How to install Anbox on Debian (2024)

Sylvain Bellone

Posted on May 2, 2021

#linux #android #tutorial

While waiting to see how it works on the PinePhone, I've recently tried to install Anbox on a Debian (Bullseye), and found out that the official documentation or other online articles don't have proper Debian instructions. Most of those articles are based on Snap, while nowadays everything is present to install it the Debian way.

After digging around, it turns out that most of what I will describe here is properly documented in the dedicated Debian README (/usr/share/doc/anbox/README.Debian), but I have to admit that it took me time to find it and I personally often prefer a simple and visual tutorial.

So, here is what I had to do to run Anbox and the F-Droid apk on Debian!

The first thing to do is of course to install Anbox itself:

$ sudo apt install anbox

Then, as stated in the official doc, check that the necessary kernel modules are enabled:

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

If not:

$ sudo modprobe ashmem_linux$ sudo modprobe binder_linux

If like me, /sbin is not in your $PATH (modprobe: command not found), add it or use the full path:

$ sudo /sbin/modprobe ashmem_linux$ sudo /sbin/modprobe binder_linux

At that point, if you try to run it (anbox session-manager), you will probably get the following error:

Failed to connect to socket /run/anbox-container.socket: No such file or directory

Anbox indeed expect to find an Android image at /var/lib/anbox/android.img.
Download the latest image available at https://build.anbox.io/android-images/ and move it there:

$ sudo mv ~/Downloads/android_amd64.img /var/lib/anbox/android.img

Restart the service:

$ sudo service anbox-container-manager restart

You should now be able to run Anbox, either from your Desktop environment launcher, or with the following command:

anbox launch --package=org.anbox.appmgr --component=org.anbox.appmgr.AppViewActivity

This last part is well explained in the doc. Start by installing adb:

Top comments (6)

KitchM

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Mar 15, 2022

• Mar 15 '22

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I greatly appreciated the simple and well thought-out steps to get this working. However, even though everything worked at each step as directed, the outcome was the same as installing it thru Synaptic; I get a full screen window with the text "Starting..." and then nothing happens until a timeout and the windows goes away.

Debian 11 with Xfce 4.16.

Ferdinand Rau

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See Also
Anbox › Ubuntu Touch › Wiki › ubuntuusers.de

Mar 20, 2022

• Mar 21 '22

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Hi,
check the output of the command sudo service anbox-container-manager status to find out what's going wrong under the hood. Might be missing permissions, or a wrong filename for your Android image, or missing kernel modules while starting the Android image.
if that does not help, digging in the output of sudo journalctl -x -b -l | grep anbox probably will.

I'm on Debian GNU/Linux 11 with Xfce4 4.16 as well and it works. In a clean install, if you don't have sudo available, run the above commands as root without the sudo part.

Sergio

Joined

Apr 8, 2022

• Apr 8 '22 • Edited on Apr 8 • Edited

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Anbox seems to be heavily broken on Debian 11 instead, with no signs of verbose error. debian anbox[25324]: Session manager failed to become ready is the only error you can find, everything else is normally loading components. github.com/anbox/anbox/issues/978 Might be a return of this issue

jimlp12

I'll be Honest.... I'm not a DEV.... I'm having major problems w/a Anbox on MX-Linux 21.3 x 64 Wildflower.. =)

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Jan 19, 2023

• Jan 19 '23

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Sylvain;
Hello, I'm James from NM, USA... I am following your Post on "How to Install Anbox on Debian", dated May 2, 2021. Here in the "Android Image" section it refers to: build.anbox.io/android-images/, Unfortunately... this URL no longer works, it just times out. Others have reported it to Google and I found no solutions, now I'm trying to find another source to download an appropriate Android Image, any suggestions...?
I'm running MX-Linux 21.3 x 64 Wildflower on a Dell Latitude E6540, Intel i7-4810 Quad Core w/8 threads, 16 GB RAM, Western Digital 1TB HDD, Intel Graphics...
James....

Sylvain Bellone

Joined

May 1, 2021

• Jan 14 '22 • Edited on Jan 14 • Edited

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I haven't tried @iamlegendz solution, but I'd personally go for a great alternative: the Aurora Store, which mirrors the Play Store nicely and can be installed from F-Droid: f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora...

Mohamed Benkouider

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Oct 30, 2021

• Oct 30 '21

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It works well, you must run this command before: sudo mkdir /etc/systemd/system/anbox-container-manager.service.d/ and then install google play store with the script.

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