Waydroid

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Waydroid is a container-based approach to boot a full Android system on a regular Linux system.

Prerequisites

CPU Requirements

The requirements depend on the CPU architecture. You can check this table for more information.

You can check if you have the required CPU instructions with cat /proc/cpuinfo.

GPU Requirements

Waydroid currently works best with Intel GPUs. They should work out of the box.

All AMD GPUs have been supported; if Waydroid does not work you might also want to try to build a new Waydroid image (which works for Radeon 680M), or try the NVIDIA instructions below.

NVIDIA GPUs do not work currently, but there are 2 workarounds.

  1. Switch to integrated graphics card if possible
  2. Use software rendering (see #Software rendering)

Wayland session manager

Waydroid only works in a Wayland session manager, so make sure you are in a Wayland session.

Note that even if you are in X11, many Wayland session managers support nested session (so you can run it inside your X11 session), the simplest example is cage.

Kernel Modules

You need to run a kernel which comes with the binder modules. They are not part of Arch Linux's default kernel (linux), thus you need to install a kernel which ships these modules.

You might also need to configure your boot loader to use a different kernel. Please refer to the wiki page of your bootloader how to boot with the new kernel. Booting into another kernel (version) is one of the few occasions when you have to reboot a Linux system. You should boot into the kernel with these modules before starting Waydroid.

To get a compatible kernel, you have multiple options:

Using Linux-Zen

The linux-zen kernel includes the necessary modules. This might be the most comfortable way, as you do not have to compile the kernel (which takes a long time) and will receive updated versions regularly.

DKMS modules

Install binder_linux-dkmsAUR and load the kernel module binder_linux with module options devices=binder,hwbinder,vndbinder (see bug report). 

$ sudo modprobe binder-linux devices=binder,hwbinder,vndbinder

Optionally, you can setup binder_linux to be loaded at boot by creating configuration files in /etc/modules-load.d/ and /etc/modprobe.d/ (See Kernel module for more information). 

/etc/modules-load.d/binder_linux.conf
# Load binder_linux at boot
binder_linux

/etc/modprobe.d/binder_linux.conf 
# Options for binder_linux
options binder_linux devices=binder,hwbinder,vndbinder


You will also need to use the Kernel parameter ibt=off to work around oops on kernels 5.18+. See Segmentation fault when mounting /dev/binderfs

Building a kernel

Alternatively, you can recompile the linux kernel — or other kernel packages (>=5.7) — with the necessary options. Also see Kernel#Compilation.

When building a minimal kernel, keep the following requirements in mind:

  • IPv6 support. Without IPv6 networking built into your kernel, there will be no IPv4 connectivity in Waydroid.
  • Netlink sockets (CONFIG_NF_CT_NETLINK=y).
  • PSI (CONFIG_PSI=y).
  • Loop block devices (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_LOOP=m) - the loop module must be loaded before starting Waydroid.

When setting compilation options, you have 2 options available; binder and binderfs. Instructions for both are provided below.

Using binder

The modules can either be compiled into the kernel (y), into modules (m), or not at all (n). Also, not all combinations in the configuration are possible, and some options will require other options.

The configuration options below will compile binder as a module, while the last option specifies that there will be three devices created in the /dev/ directory, when the binder module is loaded. 

CONFIG_ANDROID=y
CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDER_IPC=m
CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDERFS=n
CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDER_DEVICES="binder,hwbinder,vndbinder"

When building a kernel from the AUR, one can update the configuration with the following steps:

  1. run makepkg --nobuild, which will download the sources, verify and extract them and run the prepare() function.
  2. edit the .config file (with the dot in the filename), which is located at the base of the kernel directory.
  3. at the end of the prepare() function was probably a command which regenerates the makefiles with information from the configuration, possibly make olddefconfig. Move that to the build() function, or execute it yourself.
  4. run makepkg --noextract, which will continue from the place where makepkg --nobuild stopped.
Using binderfs

The binder kernel module has been known to cause issues for several users. To address these issues, binderfs was created. One has to choose between the old and the new way when compiling the kernel. With the options below, one will use binderfs instead.

With the kernel sources comes also a simple script to set configuration options. It will not do dependency checks, just like when editing the configuration by hand. When being in the same directory where the .config file lies, one can execute the following commands: 

$ scripts/config --enable  CONFIG_ANDROID
$ scripts/config --enable  CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDER_IPC
$ scripts/config --enable  CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDERFS
$ scripts/config --set-str CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDER_DEVICES ""

When building a kernel from the AUR, it is enough to insert these lines at the right place in the PKGBUILD, usually in prepare().

Setup binder devices

Make sure you have the latest version of Waydroid package, and Waydroid will automatically take care of this.

Installation

Install the waydroidAUR package.

Optionally, install waydroid-imageAUR or waydroid-image-gappsAUR to provide the needed Android image through AUR. It is however recommended to let Waydroid itself handle downloading the images.

Afterwards init Waydroid, this will automatically download the latest Android image if it is not yet available. 

# waydroid init

To init with GApps support: 

# waydroid init -s GAPPS

Next start/enable the waydroid-container.service.

Waydroid should now work.

Usage

Make sure that waydroid-container.service is started then run: 

$ waydroid session start

The Waydroid session is now active, the following are command examples to interact with it:

Launch a GUI: 

$ waydroid show-full-ui

Launch a shell: 

# waydroid shell

Install an application: 

$ waydroid app install $path_to_apk

Get the application list: 

$ waydroid app list

Run an application: 

$ waydroid app launch $package_name

Network

The network should work out of the box, if it's not you might need to make sure packet forwarding is enabled in the kernel and allow the following rules through your firewall before running Waydroid session start.

Taking ufw as an example:

  • DNS traffic needs to be allowed: 
    • # ufw allow 67
    • # ufw allow 53
  • Packet forwarding needs to be allowed: 
    • # ufw default allow FORWARD

For firewalld, you can use those commands:

  • DNS: 
    • # firewall-cmd --zone=trusted --add-port=67/udp
    • # firewall-cmd --zone=trusted --add-port=53/udp
  • Packet forwarding: 
    • # firewall-cmd --zone=trusted --add-forward
  • Add the waydroid interface to a trusted: 
    • # firewall-cmd --zone=trusted --add-interface=waydroid0
Note: We assume that interface waydroid0 created by waydroid should be in the firewalld zone trusted automatically. If not so, please adjust those commands above or move interface waydroid0 to trusted. You may also need 
# firewall-cmd --runtime-to-permanent
to make your changes persist after a restart.

Tips and tricks

Enable Window integration with Desktop Window Manager

waydroid by default always runs in fullscreen.

If you want waydroid to integrate with your Desktop Environments Window Manager:

start a waydroid sesion with: 

$ waydroid session start

set the required property: 

$ waydroid prop set persist.waydroid.multi_windows true

now apps should start in their own desktop windows.

more in the official Docs

Software rendering

Make sure that you have already run: 

# waydroid init

(see #Installation section for more information)

Then, add the following: 

/var/lib/waydroid/waydroid_base.prop
ro.hardware.gralloc=default
ro.hardware.egl=swiftshader

Finally, restart the waydroid-container.service.

Setting viewport dimensions

To set the dimensions of the waydroid window use the following commands with the dimensions adjusted to your liking: 

$ waydroid prop set persist.waydroid.width 576
$ waydroid prop set persist.waydroid.height 1024

Then restart the waydroid-container.service.

Troubleshooting

If you run into issues, take a look at the official Issue Tracker: Waydroid issue tracker.

General tips

Waydroid is in rapid development so if you face issues, here is a good list of steps to do first:

  1. Make sure your Waydroid package is up to date.
  2. Make sure you have the latest Waydroid image by running 
    # waydroid upgrade
  3. Reset Waydroid: stop the waydroid-container.service, run 
    # waydroid init -f
    and start the service again.
  4. You may also want to do little cleanup, run 
    # rm -rf /var/lib/waydroid /home/.waydroid
    $ rm -rf ~/waydroid ~/.share/waydroid ~/.local/share/applications/*aydroid* ~/.local/share/waydroid
Tip: Removing /home/.waydroid/ is unnecessary if you installed it after 2021-09.

ARM Apps Incompatible

Use casualsnek's script to install a translation layer.

Due to optimizations in the translation layers, It is recommended to use libndk on AMD CPUs and libhoudini on Intel CPUs. However some apps will work on one translation layer and not another. so you may need to try both if a game does not work or gets bad performance.

Install libndk arm translation 

# python3 main.py install libndk

Install libhoudini arm translation 

# python3 main.py install libhoudini

Rotated apps are unusable

See Issue 70.

Click F11 to switch the current app to windowed mode.

Failed to start Clipboard manager service

Install python-pyclipAUR and its dependency for your graphical session (xclip for X11 or wl-clipboard for Wayland).

Sometimes the physical keyboard does not work

Press the left Alt key.

dnsmasq: failed to open pidfile /run/waydroid-lxc/dnsmasq.pid: Permission denied

An AppArmor rule is likely not set. Add the following rule: 

/etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.dnsmasq
@{run}/waydroid-lxc/ r,
@{run}/waydroid-lxc/* rw,

Commands inside Waydroid shell outputs inaccessible or not found

On Arch based distributions there's a "bug" that may appear while working with lxc-attach that may cause this issue with commands inside waydroid shell like adbd or settings.

A possible workaround for this would be replace the waydroid shell command with 

# lxc-attach -P /var/lib/waydroid/lxc/ -n waydroid --clear-env

WARNING: Service manager /dev/binder has died

See Issue 136.

You should enable PSI.

Add psi=1 to the kernel command line.

Note that the Liquorix kernel will never work with Waydroid, as it uses certain schedulers that are incompatible with PSI.

Graphical Corruption on multi-gpu systems

Currently Waydroid needs to run on the same GPU the host compositor is running on. The two ways of fixing this is to either edit /var/lib/waydroid/lxc/waydroid/config_nodes to be the correct GPU or to change the GPU the compositor runs on.

No internet connection

This article or section needs expansion.

Waydroid conflicts with docker. To fix this run the following commands: 

# systemctl stop docker
# systemctl restart iptables
# ip link delete docker0
# systemctl restart waydroid-container

See also