HowTo - Porting Android 4.0 ICS onto x86 VirtualBox

Thanks to Android-x86 community.

1. Build environment

1.1 Install Java JDK 7 [1]

(1) Download Java JDK 7

(2) Unzip, rename as java-7-oracle

(3) Move it to /usr/lib/jvm

(4) Use this tool to change the system Java version to java-7-oracle

$ wget http://webupd8.googlecode.com/files/update-java-0.5b 
$ chmod +x update-java-0.5b
$ bash update-java-0.5b

1.2 Install required packages (Ubuntu 12.04) [2]

$ sudo apt-get install git-core gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential \
  zip curl libc6-dev libncurses5-dev:i386 x11proto-core-dev \
  libx11-dev:i386 libreadline6-dev:i386 libgl1-mesa-dev:i386 \
  g++-multilib mingw32 openjdk-6-jdk tofrodos python-markdown \
  libxml2-utils xsltproc zlib1g-dev:i386 libxext-dev:i386 lib32ncurses5-dev

2. Build the image

2.1 Download Android-x86 source file [3]

$ mkdir android-x86
$ cd android-x86
$ repo init -u http://git.android-x86.org/manifest -b ics-x86
$ repo sync

*ics-x86 is based on Android 4.0 release. If the above link fails, try git://android-x86.git.sf.net/gitroot/android-x86/x86/platform/manifest.git -b

2.2 Build

$ bash
$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ lunch

Choose eeepc-eng as target product (that is the only thing that compiles through).

$ m -j16 iso_img

*16 is the number of parallel threads which can be determined by cpu info.

2.3. Locate the generated image at

out/target/product/eeepc/eeepc.iso

3. Download and run VirtualBox

3.1 Configurations: [4]

• OS Type: Linux 2.6
• Base Memory: At least 256MB, 512MB is better.
• CD/DVD-ROM image: eeepc.iso

3.2 Start

On the boot menu, select the VESA mode item. 

3.3 Usage [5]

4. Alternative option

For VirtualBox Android, try BuilDroid. It has a faked Wi-Fi connection, making things much easier.

Check my test on VirtualBox here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQB9Pp8v5Ow

[1] http://askubuntu.com/questions/67909/how-do-i-install-oracles-jdk-6
[2] http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html
[3] http://www.android-x86.org/getsourcecode
[4] http://www.android-x86.org/documents/virtualboxhowto
[5] http://blog.gokifu.com/2011/05/android-x86-faster-emulator/