How to install libhoudini on a custom Android x86 rig

Question

I'm currently making a custom built Android Marshmallow x86 64 on a mini PC. I've successfully installed the Android and now I'm trying to install libhoudini on the rig so that it can play ARM apps and games (porting the apps to x86 is not possible since they are 3rd party apps). How do I install and use it? When I go to its Github repo, it only has links with .sfs files in it. And also there is no documentation or tutorial whatsoever about how to install and use it.

Thanks.

Solution 1

So I've actually managed to find a pretty new tutorial about this and I've successfully installed and used libhoudini on my rig.

The newest Android-x86 isos from http://www.android-x86.org actually have a bash script executable that will help us install libhoudini. So these are the steps:

• Enable this option: Settings>Apps Compatibility>Enable Native Bridge
• Go to the Android console (Alt-F1 or install a terminal emulator)
• Login as super user / root
• Run /system/bin/enable_nativebridge

NOTE: If you look at the script itself, you will see that the script will try to download the needed file if your device doesn't have one. But there's a chance that the server of the file will be down and the wget will loop indefinitely. If that's the case, this is what you have to do:

• Download the appropriate houdini.sfs from https://github.com/rrrfff/libhoudini
• Move / copy houdini.sfs to /system/etc
• Go to the Android console (Alt-F1 or install a terminal emulator)
• Run /system/bin/uname, if it says x86-64, rename houdini.sfs to houdini64.sfs
• Run /system/bin/enable_nativebridge

I hope it helps anyone who wants to run ARM apps on an Android-x86 using libhoudini. Cheers.

Solution 2

The first answer from @Bawenang is very helpful, but unfortunately the http://goo.gl links in the enable_nativebridge script are now forwarded to HTTPS by Google.

wget on android-x86 does not understand SSL, therefore the download fails.

A workaround is to edit the script and insert a proper link, e.g. the ones from this page are quite easy to type:

https://github.com/Rprop/libhoudini

In the script you only have to replace one of the URLs, e.g. for x86, replace the one that is preceded by v=7x or v=8x.

Solution 3

For android x86 64 bit Oreo, I first downloaded houdini.sfs( [http://dl.android-x86.org/houdini.php?v=9_y][1] or any other link you trust) version 9y for 64 then enabled native bridge in androidx86 settings. Afterwards I downloaded a root browser to move houdini.sfs file to system/etc/ but before moving it, I renamed it to houdini9_y.sfs. When the file is moved to system/etc/ then you can go to the command line (ALT+F1 to go to your system console ALT+F6/7 to go back to the android interface.) Type in system/bin/su to grant you root privileges then type in system/bin/enable_nativebridge. You should be done after that and apps should work that require libhoudini on it. This worked for me on a lenovo x carbon 1 running android-x86_64-9.0-r2.iso installtion.

Comments

[abulhol]

See Alex Ramos' post: "Type in system/bin/su to grant you root privileges then type in system/bin/enable_nativebridge." As root you can also change the file permissions

[Shrenik]

When installing the rpm package using alien on Ubuntu 20.04, even with system/bin/su it is not possible to remount the system partition rw, thus making it impossible to even edit enable_nativebridge since it is mounted ro. I realise that all the methods discussed herein use the native iso or qemu + iso method. Hence I am next going to try this