Host your cloud Android with redroid

redroid (Remote Android) is a GPU-accelerated Android-in-Cloud (AIC) solution that integrates seamlessly with Olares. You can easily host high-performance Android instances on your Olares and access them anytime to run Android games, apps, or even automation tests.

This tutorial walks you through installing redroid on Olares and accessing the Android instance from Windows and macOS.

Objectives

By the end of this tutorial, you will learn how to:

• Install the required Linux kernel modules on the Olares host.
• Install the redroid app on Olares and get the service URL.
• Connect and operate the Android instance from Windows and macOS, using adb and scrcpy.
• Install APK apps on the Android instance.

Before you begin

Make sure the following requirements are met:

• Olares is installed and running on a Linux machine.

  Configuration requirements

  • redroid is only supported on Linux. Make sure your Olares instance is running on a Linux system.
  • redroid is resource-intensive. For best performance, we recommend using a machine with at least an 8-core CPU and 16GB of RAM.

• Your device and Olares are on the same local network.

  Remote access

  If your device is on a different network, use LarePass to enable a private network connection to Olares.

Install dependent kernel modules

redroid requires specific kernel modules to run on Linux. For details, refer to the official redroid docs.

For example, on Ubuntu, you can install the required kernel modules by running the following commands in the terminal:

sudo apt install linux-modules-extra-`uname -r`
sudo modprobe binder_linux devices="binder,hwbinder,vndbinder"
# This command might fail on newer kernels; the error can be safely ignored.
sudo modprobe ashmem_linux

Install redroid on Olares

redroid runs as a headless backend on Olares. To install redroid:

1. In Olares Market, find redroid under "Utilities", and click Get. redroid will launch automatically after installation.

2. Get the URL to access the redroid service:

   a. From Olares Desktop, navigate to Settings > Application > redroid.

   b. In Entrances > Set up endpoint, get the base domain of redroid, e.g., beb583c3.<olares_id>.olares.com.

   c. Append the exported port of redroid (46878) to the base domain.

   As redroid only allows local access, the domain should also include .local. Here is an example of our final URL to access the redroid service: beb583c3.local.olares01.olares.com:46878.

Connect to the redroid service

To access the Android instance on Olares, you'll need to connect to the redroid service using adb and render the UI using scrcpy.

Install APK

Once connected, you can use adb to install third-party APK apps on the Android instance.

After installation, run scrcpy again to render the Android screen. Swipe up to see the installed APK.

Common adb commands

Note

The following commands are for macOS and Linux. On Windows, replace adb with adb.exe.

# Start adb server
adb start-server

# Connect to a device
adb connect <url>:<port>

# List connected devices
adb devices

# Disconnect a device
adb disconnect <url>:<port>

# Install an APK by transport_id
adb -t 3 install your_app.apk

# View real-time logs
adb logcat

# Export logs to a file
adb logcat -v time > log.txt

# Push a file to the device
adb push <local_path> <device_path>

# Pull a file from the device
adb pull <device_path> <local_path>

# List directory contents on device
adb shell ls <path>

# View file contents
adb shell cat <file_path>

# Reboot the device
adb shell reboot

# Shut down the device
adb shell reboot -p