Root Emulator?

[stevcha]

Is there an Android Emulator that we can download to our PCs? I have a bunch of nandroid backups saved that I want to open and see what the config is but I don't want to flash them to my phone. Is this possible? Thanks!

 

[akazabam]

The android sdk has an emulator. You can follow a guide such as this to get it set up. Once it's set up, you can google "android emulator" or something like that for specific instructions on how to start it.

That being said, I *highly* doubt there is any way to load a nandroid backup with the emulator. You've got a completely different format, with a group of files that were meant to be restored in recovery, not loaded in an emulator. I *have* heard of people loading custom ROMs in the emulator before, but not like that. If you have *that* many backups, I can look into it, but don't expect too much.

 

[stevcha]

I found a few threads that says its possible but getting it to work is another story, lol. It basically says to pull the system.img file from the nandroid then booting it in the emulator/sdk.

Nandroid Images For The Emulator - xda-developers

 

[akazabam]

Interesting. It's similar to how I've seen custom ROMs run in the emulator before. I suppose it would work, but you'd only have the base ROM itself. I guess that's good enough to figure out what the backup is. I'll tell you what, go ahead and get the emulator set up, and I'll mess around with getting a backup to load in the emulator tonight. Maybe the two of us can figure it out.

 

[Mr. Ed]

oooooh this looks cool

I wanna play too

 

[stevcha]

oooooh this looks cool

I wanna play too

Android SDK | Android Developers

 

[akazabam]

The more the merrier . First, those are old instructions. The emulator has had quite an overhall since then. Second, I *think* you'd just need to drop the system.img in the directory for android 2.2. The directory is called android-8 under platforms. I don't think you need to make any config changes now. I couldn't find a config.ini. You should probably backup the existing system.img, first, or copy the whole android-8 folder, first.

In any case, this does not work right off the bat. My guess - this thing is expecting AOSP, and doesn't know what to do with Sense. If somebody has a CM backup on hand, try using that system.img. I wonder if we can get it to work with Sense.

EDIT: Let me give some more details - I replaced the system.img for android 2.2, created a new AVD, then started it. It sat at the loading screen forever. That's as far as I've gotten. Note that it's a backup of a Sense ROM (an old CW backup I found on my computer; who knows what ROM). My guess is this will work with a CM backup.

 

[stevcha]

There was some mention about signing the system.img file in that thread. Could that be the issue?

 

[akazabam]

When you make a nandroid backup, you get an img file for every partition you backed up. Since you back up the system partition (your rom) you get a system.img. If you go look in the android-sdk-windows\platforms\android-8\images folder, you'll see the images the emulator is loading. It has ramdisk.img, system.img, and userdata.img. The instructions say to take the system.img from your backup, and replace the system.img in the AVD folder (platforms\android-8\images) with that it. That does not work right now. I think it doesn't work because this thing wasn't designed to load an image that includes a Sense ROM. Plus there's the fact that the kernel is in a boot.img, not with the system, so who knows what it's using in its place. This might be harder than it's worth to get working. I'll see if I can find anything else out.

 

[akazabam]

It looks like the kernel and ramdisk are separate image files for each AVD. There's no way this can possibly work out of the box with a Sense ROM system.img. This is going to take some serious research...

 

[stevcha]

No sweat. Thanks for looking into it

 

[Mr. Ed]

I already have it but haven't played with it at all really. I have the app builders stuff too but have not even unzipped it. Requested that and got it like 3 months later lol.

 

[kamma123]

Hi,
I have similar issue. I have HTC PG7621( Wildfire S - android 2.3.4 and kernel version 2.6.35.10).
I was pull file from above phone. I got system.img, boot.img, recovery.img , userdata.img, ...etc. And also i extracted boot.img file. After extracted boot img file, I got boot.img, ramdisk.img, kernel-qemu

I tried to find resolve this issue. But i couldn't.

I created HTC_762 folder( c\... x86\android\android-sdk\platforms\)and copy all the from android-10 and paste HTC_762. Replace my system .img and userdata.img exciting same file names. also tried like create new .avd and change .confg file(path of the platform which is HTC_762). then i started emulator it boot with yellow screen.

Please any one know hot to run device specific imge file on sdk pleas guide me, I really appreciated.

Thanks