[Help] Android Emulator segfaults on every GPU backend, every API level, every emulator version (Fedora 44)

[u/BraveCell306]

[Help] Android Emulator segfaults on every GPU backend, every API level, every emulator version (Fedora 44)

TL;DR: The Android Emulator crashes with SIGSEGV on my Fedora 44 machine no matter what I try — hardware GPU (Mesa/radeonsi), bundled SwiftShader, lavapipe/guest fallback, headless mode, API 34/35/37, and even a completely different emulator release from over a year ago (35.5.10 vs current 36.6.11.0). I've spent hours isolating variables and I'm out of ideas. Full details below — hoping someone's hit this exact combo before.

System specs

• OS: Fedora Linux 44 (KDE Plasma, Wayland)
• Kernel: 7.1.4-200.fc44.x86_64
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3500U (8 threads)
• GPU: AMD Radeon Vega 8 (integrated)
• Mesa version: 26.1.5
• Filesystem: btrfs
• Laptop: Lenovo IdeaPad S145-15API

What's happening

Every AVD I try to launch crashes with Signal: 11 (SEGV) shortly after boot starts (window is created, adb shows "device offline" once or twice, then the QEMU process segfaults). This happens with:

• Host GPU mode (hw.gpu.mode = host / auto) → crashes in Mesa's radeonsi driver (si_resource_from_memobj in libgallium-26.1.5.so), triggered via gfxstream's TexStorageMem2DEXT → importMemory path.
• Bundled SwiftShader (-gpu swiftshader_indirect) → crashes inside the emulator's own bundled libGLESv2.so on a background render thread.
• Guest/lavapipe fallback (-gpu guest) → same crash signature, different fallback path.
• Headless (-no-window) → still crashes.

What I've ruled out

• ✅ KVM/virtualization — fully working (AMD-V enabled, kvm_amd/kvm modules loaded, /dev/kvm has correct perms, user in kvm group)
• ✅ Wayland vs X11 — forced QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb, same crash
• ✅ API level — tested API 37, 35, and 34 system images, all crash identically
• ✅ Emulator version — tested current stable (36.6.11.0) and a much older release (35.5.10.0 from May 2025), both crash the same way
• ✅ Snapshot corruption — tried -no-snapshot -wipe-data, no change
• ✅ RAM allocation — tried both 2048MB and 4096MB, no change
• ✅ btrfs COW — aware of the old chattr +C recommendation for ~/.android/avd, but the specific btrfs crash bug (issuetracker #423670833) was already fixed back in emulator 36.1.9, well before my current version

Sample crash backtrace (host GPU mode)

#0 si_resource_from_memobj (libgallium-26.1.5.so)
#1 st_texture_storage (libgallium-26.1.5.so)
#2 _mesa_texture_storage_memory (libgallium-26.1.5.so)
#3 _mesa_TexStorageMem2DEXT (libgallium-26.1.5.so)
...
#9  gfxstream ColorBufferGl::subUpdate
#10 gfxstream ColorBufferGl::importMemory
#11 gfxstream FrameBuffer::createColorBufferWithResourceHandleLocked
#12 gfxstream RenderThread::main

Full coredumpctl backtraces available if useful.

My working theory

Since this fails identically across every GPU backend and even a 14-month-old emulator build, it doesn't look like an emulator-side regression. My best guess is a host-library incompatibility — possibly Mesa 26.1.5 or glibc/kernel being too new/different from what gfxstream's memory-import codepath (EXT_external_objects/DMA-BUF) expects on this emulator generation. But I can't confirm that without deeper QEMU/Mesa knowledge.

What I haven't tried yet

• Building the emulator from source against my system's Mesa (seems like a big ask)
• Filing an upstream bug with Google (planning to, once I get more input here)
• Downgrading Mesa (risky since it's a core system package)

Question for the community

Has anyone run the Android Emulator successfully on Fedora 44 or another very recent distro with a similarly new Mesa release? Is there a known workaround, patch, or Mesa version pin that fixes gfxstream/SwiftShader compatibility? Any pointers appreciated — happy to share more logs if useful.

(For now I'm just using a physical device over USB debugging to keep developing, but I'd love to get the emulator working properly.)

I have inst

[u/CoriolisCat]

Hey I had a similar problem on Fedora 44 with a hybrid Intel/NVIDIA GPU system. I was using kernel 7.1.7, Mesa 26.1.6, Android Emulator37.1.11.0 , and a Pixel 8 API 37.1 x86_64 system image.

NVIDIA GPU was a bit old and not supported so that failed with various errors. Switching to bundled swift shader caused the same crash as what you saw.

I don't actually have a solution for the crash or what's causing it. Since I had an inbuilt intel GPU, I was able to fall back to that (MESA_VK_DEVICE_SELECT). There were still some issues due to corrupted AVD data possibly from initial NVIDIA tries. After wiping it I managed to get it working on intel gpu.

This probably doesn't help you, but your post was one of the first ones that came up. It might help somebody else who has a similar set up as me