Installing Android on a virtual machine. Installing Android OS on a VMware Workstation virtual machine

The reasons for installation may be different, but the main one is testing programs. Well, why clutter your smartphone or tablet with unnecessary software? After all, constant installation and removal of programs cannot have a positive effect on the smartphone.

And if a computer is primarily a tool for making money, then it should always be in working condition. In addition, especially on simple smartphones, the memory is very small and such experiments are simply impossible.

Creating and setting up an operating system:

After installing the program, open it and click on the “Create” button. Select “OS Type” – Linux, version – Other Linux (32 bit or 64 bit depending on which one you downloaded). I downloaded a 32-bit system (x86) and enter the name:

Create a hard drive (leave it as default):

Specify the hard drive type (leave it as default):

Select the storage format (leave it as default):

We indicate the size of the hard drive to be created (I chose 16 GB, you choose how much you need):

After creating the operating system, go to the settings in the “Display” tab, increase video memory and enable 3D acceleration. This is necessary for Android to work well (without glitches). You can also look through the tabs and increase other settings:

Let's start the installation

Click “Launch” of the created virtual operating system. A window for selecting the operating system distribution will open, select the one you downloaded from the official website and run:

The installer window will open, select installation on the hard drive (option 4) because we want to install the operating system on the hard drive, and not just view it:

In the window that opens, select “No”:

In the window that opens, we see our created and still free hard drive. Using the keys, select “New” and press “Enter” (thereby taking our free hard drive and creating space on it for our operating system):

In the new window, we leave everything unchanged (since we need all the memory of the created disk) and press “Enter”:

After this is done, we see the hard drive we created with a name and type. Next in the window, select Write to write our operating system to disk:

We are asked “Are you sure or not?” write “yes” and press “Enter”:

After creation and recording, exit by clicking on “Quit”:

After closing, you will see that a new line has appeared - this is our created and recorded disk. Select and press “Enter” to load:

In the new window, click “Yes” so that the operating system boot selection window always appears when loading:

And we also agree to the last window (click “Yes”):

After the reboot, a window for selecting the operating system installation will open. We need to click on Devices->Optical drives and uncheck the box to download our distribution. To boot the hard drive. After disconnecting, reboot the machine.

After the reboot, the operating system boot selection window will open. If everything is also shown, then you have installed Android and all that remains is to configure it. Select the first one and press “Enter”:

Select the language for the operating system:

So the long-awaited desktop has loaded and everything works great:

And one more little tweak! Exit the android and go to the settings in the System->motherboard tab. Set the cursor manipulator to: PS/2 mouse and check the box for additional features (this is so that the mouse works normally on the operating system). Also in the processor tab you can add more processors, then the operating system will think faster:

Information about my installed operating system:

(1 ratings, average: 5,00 out of 5)

I want you to exult in how easy it is to setup KitKat in VirtualBox.
Click the blue New button in Virtualbox, name the new VM Droid, change the Type to Linux and change the version to Linux 2.6 / 3.x.
Crank the Memory up to 1024MB and click Create.
Android KitKat 4.4 in VirtualBox

On the Create Virtual Hard Drive screen, change the File Size to 6 GB, leave the Hard drive file type at VDI but change the Storage on physical hard drive to Fixed size.

Create Virtual Hard Drive in VirtualBox for KitKat
Now back in the image list, double click your tasty KitKat build. You should see a Select start-up disk window poof onto the screen.

Click the tiny manila folder icon to find the Android .ISO file you downloaded earlier and then hit the Start button. VirtualBox choose your Virtual Optical Drive

VirtualBox attempts to boot off the ISO and immediately displays the Android-x86 Live & Installation CD test screen.
Keep hitting the arrow keys until you select the Installation option – then hit Enter.
Android-x86 Installation KitKat

The first thing we need to do is Create a new Partition.

Think of a partition as an isolated section of your hard disk. In this case, we’re going to set aside the entire virtual hard disk to Android but we need to create it first.

Select Create/modify partitions and keep moving.

Create/Modify partitions

This next screen may look daunting at first but it’s pretty straight forward when you think about it. The top section shows various drive facts such as:

Drive name: /dev/sda
Size: 6,442MB (6 Gigs)

The middle section shows that there are currently no partitions.

Hit the right arrow key to highlight the option along the bottom the screen, then press Enter.

Create a new KitKat partition in Virtualbox

Press enter again to make it a Primary Partition.

To be honest, I don’t think it matters if you pick the Logical Partition; however, the Primary partition makes the most sense to me so go with that.

If you’re curious about the differences between Primary and Logical partitions, just think of a Primary partition like a container which can comprise one or more logical partitions.

KitKat Virtualbox Primary Partition

Press enter again to confirm the size. Here I’m confirming the 6440.39 MB partition size.

Android 4.4 Kitkat Primary Partition Size Confirmation

Alright, now we need to make the partition bootable so make sure is highlighted below and press Enter. Make KitKat Virtualbox partition bootable

When you press enter it places the word “Boot” under the column called Flags between Name and Part Type. Now – keep pressing the right arrow key until you highlight .

Go for it, you’ve got this my friend.

VirtualBox KitKat Bootable Write in VirtualBox

Hit enter and you’ll see a confirmation warning about destroying all the data on your disk. Remember, this is your virtual disk not your real disk.

In other words, we’re about to nuke the Guest OS hard drive which is currently empty so this is perfectly safe and necessary. Type yes and hit Enter.

Erase KitKat data on bootable partition

When it finishes it’ll take you back to the previous screen. Just keep hitting the right arrow until you highlight .

Press enter so we can finish up. You should find yourself back in the Choose Partition screen; however, this time you should see your newly created Partition in the list.

Since we now have a place to park the KitKat installation we can start installing it. Select sda1 Linux and hit Enter. Choose Partition in VirtualBox for KitKat

Change the filesystem to ext3 and press Enter.

The other filesystems are for different purposes. ext2 is better suited for removable media such as USB flash drives and memory cards; however, the main advantage of ext3 is that it offers journaling.

Journaling file systems are ideal because they track file system changes in a log called a journal. This means that journaling file systems can recover faster from crashes and are less likely to get corrupted.

You definitely want this.

Choose Virtualbox Android Filesystem as ext3

You'll get a warning about losing all your data. This is fine because we have no data in the Guest OS.

Choose Yes and continue.

Virtualbox confirm format from sda1 to ext3

Install GRUB and hit Yes.

GRUB will give us the flexibility to boot up different Linux installations at startup.

Install Grub in Virtualbox for KitKat

Now hit Yes to install the /system directory as read-write.

Install /system directory as Read Write in Android KitKat Virtualbox

We're on the home stretch now baby!

Installing Android 4.4 Kitkat in Virtualbox Yay!

When you hit the finish line, in the VirtualBox menu bar, click Devices, go to CD/DVD Devices and choose Remove disk from virtual drive.

You might get a terrifying error about unmounting the disk. Don’t worry, just click Force unmount and choose Run Android-x86!

Run Android x86!

If it doesn’t start up right or it freezes, press Ctrl + r to manually restart the virtual machine.

In a few seconds it should boot up the GRUB loader. Just leave it alone for a few seconds and it’ll finish starting up.

VirtualBox GNU GRUB loader for KitKat

Now you can set it up just like a new tablet

Android welcome screen

By the way, if the mouse doesn’t work you may need to click Disable Mouse Integration from the Machine menu in the upper left corner of the Virtualbox window. This will keep the mouse gliding over the VirtualBox menu instead of getting trapped inside it.

On the Select Wi-Fi screen just click Skip. Virtualbox will use your host computers network card for data connectivity.

Select WiFi Network KitKat

And that's it!

Now you can download Google apps, setup Gmail and have a ball without fear of destroying a precious tablet.

Android 4.4 KitKat home screen

ancient article, working...

Detailed installation guide for Android-x86
Development for Android*
The emulator that comes with the Android SDK is not very fast.
The main idea is to use VirtualBox + Android X86 to overcome performance problems.

What we need:
Eclipse + Android SDK development environment here,
as well as VirtualBox.

Below the cut there are a lot of pictures and the installation process, as well as some useful tips.

Create a Virtual Machine:
Name: Android-2.2-Generic
Operating system: Linux
Version: Linux 2.6
Memory: 512 MB
Hard disk: 3GB

In Machine Settings:

Properties->Network
Adapter 1 - NAT (in a virtual machine it will be visible as eth0, for the Internet).
Adapter 2 - Virtual host adapter (will be visible in the virtual machine as eth1, for ADB management).

Connect the image to the virtual machine.
And so let’s check the parameters of the machine.

Starting the virtual machine

Control is performed by arrows left, right, up, down

Step by step how to install Linux:

In the bootloader, select the menu item
1. Installation - Install Android-x86 to harddisk
We create sections.
2. Create/Modify partitions
Select -> -> Size (in MB) 3216 press
Choose
Select confirm recording changes yes
Exit
Selecting a partition for installation
3. Select partitions to install Android-X86

File system selection
4. Please select a filesystem to format sda1

Confirm formatting Yes
Installing the GRUB boot loader
5. Do you want install boot loader GRUB?
Confirm Yes
You want to make /system read-write
6. Do you want to install /system directory as read-write?
Confirm Yes

This image contains many examples of Snake, NotePad from Eclipse it will not be possible to install your own, at the very bottom of the article there is a utility to solve this problem.
The installation process is complete
7. Android-x86 is installed successfully.
Create an SD card

size 2000 MB
disable CD-ROM

Reboot the system
Reboot

Hotkeys:

esc, right mouse button Back
menu button between right ctrl and alt, missing on some laptops
alt+f1, alt+f7 switch between consoles
alt+cursor left, alt + cursor right
f6 Mode selection, airplane mode, shutdown
, overload
win home key

If your mouse cursor does not work.
Go to Machine->Disable mouse integration host + i (default host key is right ctrl).

Unlock the screen by pulling the arrow up

Network configuration
By default, the emulator cannot work with two network adapters - no problem. We need internet + internal address for debugging.
Let's go to launch applications

Selecting an application
Settings -> Configure Ethernet
Set eth0 dhcp and select save.

Reboot the Emulator.
When the machine boots, switch to the text console alt+f1

Magic order
root@android:/ #
#netcfg
# netcfg eth1 down
# netcfg eth1 dhcp
*action "dhcp" failed (invalid argument)*
*without this command the address was not allocated at all*
# netcfg eth1 up
#netcfg
Everything looks something like this.

Remember the eth1 address; it will be needed for adb.

Steps for setting up a network with the console, unfortunately, must be done every time you start the emulator again.

Now on the computer go to the folder where the Android-SDK is located, on your system there may be a different folder
C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools\
We use the adb command eth1 address, mine was 192.168.56.101

The output will be similar:
C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb connect 192.168.56.101
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
connected to 192.168.56.101:5555

Let's run Eclipse.

An example of a working application.

What to do if I want to install NotePad, Snake and other examples
You can install this utility SystemApp_Remover_4_19.ap.

The installation process will look something like this.
C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb install c:\temp\SystemApp_Remover_4.19.apk

Then remove from the list of system applications what Eclipse conflicts with

p/s Switching video modes.
In the Boot Menu press e
Another menu will appear
kernel /android-2.2/kernel /quiet root ....
Press e again and add vga=ask at the end of the line separated by a space
To boot, press enter b, and then select the desired mode from the list.

p/p/s This is my first post on Habré, don’t judge strictly.

Forward >

Jan 29, 2018 22:48

The personal computer has long ceased to be just a means of obtaining information, a tool for performing complex operations. Installing Android on Virtual Box will allow you not only to plunge into the gaming world, but also to master the popular OS.

First, let's look at the phenomenon of a “virtual machine,” or more precisely, what it is.

Virtual Box is software that emulates popular operating systems. The technology is used for “remote” work with MS Windows, Linux, macOS and other operating systems.

Today we will install the Android platform using the capabilities of the tool mentioned above.

"Screwing" is a delicate matter

To complete the task, we need a pre-installed virtual machine. Let's look at the set without which it will be impossible to install the Android system. We will need:

A functioning emulation program (the distribution is freely available).
Installation disk image with ISO extension. We use the most stable version of Android OS – 6.0 x86.
Sufficient size of internal storage - for correct operation you will need at least 8 GB.

It is important to know!

Before starting installation activities, check the virtualization settings found in the BIOS. Otherwise, the Android virtual machine will not start.

Preliminary activities

For ease of understanding, we provide an example of installing the software in the form of step-by-step instructions.

Direct installation

We act according to the previously defined narrative scheme. Let's look at the process of installing the system on a virtual machine for Android emulation:

Android OS setup process

After restarting the PC, we see a welcome window for the new operating system. through easy manipulations, the following is set here: language, account, date and time, user name.

The process of installing Android through a virtual machine is fraught with certain difficulties. They can be avoided by using specialized Windows emulators that provide access to popular software from other platforms.

Instead of a conclusion

Any user with a certain level of training can install and configure an emulating program, download the installation file of the required OS, initiate and complete the installation process. Today’s article gave a clear example of the accessibility and ease of the manipulations performed.

VMware Workstation is paid software from the American company VMware, a leader in the field of IT infrastructure virtualization technologies. WMvare Workstation is a set of application programs, system services and drivers that emulate new computer hardware in the operating system environment where this software is installed. VMWare Workstation software provides a simple and convenient environment for creating virtual machines, with different operating systems and use them simultaneously, just as it would happen on real hardware. You can install almost any operating system (guest OS) on a virtual computer (virtual machine) and use it in parallel with the main one. For example, on a real computer with the Windows operating system, VMware Workstation virtualization tools allow you to create virtual machines (VM - Virtual Machine, VM) and install on them any of the most common operating systems supported by this software product. Virtual machines, just like real ones, have their own hardware configuration created by VMware Workstation tools - processor, memory, disks, their own BIOS, etc. and, from the point of view of the installed or already installed operating system, are no different from real machines. Each virtual machine operates in its own environment, isolated from others, and can be turned off, rebooted or reset without any impact on the real or other virtual machines. Formatting a virtual hard disk, changing its boot records, deleting or adding partitions, and other potentially dangerous actions do not in any way affect the real computer hardware, which turns the virtual machine into an ideal tool for dangerous experiments, debugging system and application software, mastering new operating systems and means of their administration. In addition, VMware Workstation allows you to create snapshots of the system, i.e. save the current state of the virtual machine, and perform a return (rollback) to the saved state.

Installing Android on a VMware Workstation virtual machine

The Android OS distribution can be downloaded from the links on the android-x86 download page.

The download page contains links for downloading various Android distributions in the form of boot disk image files (iso file). For installation, you can use either the iso image file itself or a physical or virtual DVD drive with media on which the iso image is written before installing Android.

The process of creating a virtual machine in the VMWare Workstation environment is very simple and is performed using a special wizard launched by selecting “File” - “New virtual machine”.

However, at the moment, VMware Workstation software cannot correctly recognize distributions of the Android operating system family (they are identified as FreeBSD), and it is better to set some of the virtual hardware parameters yourself. In particular, this concerns the size of the disk space allocated for the virtual machine and the amount of RAM.

The 20GB disk space size suggested by the virtual machine creation wizard can be reduced several times by allocating 3-4GB, which will be quite enough. In standard installation mode, for example, OS Android x86 version 4.4, approximately 1.5GB of disk space will be used.

If you plan to transfer a virtual machine to another computer, then it is more convenient to use the “Save virtual disk in one file” mode. After clicking the “Next” button, a final window with the selected parameters of the virtual machine is displayed:

All parameters, except for the amount of RAM, can be left with the values suggested by the wizard. Using 256MB of RAM is very undesirable because the virtual machine runs too slowly. This is especially evident during the installation of the Android OS, therefore, at least for this time, you need to increase the size of the allocated RAM to 0.5GB or more, if possible. To change the amount of memory of a virtual machine, you need to click the “Hardware Setup” button at the bottom of the window with the parameters selected by the wizard.

After clicking the “Finish” button, the wizard will turn on the virtual machine and begin booting from the Android installation disk. A window with the bootloader menu will appear on the screen:

To check the compatibility of the equipment with the selected Android OS distribution, instead of installing the system, you can boot it using the first menu item - “Live CD – Run Android-x86 without installation”. To install the system on a virtual hard disk, use the last menu item – “Installation – install Android-x86 on harddisk”.

At the initial stage, you will need to create logical partitions on the virtual hard disk for the system being installed:

Select “Create/Modify Partitions”, and the program for working with hard drive partitions cfdisk will be launched. The screen displays information about the characteristics of the hard drive /dev/sda and existing markup that is missing and represented as free space Free Space

At the bottom of the screen there are buttons for selecting program menu items. Move between items using the arrow buttons, and select by pressing Enter. To create a partition, select “New”, then “Primary” and set the partition size, and set the bootable partition flag. As a result, we get a primary partition sda1 of a given size:

To write the prepared partition configuration to the virtual hard disk, click the “Write” button. When asked to confirm the entry, you must answer “yes”. After recording is complete, exit the cfdisk program by selecting the “Quit” menu item.

At the next stage, you need to select a partition to install the system (sda1):

After selecting a partition, you must specify the file system that will be created when formatting it - ext3, and answer “Yes” to the confirmation prompt before starting formatting. After it is completed, you will be prompted to install the bootloader grub:

Installation must be allowed grub by selecting the “Yes” option. Further installation steps can be confirmed by pressing “Enter” until a success message appears:

You can select any of the modes, “Run Android-x86” or “Reboot” and as a result, either immediately or after a reboot, you will proceed to setting up the Android environment. At this stage, the system language is selected:

To navigate, use the Up/Down arrow keys, confirm your selection with the right arrow and Enter, or click on the gray triangle on the right.

After selecting the “Russian” language, the installation will continue with messages displayed in Russian:

We skip choosing a Wi-Fi network, since the easiest way is to use a virtual Ethernet adapter in NAT mode, emulated by VMware. With this option, a virtual machine running the Android operating system will have access to the Internet without any additional settings. If necessary, you can change the network parameters even after the system installation is completed.

During further installation, you must enter the details of an existing Google account or create a new one, enter user information, set the date and time, and, if desired, create a comfortable working environment with your preferred set of menu items. As a result, we will get a virtual machine with the Android-x86 operating system installed

You can use the arrow keys to navigate; to return to the previous level, use the Esc. To go to the console with rights root you can use a keyboard shortcut Alt+F1, to return to the graphical environment - Alt+F7. To clear the console screen, use the command clear. To eliminate unnecessary screen rotation in a virtual machine environment, it makes sense to change the orientation settings from “Automatic” to landscape or portrait. In addition, it is advisable to disable the transition of the virtual PC to sleep mode when the user is inactive (Settings - Display - Sleep mode).

Virtual machine VirtualBox(Oracle VM VirtualBox) is a relatively young virtualization software product that is rapidly gaining popularity due to its quality, cross-platform, free, multi-language support, convenience and ease of use. VirtualBox is easily installed in the environment of most modern operating systems and allows you to programmatically emulate standard computer hardware, the so-called virtual machine, which can be used almost in the same way as a real computer. A virtual machine has its own virtual devices - processor, memory, peripheral devices, as well as its own BIOS. You can install almost any operating system (guest OS) on a virtual machine and use it in parallel with the main one. So, for example, on a real Windows computer you can install a virtual machine (VM) with a Linux operating system and use both operating systems simultaneously. You can add virtual machines running Windows, Mac OS X, Android or even MS DOS to them. Virtual machines are completely isolated from each other and from the main system and, for example, accidentally formatting the hard drive of one of the VMs will not affect the others. However, it is possible to configure interaction between real and virtual machines over a local network, organize data exchange via the clipboard, removable media, shared folders, etc.
Important feature VirtualBox is the ability to create a snapshot of the state of a virtual machine, and, if necessary, at any time, perform a full rollback to this state. There can be several snapshots, for example, the state of the system immediately after installation, the state after installing device drivers, etc. Rolling back the current state of a virtual machine is possible using any of the existing snapshots.
In other words, a virtual machine is a very convenient tool for learning new operating systems, debugging software, conducting experiments without disturbing the operation of the main OS, researching viruses, diagnostic and recovery tools, and simply for running several operating systems in parallel on one computer.

Installing Oracle VM Virtualbox

The current version of Oracle VM VirtualBox can be downloaded on the project download page, where there are links to download installation packages for Windows x86/x64, Linux, Solaris and OS X.

Installation in a Windows environment must be performed under a user account with administrator rights.

During the further installation of VirtualBox, a warning will be issued:

This means that when installing VirtualBox network drivers, current network connections will be reset and a temporary disconnection from the network will occur. If, for example, in parallel with the installation, data is being exchanged with a network drive, it will fail with an error. If you are not working on the network, then briefly disabling the adapters will have no effect, and you should allow the installation to continue by pressing a button Yes. Otherwise, you need to shut down the network resources first.

After the installation is complete, the main software module for the VirtualBox user - Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager (Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager) will be launched:

Installing Android on an Oracle VM VirtualBox virtual machine

All actions to create virtual machines, change their settings, import and export configurations, etc. can be performed using the manager Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager(in Russian-language software - Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager) or using the command line utility VboxManage.exe. The latter has somewhat greater capabilities for setting up virtual machines, but is more difficult to use.

Installing a guest OS on a virtual machine can be roughly divided into 2 stages:

Creating the required virtual machine using VirtualBox;

The download source (media with the Android-x86 distribution) is determined by the virtual machine settings. It can be a real or virtual CD/DVD drive, floppy disk, HDD, boot disk image or local network. By default, the boot order is as follows - floppy disk, CD-ROM, hard disk, Network. This order can be changed in the virtual machine settings.

When you launch VirtualBox for the first time, the main program window is displayed with a welcome message and an activated button Create to create a new VM:

When creating a new virtual machine, the following parameters are defined:

Virtual machine name. In accordance with it, a directory with virtual machine files will be created. Default is directory C:\Users\User\VirtualBox VMs\. If desired, the location of the virtual machine files can be changed.

The type of operating system that will be installed on the virtual machine. In the case of Android OS, you can select Linux. The type and version of the virtual machine OS are not particularly important and serve only to determine its parameters, such as the amount of RAM, hard drive capacity, etc., offered by the program during the creation of the VM.

OS version. In this case, you can choose, for example, Oracle (32bit).

After clicking on the “Forward” button, the program will proceed to the step of allocating the resources of the real machine for the needs of the created virtual one. The suggested parameters for the Linux/Oracle (32bit) configuration are 512 MB of RAM and 12 GB of hard disk space. If necessary, the parameters can be determined based on your own preferences, for example, increasing the amount of RAM allocated to the virtual machine.

Here is an example of allocating 1024 MB of RAM to a virtual machine, instead of the recommended 512 MB. When allocating memory, you need to take into account its actual size and the minimum requirements of the guest OS. In the case of Android-x86 version 4.4 r2, allocating less than 512 MB of memory will result in very low performance, especially during the OS installation stage. Increasing the volume above 1024MB, as a rule, is not required for the standard use of this virtual machine. Improper memory allocation between the real and virtual machines can result in poor performance for both.

A virtual machine's hard disk (virtual hard disk) is a special file format in the Windows file system. A virtual disk can be created either dynamic or fixed. A dynamic disk is created not for the entire volume specified by the setting, but for part of it, and increases as needed during the operation of the virtual machine. To obtain maximum performance of the guest operating system, it is better to choose a fixed virtual hard disk, and to save disk space, it is better to choose a dynamic one. The minimum hard drive size for Android 4.4 r2 is approximately 1.5GB.

VirtualBox allows you to use several different virtual disk data formats:

Most of the settings that are defined during the creation of a new virtual machine can be changed later if necessary.

After the virtual machine creation process is completed, the button becomes active Tune, which allows you to change some of its settings, add or remove virtual devices, change their operating modes, and manage the distribution of resources of the real operating system.

The distribution for the Android guest operating system can be downloaded from the links on the android-x86 download page.

This page contains links for downloading various Android distributions in the form of boot disk image files (iso file). When installing Android on a virtual machine, you can use either the iso image file itself or a physical or virtual DVD drive with media on which the iso image is written. The easiest way is to use an .iso file connected as a VirtualBox virtual DVD drive.

The virtual machine is launched by pressing a button Launch. After the VM starts, a message about usage is displayed on the screen Automatic keyboard capture

This means that when the cursor is within the VM window, keyboard input will be performed for the virtual machine. By default, to switch keyboard input between real and virtual machine windows, use right Ctrl. The current input state is displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the virtual machine window.

The green color of the arrow means that keyboard input will be performed for the virtual machine, gray - for the real one.

To install the operating system on a virtual machine, you will need to boot from the installation disk. In the VirtualBox environment, it is possible to boot not only from standard devices (CD/DVD drive, flash drive, network...) but also using a virtual drive created based on the boot disk image.

When you start a virtual machine for the first time, when there is no guest operating system installed yet, VirtualBox will prompt you to select a boot device

By default, it is assumed that booting will be performed using a physical drive (“Host Drive”). Instead of a physical drive, you can select an image file, for example android-x86-4.4-r2.iso, which will be connected as a virtual device with an installation CD/DVD disk.

When you press the button Continue will boot from the virtual drive and install the guest operating system (Android-x86 4.4 r2)

A window with the bootloader menu will appear on the screen:

At the initial stage, you will need to create logical partitions on the virtual hard disk for the system being installed:

At the next stage, you need to select a partition to install the system (sda1):

Installation must be allowed grub by selecting the “Yes” option. Further installation steps can be confirmed by pressing “Enter” until a success message appears:

To navigate, use the Up/Down arrow keys, confirm your selection with the right arrow and Enter, or click on the gray triangle on the right.

After selecting the “Russian” language, the installation will continue with messages displayed in Russian:

You can use the arrow keys to move between application icons, and use the arrow key to return to the previous level. Esc.

Once the installation is complete, make sure your virtual machine is configured to boot Android from the virtual hard disk rather than the virtual installation DVD. You can disable the virtual DVD drive based on the .iso file and connect a physical DVD drive instead. Or change the boot order through the menu – “Configure – System – Motherboard”:

In the Android x86 OS environment, it is possible to switch between the graphical shell and the user console with rights root. You can use a key combination to go to the console Alt+F1(CTRL+ALT+F1). After pressing this combination, a flashing cursor will appear on the screen. After pressing “Enter” you will be prompted to enter commands for root:

root@x86:/ #

To clear the console screen, use the command clear.

The terminal uses a shell sh And BusyBox- a set of UNIX command line utilities used as the main interface in embedded operating systems. To obtain brief reference information, you can use the following commands:

busybox –help- display busybox prompt

busybox –list- display a list of busybox functions

busybox ip –help- display a hint on how to use the command ip

Please note that the superuser root has unlimited rights in the system, and before experimenting with it, it is recommended to take a snapshot of the state of the virtual machine in order to be able to restore its functionality.

To return to the graphical environment, use the combination Alt+F7(CTRL+ALT+F7).

In addition, I note that to eliminate unnecessary screen rotation in a virtual machine environment, it makes sense to change the orientation settings from “Automatic” to landscape or portrait. In addition, it is advisable to disable the transition of the virtual PC to sleep mode when the user is inactive (Settings - Display - Sleep mode).