How to install Android 4.0 ICS in Virtualbox? Step by step installation guide

Finally day before yesterday I managed to install Android ICS with active ethernet and functional play store inside Virtualbox (which is inside Ubuntu 12.04). It took me 3-4 attempts with different ISOs. And to my rescue came the blog Android x86. I am heavily indebted to it, though I tweaked a few things here and there to make it work for me.

From Android 4.0 ICS

To begin, you need to download four things:

1. Virtualbox itself. You can get it from Ubuntu software center or from Virtualbox website. I have 4.1.18 for Linux, you can download for windows or mac as well, depending on your system. And install it.

2. Download the latest Android 4.0 version from Buil Droid. It is the OS which we'll be loading in virtualbox, 109.1 MB in size.

3. Android SDK files - the default android installed without any Play Store or apps. To install apps, you need it installed in your system. You can download it from here. Step by step instructions to install are given in the site itself.

4. Apps by by314 from this deposit files. It has some cool app collection like gmail, google maps, play store, etc. which we'll install in the vanilla android OS which we downloaded in couple of steps before.

Step 1: Once virtualbox is installed and Ova file from Buil Droid is downloaded, double click on the Android-4.0.3_bd2a.ova file. Automatically, it will install itself in virtualbox with predefined settings.

From Android 4.0 ICS

Click import and you'll see Android-4.0.3-bd2 in virtualbox.

From Android 4.0 ICS

Select it and press Enter, Android ICS will start and show you the grub.

From Android 4.0 ICS

Continue with the second option selected and it will boot Android. You'll see the default Android screen, like the one given below (this is after I changed the black-blue wallpaper and installed a few apps).

From Android 4.0 ICS

Open browser, internet should work. If it doesn't, go to virtualbox, select Android 4.0.3 bd2, click setting -> Network -> select Bridged Adapter as Attached to and wlan0 (if wifi) or eth0 (if your default system internet is through lan cord). Again restart Andriod, internet should work.

From Android 4.0 ICS

It will vanilla Android. In step 2, we'll install some cool apps along with market/play store. For that, go to Setting -> check about tablet to confirm you've Anroid 4.0.3 and finally go to Developer options -> check USB debugging for the outside system to connect to the Android inside virtualbox.

From Android 4.0 ICS

From Android 4.0 ICS

Step 2: In step 2, unzip (for Linux) install Android SDK to your linux or windows from the file you downloaded earlier. Installation will take a bit of time depending on internet connection. Follow the default instruction link provided in the Android SDK site.

Go inside Android-sdk-linux -> tools folder (for Ubuntu, Windows 7 one is easy, one simple .exe file), and click on Andriod.

From Android 4.0 ICS

From Android 4.0 ICS

Once installed, unzip the apps you had downloaded earlier. It has a folder named gapps_buildroid_modby314 inside. I purposively unzipped it inside ./Home/Arindam/Downloads so that I can access it easily via terminal.

Now open a terminal. Locate the adb file in the Android-sdk-linux -> platform_tools directory.

From Android 4.0 ICS

Another thing which is required is the IP of the Android distro. This is required as well are going to launch a FTP service to push the apps inside Android. I had the advantage of having scores of Linux distros inside my virtualbox and I checked ip configuration on one of them & found it be 192.168.1.4. So, I tried 192.168.1.5 onwards (my actual system has 192.168.1.3) and 192.168.1.6 worked.

To check if it is working, I opened browser inside Android OS running and typed in my system Linux (which is the main OS in my computer) terminal:
arindam@arindam-K55VM:~$ /home/arindam/Downloads/android-sdk-linux/platform-tools/adb connect 192.168.1.6
and it showed "connected to 192.168.1.4:5555". If it is unable to connect, it will show the same. Kind of trial and error method, but I didn't find any other method that worked for me.

Once you're able to connect, type
arindam@arindam-K55VM:~$ /home/arindam/Downloads/android-sdk-linux/platform-tools/adb remount

followed by
arindam@arindam-K55VM:~$ cd ./Downloads/gapps_buildroid_modby314

to move to the directory where your apps are.

And then we'll start pushing the apps by
arindam@arindam-K55VM:~/Downloads/gapps_buildroid_modby314$ /home/arindam/Downloads/android-sdk-linux/platform-tools/adb push system /system/

You'll see something of a screen below:

From Android 4.0 ICS

Once complete you'll see all the applications that we pushed inside Andriod. Close the browser that you had opened earlier and check the apps installed, you'll see gmail, playstore, maps, gtalk, etc.

From Android 4.0 ICS

From Android 4.0 ICS

It has superuser & terminal emulator as well. I installed GO Launcher EX from Play Store as well along with other free apps.

From Android 4.0 ICS

From Android 4.0 ICS

From Android 4.0 ICS

However, still this installation has quite a few limitations, like Facebook apk doesn't work with it, neither temple run. I'll do some research on how to make these fun apps work with the laptop installation; if I find something useful, I'll document it in my blog.