install.md

Install Anbox

To install Anbox your system need to support snaps. We do not officially support any other distribution method of Anbox at the moment but there are community made packages for various distributions (e.g. Arch Linux). However please keep in mind that the Anbox project can not give support to them and its solely in the responsibility of the community packager to keep up with upstream development and update the packaging to any new changes. Please feel free to report still any bugs you encounter as they may not be related to the packaging.

If you don't know about snaps yet head over to snapcraft.io to get an introduction of what snaps are, how to install support for them on your distribution and how to use them.

The installation of Anbox consists of two steps.

1. Install necessary kernel modules
2. Install the Anbox snap

In order to support the mandatory kernel subsystems ashmem and binder for the Android container you have to install two DKMS based kernel modules. The source for the kernel modules is maintained by the Anbox project here.

At the moment we only have packages prepared for Ubuntu in a PPA on Launchpad. If you want to help to get the packages in your favorite distribution please come and talk to us or submit a PR with the distribution specific packaging.

The second step will install the Anbox snap from the store and will give you everything you need to run the full Anbox experience.

Install necessary kernel modules

In order to add the PPA to your Ubuntu system please run the following commands:

 $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:morphis/anbox-support
 $ sudo apt update
 $ sudo apt install anbox-modules-dkms

In case add-apt-repository is missing, install it via:

sudo apt install software-properties-common

These will add the PPA to your system and install the anbox-modules-dkms package which contains the ashmem and binder kernel modules. They will be automatically rebuild everytime the kernel packages on your system update.

After you installed the anbox-modules-dkms package you have to manually load the kernel modules. The next time your system starts they will be automatically loaded.

 $ sudo modprobe ashmem_linux
 $ sudo modprobe binder_linux

Now you should have two new nodes in your systems /dev directory:

 $ ls -1 /dev/{ashmem,binder}
 /dev/ashmem
 /dev/binder

Install the Anbox snap

Installing the Anbox snap is very simple:

 $ snap install --devmode --beta anbox

If you haven't logged into the Ubuntu Store yet, the snap command will ask you to use sudo snap ... in order to install the snap:

 $ sudo snap install --devmode --beta anbox

At the moment we require the use of --devmode as the Anbox snap is not yet fully confined. Work has started with the upstream snapd project to get support for full confinement.

As a side effect of using --devmode the snap will not automatically update. In order to update to a newer version you can run:

 $ snap refresh --beta --devmode anbox

Information about the currently available versions of the snap is available via:

 $ snap info anbox

Available snap channels

Currently we only use the beta and edge channels for the Anbox snap. The edge channel tracks the latest development is always synced with the state of the master branch on github. The beta channel is updated less frequently to provide a more stable and bug free experience.

Once proper confinement for the Anbox snap exists we will also start using the candidate and stable channels.

Uninstall Anbox

If you want to remove Anbox from your system you first have to remove the snap:

NOTE: By removing the snap you remove all data you stored within the snap from your system. There is no way to bring it back.

 $ snap remove anbox

Once the snap is removed you have to remove the installed kernel modules as well:

 $ sudo apt install ppa-purge
 $ sudo ppa-purge ppa:morphis/anbox-support

Once done Anbox is removed from your system.