Android-x86

Run Android on your PC

Debug Howto

This page explains how to use adb and gdbserver with VirtualBox

1. use adb:

• In the VirtualBox network configuration, it is simplest to configure it for Host-Only or Bridged.
• boot up Android iso image on the VirtualBox.
• setup ethernet (normally, it will do DHCP by default)
• find the IP address of the android VM, by going to the console <Alt-F1> and then typing: netcfg
• you can go back to the UI by pressing <Alt-F7>
• on you host machine, cd <android source code root directory>/out/host/linux-x86/bin/
• ./adb kill-server
• ./adb connect <VirtualBox IP address>:5555, after this command, you should see something like below

* daemon not running. starting it now *
* daemon started successfully *
connected to <VirtualBox IP address>:5555
• ./adb logcat to dump the debug log

2. using adb with a NAT'ed VM

• The steps above work nicely if you have a VM which is set up to use Bridged or Host-Only adapters
• However, if you have a NAT'ed VM you cannot connect to the VM IP from the host
• You will need to set up port forwarding for a host port to be forwarded to the VM port 5555 (which is adb)
• VBoxManage modifyvm <VMName&rt; --natpf1 adb,tcp,*,<localport&rt;,*,5555
• Example from one machine:
• VBoxManage modifyvm froyo --natpf1 adb,tcp,*,5555,*,5555
• Once this is done, you should see the local port (i.e. 5555 in this case) bound on the host via netstat -a
• You can now connect to the VM by adb localhost:5555

2.a using adb with KVM (qemu)

If you are using KVM instead of Virtualbox you may find the following useful.
Example of running a iso using kvm:

kvm -soundhw es1370 -net nic -net user,hostfwd=tcp::4444-:5555 -cdrom buildname.iso
note the networking arguments: this allows "user networking" which doesn't need root access, while still allowing adb connections, by forwarding them on port 4444 of localhost, so to connect you would use:
adb connect localhost:4444
to disconnect simply (you'll need to do this after stopping/restarting a VM session):
adb disconnect
Its also possible to pass-through usb devices from the host to android guest running in kvm by adding the parameters:
-usb -usbdevice host:2.*
where in the above example that would pass through all devices on the number 2 usb host bus.

3. how to use gdb with gdbserver:

Android-x86 comes with a preinstalled gdbserver. And you can find it in /sbin/gdbserver. To use gdb to debug your process, you need to:
• set up host-only network as mentioned earlier
• in the terminal emulator, run su
• in the terminal emulator, run gdbserver
  <VirtualBox ip address>:1234 [application binary name with the path] or [--attach pid]
• on your host machine, run gdb [path of your application binary]
• gdb > target remote <VirtualBox ip address>:1234
• gdb > set solib-search-path <the path to all the shared library binaries>
• gdb > c

4. Stop zygote to run automatically:

in the vendor/asus/eeepc/init.rc, change following lines

service zygote /system/bin/app_process -Xzygote /system/bin --zygote --start-system-server
socket zygote stream 666
onrestart write /sys/android_power/request_state wake
onrestart write /sys/power/state on
to:
service zygote /system/bin/app_process -Xzygote /system/bin --zygote --start-system-server
socket zygote stream 666
onrestart write /sys/android_power/request_state wake
onrestart write /sys/power/state on
disabled
oneshot
To start zygote manually just do "start zygote" from the command line.