The initial Ubuntu Touch Emulator installation instructions changed so if you've installed the first experimental release, use the instructions below to create new instances.
Below you can watch a quick Ubuntu Touch Emulator test video I've recoded in Ubuntu 14.04:
( direct video link )
Install Ubuntu Touch Emulator in Ubuntu 14.04, 13.10 and 12.04
Ubuntu 14.04 users can install Ubuntu Touch Emulator from the official Ubuntu repositories, by using the following command:
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-emulator
For Ubuntu 13.10 or 12.04 , you'll need to use a PPA to install the Ubuntu Touch emulator. Add the PPA and install the emulator using the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:phablet-team/tools
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-emulator
The Ubuntu Emulator package is also available in the
Ubuntu SDK PPA , but it's an older version at the time I'm writing this article (about one month older than the one from the Phablet Tools PPA).
Note that I've only tested it in Ubuntu 14.04 and 12.04, but it should also work in Ubuntu 13.10 since the PPA above has packages for it.
Creating and running instances
1. The first thing you need to do is create a new instance - we'll call it "UbuntuTouch" in the commands below:
sudo ubuntu-emulator create UbuntuTouch
On Ubuntu 12.04, you may get the following error:
Error while converting ~/.local/share/ubuntu-emulator/UbuntuTouch/system.img: Unknown option 'compat'
qemu-img: Invalid options for file format 'qcow2'.
I'm not sure why this error is displayed, but the emulator runs just fine so ignore it.
2. Then, run the new instance by using the following command:ubuntu-emulator run UbuntuTouch
If you want to interact with the emulator via an interactive ADB session, log in here using "phablet" (without the quotes) for both the username and password . It's not required to log in here if you only want to use the Ubuntu Touch Emulator GUI.
After this, it might take another few minutes and Unity 8 with Mir should be loaded in the Ubuntu Touch Emulator.
In theory, Ubuntu Touch emulator should support some parameters, such as setting the memory ("--memory"), which by default is set to 512mb of RAM, but for some reason the instance doesn't start when using this, or at least it didn't in my test.
- the downloaded images are stored under ~/.cache/ubuntuimages
- the images are stored under ~/.local/share/ubuntu-emulator
Deleting instances
To delete an Ubuntu Touch Emulator instance , use the following command:sudo ubuntu-emulator destroy UbuntuTouch
Where "UbuntuTouch" is the name of the instance you've created. If you can't remember the name, you can run the command below to list your Ubuntu Touch Emulator instances:
ubuntu-emulator list
Creating / restoring snapshots
Ubuntu Touch Emulator supports disk snapshots - to take a snapshot , use the following command:
ubuntu-emulator snapshot --create=SNAPSHOT1 UbuntuTouch
where "SNAPSHOT1" is the name of the snapshot and "UbuntuTouch" is the name of your instance created above.
Then, when you wish to restore this snapshot , use:ubuntu-emulator snapshot --revert=SNAPSHOT1 UbuntuTouch
You can also use "--revert-pristine" to
revert to the originally created snapshot .
Refrences: