error: 'SDL init failure, reason is: No available video device' when launching AVD

Question

This is killing me. Every time I try to run my Android app in Eclipse, I'm getting the error:

[2011-05-24 23:11:04 - app] Android Launch!
[2011-05-24 23:11:04 - app] adb is running normally.
[2011-05-24 23:11:04 - app] Performing droid.blah.app activity launch
[2011-05-24 23:11:04 - app] Automatic Target Mode: launching new emulator with     compatible AVD 'default'
[2011-05-24 23:11:04 - app] Launching a new emulator with Virtual Device 'default'
[2011-05-24 23:11:04 - Emulator] SDL init failure, reason is: No available video device

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit and the Android 2.3.3 SDK. I've googled EXHAUSTIVELY to try to find a solution, tried installing all the 32-bit libraries that were suggested here, but they're already installed.

I'm seriously considering just moving to the 32-bit version of Ubuntu, but it seems from what I've read that other people can get it working. JUST NOT ME! Does anyone have any advice? Thanks!

Answer 1

You need more 32 bit libraries. ;)

On Ubuntu/Debian run:

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

Answer 2

I also got this same error when running automated builds on our Jenkins server. I think the problem is that the emulator needs to talk to an X display. If you are running this on your own machine, you can try setting the DISPLAY environment variable in the terminal before trying to launch the emulator. Something like:

export DISPLAY=:0.0

If you are running this on a headless Jenkins server, then you need to run an Xvnc session during the build to provide an X server for the emulator.