Trouble running Android runtime environment via Waydroid – shared library and permissions error?

1

Hi everyone,
hoping to get some insight from anyone familiar with running Android container runtimes or LXC-based translation layers on NixOS.

I’ve been attempting to set up a sandboxed Android environment on my desktop (running unstable, Flakes-based setup with Sway/Wayland) to test out a few mobile utility apps and script automation packages. I configured Waydroid and everything boots into the Android interface fine, but certain APK binaries crash immediately upon execution or freeze at the main thread initialization.

Checking journalctl -u waydroid-container and adb logcat, I’m seeing missing library errors related to native dynamic dependencies (libEGL.so and libc++.so) along with permission denied warnings on execution hooks. I looked over some user guides and manual fix suggestions here regarding app initialization failures and missing dynamic hooks, but applying those workarounds inside the Nix store environment hasn’t been straightforward due to how Nix handles unpatched dynamic binaries.

Has anyone ran into similar ELF pathing or library linking issues when running modified or third-party APKs inside Waydroid/Anbox on NixOS? Should I be wrapping these binaries using autoPatchelfHook or setting up a dedicated FHS userenv container instead to handle the execution permissions properly?

Any suggestions on the cleanest way to structure the Nix configuration for this would be greatly appreciated!

2

Normally, when you run some unpatched binaries, you will receive the following prompt:

Could not start dynamically linked executable:
NixOS cannot run dynamically linked executables intended for generic
linux environments out of the box. For more information, see:
https://nix.dev/permalink/stub-ld

If your logs contain this, it is likely a NixOS issue, meaning you need to use a tool like nix-ld.