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Installing additional Android app's in Anbox on Ubuntu Touch

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    • A Offline
      arubislander
      last edited by 21 Jan 2018, 19:48

      I followed the instructions found here and installed Xenial and Anbox on my BQ M10FHD.
      And now I was wondering how to install additional Android apps to Anbox. I followed the instructions on the Anbox site. I installed the adroid-tools-adb on my tablet, downloaded an apk file and then tried to do adb install <app.apk>. But adb does not see the Andbox container. adb devices does not return any devices.
      Am I missing some crucial step somewhere?

      πŸ‡¦πŸ‡Ό πŸ‡³πŸ‡± πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Έ
      Happily running Ubuntu Touch
      Google Pixel 3a (20.04 DEV)
      JingPad (24.04 preview)
      Meizu Pro 5 (16.04 DEV)

      A 1 Reply Last reply 21 Jan 2018, 22:22 Reply Quote 0
      • A Offline
        arubislander @arubislander
        last edited by arubislander 21 Jan 2018, 22:22

        I installed Anbox on my laptop running Ubuntu 16.04 to get a feel of how installing additional apps is supposed to work.
        I found out that Anbox is only visible to adb when an Anbox application is running. Most commonly the Anbox Application Manager. In that case the result is as follows on my machine:

        me@my-device:~$ adb devices
        List of devices attached
        emulater-5558  device
        

        On my tablet I have no icon for the Anbox Application Manager. Instead, the Android applications that come installed each have their own icons visible in the Ubuntu Touch Applications scope.

        When launch one of the applications and wait till it is running in foreground, then adb shell into the tablet I get:

        phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ adb devices
        List of devices attached
        
        

        So still no joy.

        πŸ‡¦πŸ‡Ό πŸ‡³πŸ‡± πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Έ
        Happily running Ubuntu Touch
        Google Pixel 3a (20.04 DEV)
        JingPad (24.04 preview)
        Meizu Pro 5 (16.04 DEV)

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • B Offline
          BlandCorporation
          last edited by 23 May 2018, 23:16

          Hey there

          I'm new to Anbox but am thinking about this as well. As far as I can figure, some APKs are at the directory ~/anbox-data/rootfs/system/app. So, for example, the path of the Android Calendar application is as follows:

          /home/phablet/anbox-data/rootfs/system/app/Calendar/Calendar.apk
          

          I had figured on changing to that directory, creating a directory for a new application and then adding its APK to that new directory. I'm not sure how to kill Anbox properly, but the following steps seem to work somewhat:

          sudo apt install psmisc
          killall anbox
          

          Having "killed" Anbox I want to create a new directory for an application and add the application, in a way like the following:

          mkdir /home/phablet/anbox-data/rootfs/system/app/Funkytunes
          cd /home/phablet/anbox-data/rootfs/system/app/Funkytunes
          wget https://github.com/funkyg/funkytunes/releases/downlad/0.2.1/funkytunes-0.2.1.apk
          chmod 755 funkytunes-0.2.1.apk
          

          However, when I attempt to do this, I am told that the filesystem of Anbox is read-only:

          phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~/anbox-data/rootfs/system/app$ touch Funkytunes
          touch: cannot touch 'Funkytunes': Read-only file system
          

          I'm not sure how to go past this. Any ideas?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • T Offline
            tomoqv
            last edited by 24 May 2018, 09:53

            To install apps from apk you need to do the following:

            Copy the apk to /home/phablet/anbox-data/data

            Login to android container on your phone:
            lxc-console -ndefault -P /home/phablet/anbox-data/containers -t0

            cd into data/ then and use pm install [appname].apk

            Sorry, I don't know how to do code formatting on this forum...

            O 1 Reply Last reply 17 May 2020, 08:30 Reply Quote 0
            • T Offline
              tomoqv
              last edited by 24 May 2018, 09:55

              I tried out Anbox on my Pro 5 again. Unfortunately it still breaks the SIM discovery, but I was able to install quite a few apps via apk. Most of them start, and pretty rapidly too, but some say they "...don't work without the Google Play services, which are not supported on this unit" while others start fine but can't integrate properly with e.g. bluetooth. None of the Android apps or settings show an OSK, but input is possible via an external BT keyboard.

              It is nice to see that it kind of works, although not all the way. But of course no mobile is a show stopper.

              S 1 Reply Last reply 24 May 2018, 11:41 Reply Quote 0
              • S Offline
                Stefano @tomoqv
                last edited by 24 May 2018, 11:41

                @tomoqv Apparently Marius has a updated Anbox image on his desktop, and no more problem with the sim functionality. But he is busy to update the anbox images on the website, or doesn't want to share. I've asked 3 times for it. πŸ™‚

                T 1 Reply Last reply 24 May 2018, 12:37 Reply Quote 0
                • T Offline
                  tomoqv @Stefano
                  last edited by 24 May 2018, 12:37

                  @stefano
                  C'mon @mariogrip , feed the hungry testers :-D!

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • P Offline
                    padraic
                    last edited by 25 May 2018, 11:03

                    @tomoqv Thanks for that, it worked for me just this morning.

                    I installed fdroid which was exciting, unfortunately I can't seem to bring up the keyboard in any anbox app so far however.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • B Offline
                      BlandCorporation
                      last edited by 28 May 2018, 17:01

                      @tomoqv Ah, magic! That worked perfectly, thanks. πŸ˜„ Basically all applications I've tried have worked so far which is awesome. Would you happen to know the status for keyboard interactions? Are you aware of a way to get the onscreen Ubuntu keyboard to send keystrokes to the running Anbox application?

                      By the way, the code formatting is done using standard Markdown syntax. So, if I wanna display some Python code, like this:

                      a = 1
                      

                      then I just write some Markdown code like this:

                      ```Python
                      a = 1
                      ```

                      T 1 Reply Last reply 30 May 2018, 12:44 Reply Quote 2
                      • T Offline
                        tomoqv @BlandCorporation
                        last edited by 30 May 2018, 12:44

                        @blandcorporation
                        No, I have had no success with the OSK in Android apps. I was hoping that @mariogrip would chime in on this.

                        1+1 = 2
                        

                        Got it, thanks!

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • O Offline
                          oxwivi @tomoqv
                          last edited by oxwivi 17 May 2020, 08:30

                          @tomoqv said in Installing additional Android app's in Anbox on Ubuntu Touch:

                          To install apps from apk you need to do the following:

                          Copy the apk to /home/phablet/anbox-data/data

                          Login to android container on your phone:
                          lxc-console -ndefault -P /home/phablet/anbox-data/containers -t0

                          cd into data/ then and use pm install [appname].apk

                          Sorry, I don't know how to do code formatting on this forum...

                          Sorry for reviving this old thread, but this method didn't work for me. I'm helping a friend with this because there's not enough space to install ADB; first the lxc-console command failed because default was not running, and I found with lxc-ls the container is called android, but again the output was android is not running. I couldn't go to the next step of pm install.

                          For context, the exact commands were:

                          $ sudo lxc-console -ndefault -P anbox-data/containers -t0
                          $ sudo lxc-ls --fancy
                          $ sudo lxc-console -nandroid -P anbox-data/containers -t0
                          
                          LakotaubpL 1 Reply Last reply 17 May 2020, 08:43 Reply Quote 0
                          • LakotaubpL Offline
                            Lakotaubp @oxwivi
                            last edited by Lakotaubp 17 May 2020, 08:43

                            @oxwivi There is very little point in restarting an old thread, things have moved on a lot. Please start a new thread and say what device you are trying to install Anbox on. It does not work on all devices I think. Also have a search of the Forum for Anbox issues for that device your issue may already have been solved. Thanks. I will now lock this one.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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