32 bit or 64 bit Emulator

[akarsh]

Hi @jangrewe ,

I used the docker image for testing the gitlab-ci.
Have you tried functional tests in gitlab-ci for any android project ?

I tried to use android-sdk-linux/tools/emulator -avd test -no-window -no-audio
I ended up with errors of 32 bit.
If you have tried emulator 64 bit emulator64-x86 ?

[jangrewe]

Hi @akarsh, i haven't used the emulator in this image at all, but please give some feedback if you figure it out!

[sczerwinski]

Hi @jangrewe and @akarsh,

I got to the point, where I'm installing required packages and starting the emulator:

androidTests:
  stage: test
  script:
    - apt-get -qq update && apt-get install -qqy --no-install-recommends qemu-kvm && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* /tmp/* /var/tmp/*
    - /sdk/tools/bin/sdkmanager --verbose 'system-images;android-25;google_apis;x86_64'
    - echo "no" | /sdk/tools/bin/avdmanager create avd -f -n api25 -k 'system-images;android-25;google_apis;x86_64' -d "pixel" -c 128M
    - echo "no" | /sdk/tools/emulator -avd api25 -wipe-data -noaudio -no-window -gpu off -verbose -qemu -vnc :2 &
    - timeout 180 /sdk/platform-tools/adb wait-for-device
    - ./gradlew cAT --stacktrace

Unfortunately, shared runners on gitlab.com seem to have KVM disabled in BIOS, so I end up with the following error:

emulator: CPU Acceleration: DISABLED
emulator: CPU Acceleration status: /dev/kvm is not found: VT disabled in BIOS or KVM kernel module not loaded
emulator: ERROR: x86_64 emulation currently requires hardware acceleration!
Please ensure KVM is properly installed and usable.
CPU acceleration status: /dev/kvm is not found: VT disabled in BIOS or KVM kernel module not loaded

[jangrewe]

Thanks for the feedback, i'll try that out when i have some time, that's probably quite useful for some people.

[alibitek]

emulator-check accel or emulator -accel-check commands can tell if hardware acceleration is working correctly:

accel:
0
KVM (version 12) is installed and usable.
accel

GitLab.com shared runners run on Digital Ocean:

From: https://about.gitlab.com/2016/04/05/shared-runners/

All your builds run on Digital Ocean 4GB instances, with CoreOS and the latest Docker Engine installed.

Which seems to have support for KVM.

From:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/can-i-use-a-droplet-to-create-linux-kvms-while-building-a-vm-management-app
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/does-digitalocean-support-nested-kvm-now

DigitalOcean droplets are KVM based machines.

From: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KVM

KVM requires that the virtual machine host's processor has virtualization support (named VT-x for Intel processors and AMD-V for AMD processors)
and
KVM is a special operating mode of QEMU that uses CPU extensions (HVM) for virtualization via a kernel module.

Seems like GitLab shared runners are not configured to load the kernel modules that add kvm support

Similar issue: https://forum.gitlab.com/t/cannot-run-android-emulator-avd-in-gitlab-ci/11620

Work in progress:

• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/issues/159
• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/issues/2885
• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/merge_requests/464

[burhanyilmaz]

Hi @jangrewe @sczerwinski,
Did you solve this #16 (comment) ?
I have same problem

emulator: CPU Acceleration: DISABLED
emulator: CPU Acceleration status: /dev/kvm is not found: VT disabled in BIOS or KVM kernel module not loaded
emulator: ERROR: x86_64 emulation currently requires hardware acceleration!
Please ensure KVM is properly installed and usable.
CPU acceleration status: /dev/kvm is not found: VT disabled in BIOS or KVM kernel module not loaded

[nstrelow]

Solutions to this would be greatly appreciated.

But this seems to be in the hands of gitlab and their shared runners:
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/issues/2242

[oliverspryn]

I hate to resurrect old threads like this, but since it is still open, I thought I'd share this. Since March 2019, the emulator can now run in Docker with headless mode: https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/emulator#headless-build