data many times since then because i like to experiment and break things.

Lakotaubp · 25 Feb 2021, 18:46

@kugiigi You answered what I was thinking but couldn't check till later today.@dobey confirmed what I imagined was the case. Never used Anbox and don't want to really

AntiDroid · 25 Feb 2021, 19:44

So if it is indeed residual install parts from my testing being reactivated by the OTA update does anyone know how to purge every last bit of Anbox from my system?

I went though my terminal history and reran these commands to make sure i had removed it. In my history I also see I purged the cache back then too.

I remounted the file system on my stable install as read write and ran

sudo apt purge anbox-ubuntu-touch

and

sudo apt purge android-tools-adb

Both gave me

E: unable to locate package anbox-ubuntu-touch

and

E: unable to locate package android-tools-adb

That tells me I do not have Anbox installed on my Stable install

When I have time to have my phone down for a while I will reinstall the release candidate and run those commands to see if it really is installed and if it can be removed the same way.

I was just rereading the Anbox page in the UT docs and now I think I may not have switched boot.img back to the stock one after testing and now I have no idea where to find the stock one (my copy is long gone). I did not think it would survive an update since the page says you will likely have to reinstall it after updating.

dobey · 25 Feb 2021, 20:13

@antidroid all you need to do is run sudo anbox-tool disable and then remove the ~/anbox-data/ directory and ~/.local/share/applications/anbox/ directories, and then the anbox apps and image should be gone from your device.

AntiDroid · 25 Feb 2021, 21:30

@dobey Thank you. I just ran

grep -r -H anbox

and the .desktop files for all the anbox stuff were still in the applicatuons folder. I have removed them now. Hopefully that was the only reason they showed up after the update.

Now the only thing left are records of me removing them in bash-history and zeitgeist enteries. I still have to wait before retesting the release candidate again.

I also tried to grep the root folder for anbox stuff but that caused the phone to reboot.

kugiigi · 26 Feb 2021, 03:39

@antidroid I think your purged the anbox tools that are used for installing actual anbox. Try Rodney's suggestion. To be fair, anbox documentation needs to be updated. Other stuffs there are not needed anymore like kernel installation.

AntiDroid · 26 Feb 2021, 07:51

I had a chance to quickly test the release candidate again and on this boot the icons were gone so that seems to confirm they were left behind from the previous install.

On stable when i try and remove anbox-ubuntu-touch it says it is not installed. But when i try on RC i get

Which you can see would remove ubuntu-touch, ubuntu-touch-core and ubnutu-touch-hybris which to me means it is deeply integrated in to the core of UT now and can not be removed.

When I have enough time to run the RC channel (be without a stable phone) for more than a few minutes I will see if disabling anbox works.

I hope the devs have solved the battery drain issues that Anbox is reported to cause or that just another reason Anbox should not be installed by default.

TL;DR OTA-16 for certain devices does indeed include Anbox by default but it is not enabled. I only noticed because of residual .desktop files from a previous Anbox install.

This is confirmed in the OTA-16 announcement,
"Anbox packages are now included with Ubuntu Touch by default. This means that supported Anbox devices can use Anbox without installing more packages, and Anbox installations will no longer break with every Ubuntu Touch update."