How to make system partition in AVD in emulator writable

Question

This is fairly a very old question but I am surprised that none of the solutions are working for me. I need to run an android app as system app in an AVD (in emulator) created for Android version 7.0. For this, I want to push apk file to system partition but I keep getting error saying it is read only file system. I found many similar questions on stackoverflow but nothing is working for me. I restarted adb in root, executed it with remount as suggested in answers to similar questions, but system partition file system permissions do not change. Here is a sample session:

mvsagar@mvslt:~/sw/android_sdk/platform-tools$ ./adb root
restarting adbd as root
mvsagar@mvslt:~/sw/android_sdk/platform-tools$ ./adb remount
remount succeeded
mvsagar@mvslt:~/sw/android_sdk/platform-tools$ ./adb push /home/mvsagar/projects/AndroidStudioProjects/LcnApps/app/LCNUE.apk  /system/app/LCNUE.apk
adb: error: failed to copy '/home/mvsagar/projects/AndroidStudioProjects/LcnApps/app/LCNUE.apk' to '/system/app/LCNUE.apk': couldn't create file: Read-only file system

I have tried manually remounting with read/write(rw) options using adb shell, but the remounting fails.

Is there any way to have read/write permission on system partition?

My dev env is Android Studio on Ubuntu.

Nonu · Answer 1 · 2018-02-21T16:58:12.623

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In my case, I use a avd( Based on: Android 8.0 (Oreo) Tag/ABI: google_apis/x86_64 ).

$ emulator -avd Nexus_5X_API_26_APIs -writable-system 
$ adb root 
$ adb remount

Then, /system is writeable.

$ adb push somefile /system/bin/ is work.

edited Feb 21 '18 at 16:58

answered Feb 21 '18 at 16:17

Nonu

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Is emulator command in the android tools? – htafoya May 10 '21 at 18:59

score 15 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 30 '20 at 15:57

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When working with Q, this is the only solution that worked for me: https://stackoverflow.com/a/64397712/1898527

Adding here the steps for completion (kudos to the original author):

> emulator -avd Pixel_3a_XL_API_29 -writable-system
> adb shell avbctl disable-verification
> adb disable-verity

Now reboot your emulator so that the changes take effect.

> adb root
> adb remount
> adb shell "su 0 mount -o rw,remount /system"

Note: you will need an emulator without Google Play, otherwise this won't work. You can get it by following the steps described here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/45668555/1898527

answered Nov 30 '20 at 15:57

narko

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Beautiful. It works to me! Other solution didn't work until I saw it for the "Q Emulator". Thanks! – Sebastian Diaz Dec 16 '20 at 21:22
Thanks Narko! Just realized emulator avd commands are a bit different in Windows. – Shishir Shetty May 24 '22 at 12:47
Thanks! Can confirm this works for an "R" emulator as well! (API version 30, no play store) – Vidhyasagar Jun 29 '22 at 02:30

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 07 '17 at 11:42

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use genymotion emulator, which is faster, light weight and pre rooted. (which means you can access system directory)

answered Mar 07 '17 at 11:42

Learn Pain Less

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score -1 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

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For the benefit of others, answer to the question was answered a long ago by @Ishamael in another stackoverflow question Read only file system on Android

edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

Community

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answered Mar 07 '17 at 14:07

mvsagar

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How to make system partition in AVD in emulator writable

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