Testing Android-x86 Ice Cream Sandwich-Image from VMLite

[German version]Sometimes coincidence happens. Yesterday and the day before I blogged  here and here about Android-x86 ports of Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) for Virtualbox. Got a lot of traffice here within my blog. This morning I received an email from Dr. Huihong Luo, founder of VMLite Corporation. I was informed about a new beta of (the long awaited) VMLite 4. And Mr. Huihong mentioned an Android-x86 port of Ice Cream Sandwich offered by VMLite for download. I will introduce VMlite in a separate article. Below I will have a short view at VMLite?s Android 4 port.

It’s been a while, since I’m was in touch with Dr. Huihong Luo as beta tester for their virtualization products. Mr. Huihong is the master mind behind Salamander .NET Decompiler/Obfuscator and he also forces development of virtualization products like VMLite, VBoot and MyOldPC.

Now VMLite Corporation created also an Android-x86 build from Ice Cream Sandwich source code. What should I write about this build? There are not too much new things to report, because I already tested a similar/identical ics build yesterday. Well, the image was created from a japanese guy. But the result is pretty identical, because he uses the same (unmodified) source.

Note: Obviously developers from VMLite was a bit more successful than me to brew an Android x86 build of ICS. I already described the steps how to build a Virtualbox image of ICS. But for my own, I wasn’t successful due to a small internet bandwith and a shortage of disc space. I spended more than 12 hours download time to find out at least, that my Ubuntu runs out of free storage on disk. So I canceled the whole thing and started to search for images already build..

Anyway, now we have a 3rd source, because VMLite Corporation offers an image of Android 4.0.1 (Ice Cream Sandwich) for free download. After downloading Android-v4.7z a use a tool like 7-Zip to unpack the archive. After expanding the .7z file, a folder with several files (some with config informations) exists.

For my 1st tests I used a portable edition of Virtualbox 4.1.6 already available on my host (because VMLite are based on Virtualbox source code). I just added the .vdi file with Android 4.0.1 image as hard disc to a new created VM. Tip: In VMLite it’s sufficient to drag the .vbox config file into the left colums of VMLite window. VMLite Workstation will create a new Guest-VM entry in this column.

After booting the virtual disc, a grub boot menu is shown, and the 2nd entry to boot from device /sda need to be choosen. Installation on /sdb fails, if no 2nd virtual disc is configured.

After successful boot (took about 15 seconds on my system), the Ice Cream Sandwich lock screen should be visible.

Just drag the circle with the lock icon to the right (where another lock icon will be shown), to unlock the screen. Then the Android 4.0 desktop should be shown.

Below is an 2nd screenshot of the APPs page visible, obtained unter VMLite Workstation.

It’s pretty the same like the desktop I have seen in my yesterday test – because the same, unmodified ics source was used for build. Within my yesterday article I explained, what you need to know about this Android-x86 build.

What’s left to mention? Does the boot stalls with a message “Kernel panic – not syncing: Attempt do kill init!”, as shown below?

This is because Android 4 needs direct access to hardware, which is supported only on machines with virtualization support (Intel VT-X or AMD-V). Just check the config page of your VM. Is the tab Acceleration is greyed out or if the check boxes VT-x/AMD-V activate and Nested Paging activate are blocked? In this case your machine doesn’t supports VT-X and Android-x86 4.0.1 can’t be executed in a VM.

Links:
1: Android 4-Download page at VMLite.com
2: Foren thread about Android 4 at VMLite.com
3: Discussion in XDA developers forum

Similar arcticles:
a: Ice Cream Sandwich-Testdrive in Virtualbox – Teil I
b: Test: Ice Cream Sandwich in Virtualbox – Teil II
c: Android-x86 Ice Cream Sandwich from VMLite
d: Running Ice Cream Sandwich in VMware