"[android] Emulator did not appear to start; giving up"

Question

Jenkins can't start the emulator. Here is the console output of jenkins:

First time build. Skipping changelog.
Starting xvnc
[MatchMaking] $ vncserver :65 -localhost -nolisten tcp

New 'veam:65 (jenkins)' desktop is veam:65

Starting applications specified in /var/lib/jenkins/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /var/lib/jenkins/.vnc/veam:65.log

$ /usr/local/android-sdk/tools/android list target
[android] Using Android SDK: /usr/local/android-sdk
[android] Adding 256M SD card to AVD 'hudson_en-US_160_WXGA720_android-15_x86'...
$ /usr/local/android-sdk/platform-tools/adb start-server
$ /usr/local/android-sdk/tools/emulator -snapshot-list -no-window -avd hudson_en-US_160_WXGA720_android-15_x86
[android] Starting Android emulator and creating initial snapshot
[android] Erasing existing emulator data...
$ /usr/local/android-sdk/tools/emulator -no-boot-anim -ports 60491,34583 -prop persist.sys.language=en -prop persist.sys.country=US -avd hudson_en-US_160_WXGA720_android-15_x86 -no-snapshot-load -no-snapshot-save -wipe-data
SDL init failure, reason is: No available video device
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 39546 *
* daemon started successfully *
[android] Emulator did not appear to start; giving up
$ /usr/local/android-sdk/platform-tools/adb disconnect localhost:34583
[android] Stopping Android emulator
$ /usr/local/android-sdk/platform-tools/adb kill-server
Terminating xvnc.
$ vncserver -kill :65
Killing Xvnc4 process ID 16861
Finished: NOT_BUILT

If I type in

/usr/local/android-sdk/tools/emulator -snapshot-list -no-window -avd hudson_en-US_160_WXGA720_android-15_x86

or

/usr/local/android-sdk/tools/emulator -no-boot-anim -ports 60491,34583 -prop persist.sys.language=en -prop persist.sys.country=US -avd hudson_en-US_160_WXGA720_android-15_x86 -no-snapshot-load -no-snapshot-save -wipe-data

I get

PANIC: Could not open: hudson_en-US_160_WXGA720_android-15_x86

I run jenkins on ubuntu 12.04.

Answer 1

The error "SDL init failure, reason is: No available video device" would suggest that the emulator isn't running in a graphical environment.

However, your log shows that a VNC server is being started. But perhaps the VNC server hasn't quite finished starting by the time the emulator starts.

You can check whether this is the case by delaying the emulator start by a few seconds.

From the Android Emulator plugin documentation:

Although the Android Emulator plugin has been designed to ensure it always runs after an Xvnc server has been started, the Xvnc plugin does not wait for the Xvnc server to be fully up-and-running before handing control over to the Android Emulator plugin.

For this reason, you may want to delay emulator startup by a few seconds (e.g. three to five), giving the Xvnc server time to finish starting-up before attempting to launch an Android emulator into it. To do so, enter the desired number of seconds in the "Startup delay" field under "Advanced" options.

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Alternatively, you can untick the "Show emulator window" option in your job configuration, which won't show the emulator, and will remove the need to run a VNC server.