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 512MB or 1024MB and click Create.
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.
Now
back in the image list, 5.Select Virtual
device and select settings, a dialog box appears. In the dialog box select storage choose your Android.iso file for the installation.
If you don’t have CD/DVD writer, you can choose your file from your hard drive by adding SATA Controller which give you permission to install OS from your hard drive.
To add SATA Controller just right click on Storage Tree box and then click on “Add SATA Controller”.
After adding “SATA Controller”, right click on SATA Controller and click on “Add CD/DVD Device”.
After this, click on “Choose Disk” and select the (iso) file that you have downloaded.
After adding iso file to VM, click on that file shown on left side of VM and then mark the “Live CD/DVD” option.
Keep hitting the arrow keys until you select the Installation option – then hit Enter.
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.
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 [NEW] option along the bottom the screen, then pressEnter.
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.
Press enter again to confirm the size. Here I’m confirming the 6440.39 MB partition size.
Alright, now we need to make the partition bootable so make sure
[Bootable] is highlighted below and press Enter.
When you press enter it places the word “Boot” under the column called Flags between Nameand Part Type. Now – keep pressing the right arrow key until you highlight [Write].
Go for it, you’ve got this my friend.
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.
When it finishes it’ll take you back to the previous screen. Just keep hitting the right arrow until you highlight [Quit].
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.
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 offersjournaling.
Journaling file systems are ideal because they track file system changes in a log called ajournal. This means that journaling file systems can recovery faster from crashes and are less likely to get corrupted.
You definitely want this.
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.
Install GRUB and hit Yes.
GRUB will give us the flexibility to boot up different Linux installations at startup.
Now hit Yes to install the /system directory as read-write.
We’re on the home stretch now baby!
When you hit the finish line, in the VirtualBox menu bar, click Devices, go to CD/DVD Devicesand 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!
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.
Now you can set it up just like a new tablet
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.
And that’s it!
Now you can download Google apps, setup Gmail and have a ball without fear of destroying a precious tablet.
Have fun.
Adjusting Android-x86 screen resolution
- The screen orientation of Android-x86 is in landscape mode, but you may prefer portrait mode. To add this configuration, close VirtualBox completely and open the .vbox file in the machine folder found in the the VirtualBox VMs directory (most likely in your user directory). In the <ExtraData> section, add the following line: <ExtraDataItem name="CustomVideoMode1" value="400x600x16"/> or some other multiple of 320x480. Other ratios work but seem to have poorer performance. Save and close the file.
- Restart VirtualBox and reboot the machine. At the boot screen, press "e" to view the command-line configuration, and "e" again to actually edit it. Where the line has DPI=240, change it to DPI=160, and add vga=ask to the end of the line. Press Enter and then "b" to boot with this configuration. Changing the DPI allows the device to adopt a more natural size and resolution similar to what you would actually see on a phone. During boot you'll be prompted to see available resolutions and can choose the number for the resolution you entered.
- Optionally, you can avoid having to retype all of this with each reboot by editing the GRUB menu list. After booting, press Alt-F1 to enter the command line, and then mount the grub folder as follows: Enter su, then mkdir /data/fs, then mount -t ext3 /dev/block/sda1 /data/fs. Next edit the grub.lst file (eg vi /data/fs/grub/menu.lst, if you're familiar with vi) with the changes from above.
