Running Mobile Automation Scripts with Android Emulators on top of linux Docker containers

Robot Framework
1

We are currently trying to run Android mobile automation scripts on top of dockers with ubuntu as base image , so i created need a dockerfile with the below configurations :

Android Studio: Android Studio Dolphin | 2021.3.1 Patch 1
Appium: App Version 1.19.1
Node.js: v18.12.1
Java: openjdk 17.0.2 2022-01-18 LTS
OpenJDK Runtime Environment Corretto-17.0.2.8.1 (build 17.0.2+8-LTS)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Corretto-17.0.2.8.1 (build 17.0.2+8-LTS, mixed mode, sharing)
Python: 3.10.5
RobotFramework

Below Are the configuration which we have used to create the AVD

hw.ramSize=4096
vm.heapSize=1024
image.sysdir.1=system-images/android-33/google_apis/x86_64/
hw.internalStorage.path=/root/.android/avd/Incident_AVD.avd/sdcard.img
hw.internalStorage.size=16384MB
sdcard.size=16384MB

And copied our mobile scripts which are based on Robotframework into the container

While running the dockerfile , i am getting the below error

Waiting for emulator to start…
INFO | Storing crashdata in: /tmp/android-unknown/emu-crash-34.2.14.db, detection is enabled for process: 58
INFO | Android emulator version 34.2.14.0 (build_id 11834374) (CL:N/A)
INFO | Found systemPath /opt/android-sdk/system-images/android-33/google_apis/x86_64/
INFO | Storing crashdata in: /tmp/android-unknown/emu-crash-34.2.14.db, detection is enabled for process: 58
INFO | Duplicate loglines will be removed, if you wish to see each individual line launch with the -log-nofilter flag.
INFO | Increasing RAM size to 2048MB
WARNING | File System is not ext4, disable QuickbootFileBacked feature
ERROR | x86_64 emulation currently requires hardware acceleration!
CPU acceleration status: KVM requires a CPU that supports vmx or svm
More info on configuring VM acceleration on Linux:

General information on acceleration: Configure hardware acceleration for the Android Emulator  |  Android Studio  |  Android Developers.
Emulator not found. Exiting…

Q&A:

I am currently running this docker on an T3a.large

I have reached a bit on running the android emulators on linux dockers , Is there any way we can bypass this hardware acceleration and run the tests as iam ok to take a hit on performance.

Is it must that we need hardware acceleration to run this on *86-64 architecture .

Thanks

2

Well, looks like you are trying a very complicated setup.

If the error says it needs hardware acceleration then it must.
In my PC it needed, and Android Studio installs a driver for it.
Did you manage to run Android Emulator in docker? That is the first step to solve, and I would experiment first in a normal PC.

Also I don’t know if this is relevant:

WARNING | File System is not ext4, disable QuickbootFileBacked feature

Maybe you should have the same operating system as in T3a.large, as the base Docker image.

Good luck

1 Like