Android 9 (and above?) on Parallels 15

Leaving this here in case anyone wants to try this since Parallels only fully supports whatever version of Android can be installed through the New VM thing. Currently that's Android 8, which works fine.

Was also able to get Android 9 working by downloading and using the image from Android_x86. The trick is to add 'nomodeset' after 'quiet' in the kernel boot line in grub. Otherwise, the boot sequence stops short of starting the gui with a #console prompt.

Unsure if this trick works in Android 10 as well, but it's worth a shot if anyone's having a problem.

Now if there's an easy way to get to the boot partition to permanently modify grub.config...

 

Lol... Now to modify the grub menu:
1. Boot into the #console prompt
2. Become superuser: # su
3. Create a temp directory 'USB' (use something else if it exists) on 'mnt':
# mkdir /mnt/USB
4. Mount the grub partition to /mnt/USB: # mount /dev/block/sda1 /mnt/USB
5. Now just edit the menu file in vi: # vi /mnt/USB/grub/menu.lst
6. Add 'nomodeset' after 'quiet' in the first kernel line.
7. When done editing, :wq! in vi
8. Unmount the grub partition: # umount /mnt/USB
9. Delete the temp directory if you created it: # rmdir /mnt/USB
10. Reboot the system: # reboot
11. Grub should now be correct for booting Android 9 in Parallels 15.

 

Thank you!
I'll not you don't need to force the :wq command (no explanation point).
Is this exposing a bug in Parallels Desktop ACPI?
I'm going to add this line just in case someone is searching for a solution:
ACPI error AE_NOT_FOUND Evaluating _CRS

 

I think the Linux VMs also start with an AE_NOT_FOUND, so I'm going to guess it might be a feature more than a bug.

 

I should add that the only problem I'm having with this atm is how to deal with Android going to sleep. There doesn't seem to be a consistent way to wake it up without forcing a reboot.

 

Hm, I'm resuming from suspension just fine. Using Android x86_64 9.0 rc1

 

Suspension is fine. I can suspend and unsuspend with no difficulty from the Parallels menu.

Sleep is where the screen goes blank and there's no way to get it back. Previous versions appear to have had a way to wake it up using Esc, Menu (command?), Left, Right, Up, and (or? wasn't clear) Down keys.

 

Ok... Found it. Need to set up a keyboard setting in Parallels for Android (Generic) that maps Opt-Cmd to Menu. Then you can wake it from Sleep Mode (set from Taskbar's Power Menu) by holding down Opt-Cmd until the screen reappears.

 

That sounds difficult,bro.

 

Awesome...the bluetooth dongle can't be attached for unknown reasons.

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

OK, I figured out the USB connect voodoo by mucking about with Windows10: You have to disconnect then reconnect the device in software via the USB device menu. You also have to disable the (useless) Parallels Desktop bluetooth device.

While this works in Windows 10, Android x86 still doesn't use the USB device even though I've confirmed the device now shows up using the USB Hot Controller app:



I think I have to disable the (again, useless) Parallels Desktop bluetooth device, but don't know how. PD doesn't provide an option to do this

 

Welp, that didn't last long. Now I can't attach the device anymore. Tried rebooting. Tried reattaching like 20 times.

I have no idea how it attached the one time. There doesn't appear to be any pattern

 

OK, I figured out one piece of the puzzle: Catalina automatically switches bluetooth devices when you plug one in.
To turn this on/off you use:

Code:

sudo nvram bluetoothHostControllerSwitchBehavior=always
sudo nvram bluetoothHostControllerSwitchBehavior=never

Turning this off I can attach the dongle reliably, but Android still doesn't load it.

I originally purchased this dongle based on a Reddit post (don't laugh) and looking back he was using Android 4.4. Perhaps Android 9 lacks the driver, or has a buggy driver.

It would be nice to try the Apple built-in adapter like I could with the older version of Parallels Desktop, but this doesn't appear to be an option any longer unless I reinstall Yosemite.

 

It isn't.

 

Holy moley what a frustrating process.

I switched to VirtualBox and tired to install Android 4.4 several times. It failed for various reasons so I tried a VMDK pre-install who was a different kind of nightmare (File Manager doesn't have root permissions? wtf?) It also liked to rotate the screen for no reason other than to piss me off. Lovely.

So the upside is 4.4 will work with the dongle, but the app doesn't seem to run correctly on 4.4 (which is admittedly ancient, but they CLAIM it works on 4.4).

What a lovely catch 22 we have here!

 

So the app kinda, maybe, works after you relaunch it a bunch of times. It fails to do the firmware update but kinda works otherwise.....kinda.

Unfortunately there is no bug report form or github for Android to report the driver problems.

 

Exactly what app are you trying to run?

 

Oh, just the Anker Soundcore app (and some other things). I confirmed that the driver for the bluetooth device (wlcon) is missing in 9.0 and filed a bug report. We'll see what happens.

Ultimately I had to borrow a friend's iPhone to update the firmware.

 

Ok... So it's not just BT, it's BT Audio on top of that.

 

No, it's just the missing BT driver