Files and directories

Sarab keeps everything in the usual places under your home directory. sarab info prints every path in use:

Directories
mode           installed
data           /home/you/.local/share/sarab/android
overlay        /home/you/.local/share/sarab/overlay (ok)
state          /home/you/.local/state/sarab
runtime        /run/user/1000/sarab
icons          /home/you/.local/share/sarab/icons
sarab-ns       /home/you/.local/lib/sarab/sarab-ns
sarab-hostd    /home/you/.local/lib/sarab/sarab-hostd

Where things are

Sarab follows the XDG base directories:

What	Where
The Android image, Android’s data, and the files Sarab generates for it	$XDG_DATA_HOME/sarab/android, usually ~/.local/share/sarab/android, or the directory you chose with --data-dir
Logs	$XDG_STATE_HOME/sarab, usually ~/.local/state/sarab
The FIFO for Android’s kernel log, the start lock	$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/sarab
Sarab’s own overlay files for the image	<prefix>/share/sarab/overlay
sarab-ns, sarab-hostd	<prefix>/lib/sarab
Launcher entries for Android’s apps	~/.local/share/applications/sarab.<package>.desktop
Their icons	~/.local/share/sarab/icons
The saved data directory, if you chose one	~/.config/sarab/data-dir

Set XDG_DATA_HOME or XDG_STATE_HOME in ~/.config/environment.d, not only in your shell’s startup file, or the systemd unit and your shell will use different directories.

Moving Android’s data

Choose where Android lives before the first download:

sarab setup --data-dir /mnt/big-disk/sarab

Sarab remembers the directory. It needs about 5 GB there, and checks the free space before it downloads anything. Changing the directory later only changes where Sarab looks: Android’s existing data is not moved with it yet.

Who owns Android’s files

Most of Android’s files belong to your sub-ids, 100000 and up, rather than to your own user: that is how Android’s many users map onto your one. It is also why a plain rm -rf cannot delete Android’s data. Use sarab purge, which deletes it from inside Android’s namespace.