If the device can run PostmarketOS with a mainstream kernel, then it can run any Linux distribution. (I put Arch ARM on such devices, since I like that distro.)
That's the big hurdle though - mainstream kernel support.
For most devices, even if they can be rooted and jailbroken, you're stuck with the kernel they come with. Doesn't have a new feature you need? A horrible security flaw in the network stack? You're out of luck. Most "repurpose your old phone" approaches have this problem. You can make it a server but you wouldn't want to expose it to the public Internet.
But yes, this is definitely an issue. I've been playing with a 2013-era Samsung device that came with a 3.0 kernel. It can run pmos with said kernel but there are multiple root LPE vulns. I've been looking into getting it to run a mainline kernel just for fun, but it's not going to be easy.
The thing that holds me back from this is always the battery. I want to have my battery removed so that it doesn't eventually become a time bomb, but it's a pain on modern phones and I'm not even sure if they boot without. The mobile hardware reuse space can suck for hobbyists.
Most phones can have battery removed somewhat destructively, but without affecting the rest of the phone.
Generally, as long as you keep the phone plugged in, the battery should be safe virtually indefinitely - the battery management on board will keep it in a state where its a constant charge which means the chemistry will be stable.
In theory, you can replace the battery with a chunky enough capacitor (to get past the power-on surge) and a power source at the right voltage attached right where the battery would go. The soldering points are way too tiny for my amateur soldering skills, though.
> I grabbed a few power point timer switches, and set them to only over up the charger for a hour a day. Never had another battery puffing failure - at last not in the next 2 or 3 years before I left.
hopefully "bypass charging" becomes more of a thing in the future. a few of the latest pixel phones use it but the only other time ive seen it is on tablets aimed at gaming
I tried this once a few years ago.. had half a dozen Samsung Android phones running an SSH daemon with some functionality that could be remotely accessed. However, what I learned is that phones generally don't like to run 24/7 as servers. They start giving you trouble after a while, never figured out why.
But I suspect it's just the "always on" nature and the battery. The usage pattern is just entirely different than having a phone in your pocket and using when you need it.
You're welcome to try though, maybe phones got more reliable.
All my old phones used to become BOINC nodes doing WorldCommunityGrid or seti@home, at least until we got to the point where you couldn't run the phone without a battery anymore. Came home to one too many spicy pillow'd phones even keeping them in a cool area with a rigged up fan blowing on them.
For some reason, I never buy phones that work with postmarketOS :( And I find phone naming confusing, it's difficult to find a used one locally to play with. Is it a Moto Play 2018 or a Play 2020? Trying to get that information from someone on Facebook marketplace is like pulling teeth.
That makes sense. Most phone users aren't technical. Like -- at all.
If you can think about how deep into technicalities the most average person you know gets, then you can also understand that ~half of everyone is even less technical than that.
There's nothing wrong with this. That's just the way that it is. (We can accept this or be frustrated. Acceptance is more useful.)
As a workaround, I find that searching by part number provides a good filter.
Maybe I want a very particular Moto G Power to use for whatever. I don't search for any permutation of "Motorola G Power" at all, because that description doesn't help me.
Instead, I just find the part number (maybe something like "XT2041-7") and search for that instead.
This excludes a lot of listings straight away, and that's fine: I don't want to stumble through listings from people who don't know what they have. I only want to buy what I want to buy, and what I want is an XT2041-7.
Inspired by this, went to look into how much performance I can squeeze and turns out Qualcomm software practices are so bad that I can’t do much but accept old software.
It sounds like Qualcomm has to do everything from scratch on their hidden Linux software for every new chip.
I have an old iPhone XS lying around with a broken digitizer. Basically, it's recording phantom touch events all the time, making it unusable. Though the screen itself, camera, CPU etc. are all working fine.
Any ideas what I can do with it to give it some purpose?
It's through this link that I today discovered that a surface RT can run Linux. I think I got rid of mine already. Would have been nice to breathe some life into it
There is a much easier way to do this without renting a VPS or anything. If you download and install the Localtonet application from Google Play or Termux, it is very easy to do.
so once you have a web server on the phone how are you able to make it available publicly on the internet? don't ISPs detect these and ban? are you using wireguard or something like that?
ive been looking to build and serve my own servers and i have been considering to use old android phones to outright racks but the part I am still struggling to figure out is how to serve it publicly without ISP catching on as they require business plans for that and its not cheap
ISPs don't care, actually. They care about operational problems, but you serving a constant stream of web traffic is probably not going to matter to them; web traffic for even a pretty successful blog is going to be a tiny volume compared to you streaming 4k movies from Netflix.
ISPs will have rules (maximum data volume per month) and restrictions (ISP equipment auto-drops all sending/receiving packets on port 25, 80, 443, or 456), but within those limits the ISPs do not care as long as you cause no problems for them.
Also, one of the easiest ways to expose e.g. port 80 of your in-house server is to just have your local server do an SSH port-forward to a remote server like a cheap VPS. Note that by default it'll bind to a localhost port on the remote, so on the remote you'd need to have an HTTP server reverse proxying to the remote localhost:8080, or you need to enable `GatewayPorts: yes` in sshd on the remote. Assuming you turn on GatewayPorts on remote.example.com, here's how you could expose port 80 of localhost:
# Run this on in-your-house-computer to allow folks on public internet to visit
# remote.example.com:80 but have the traffic served by in-your-house-computer:80
ssh -R :80:localhost:80 username@remote.example.com
You can make the above connection permanent by setting up `autossh` on in-your-house-computer.
Although, you may also go with a 5$ virtual host (e.g. Linode Nanode 1 GB) and wireguard to build your own tunnel (or just the 5$ virtual host to run your server)
No. No ISP who desperately tries to grow marketshare at all costs and lock their customers into a year-long contract will intentionally ban users. I'm not even sure where this misconception comes from, it's not like ISPs led a massive PR campaign warning people of the dangers of running a server.
The only way you will get banned is if you cause disproportionate strain on their network, which means you'd need to exceed the usage of the typical gamer (downloading games worth hundreds of gigs regularly), streamer (streaming 4k video for hours at a time), cloud backup customer (uploading gigabytes regularly), Windows user (in its default configuration Windows can use P2P to share updates), torrenter (sustained full-duplex bandwidth usage), and unlucky idiot with a compromised device spewing DoS traffic at line-rate.
Saturate the pipe consistently for several days by hosting video? Yeah sure you could get a warning and eventually disconnected, assuming they don't already have traffic shaping solutions in place to just silently throttle you to an acceptable level and leave it up to you to move your homebrew YouTube clone elsewhere when you realize it's too slow.
Hosting a website which will have a few mbps worth of traffic with the occasional spike? That's a rounding error compared to your normal legitimate usage, so totally fine.
The reason most consumer ISPs have a clause against running servers (not even defining what counts as a server) is to preempt a potential business starting a data center off a collection of consumer connections and then bitching about it or demanding compensation when it goes down or they get cut off. Nobody cares about a technical user playing around and hosting a blog at home.
Other folks have given general answers, but I'm wondering, what ISP do you have, and where?
(I'm lucky to have Sonic, in the SF Bay Area. A local ISP that actively campaigned for net neutrality and has 1Gps symmetric as the standard basic fiber plan. Pretty sure they're not shutting down anybody's servers.)
In my experience (in Germany and Switzerland) ISPs don’t care, but they will rotate everybody’s IP once or twice a year.
Friends from other countries, India for example, have had different experiences though, where IPs were on a much more frequent rotation and required scripted solutions.
I have wireguard and basic home automation things running as an experiment on vacuum cleaner. Its app was deadly slow, so having 2 cores and some memory to spare he became his own savior, with Valetudo included.
The main question is WHY? I already have a 3570K box running our NAS, plex, Wifi repeater admin, etc, etc, and it would be trivial to put up a web server via python or something.. If I had any need for it.
maybe because phones have a battery (built in UPS) so they will keep running if the power goes out. its only useful if you have a router that can be powered by an external battery pack i supoose
retrac|3 months ago
That's the big hurdle though - mainstream kernel support.
For most devices, even if they can be rooted and jailbroken, you're stuck with the kernel they come with. Doesn't have a new feature you need? A horrible security flaw in the network stack? You're out of luck. Most "repurpose your old phone" approaches have this problem. You can make it a server but you wouldn't want to expose it to the public Internet.
Retr0id|3 months ago
But yes, this is definitely an issue. I've been playing with a 2013-era Samsung device that came with a 3.0 kernel. It can run pmos with said kernel but there are multiple root LPE vulns. I've been looking into getting it to run a mainline kernel just for fun, but it's not going to be easy.
norman784|3 months ago
jjice|3 months ago
ActorNightly|3 months ago
Generally, as long as you keep the phone plugged in, the battery should be safe virtually indefinitely - the battery management on board will keep it in a state where its a constant charge which means the chemistry will be stable.
yaky|3 months ago
(This is for a removable battery, but should be close for built-in ones too, I suppose)
aziaziazi|3 months ago
jeroenhd|3 months ago
GTP|3 months ago
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f8SliNGeDM&pp=ygUYZ3JlYXRzY...
6510|3 months ago
leobg|3 months ago
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45021233
volumo|3 months ago
4k93n2|3 months ago
sgt|3 months ago
But I suspect it's just the "always on" nature and the battery. The usage pattern is just entirely different than having a phone in your pocket and using when you need it.
You're welcome to try though, maybe phones got more reliable.
jayd16|3 months ago
officeplant|3 months ago
ChrisbyMe|3 months ago
Just thermal paste to the battery hah
qubex|3 months ago
dinkleberg|3 months ago
_whiteCaps_|3 months ago
ssl-3|3 months ago
If you can think about how deep into technicalities the most average person you know gets, then you can also understand that ~half of everyone is even less technical than that.
There's nothing wrong with this. That's just the way that it is. (We can accept this or be frustrated. Acceptance is more useful.)
As a workaround, I find that searching by part number provides a good filter.
Maybe I want a very particular Moto G Power to use for whatever. I don't search for any permutation of "Motorola G Power" at all, because that description doesn't help me.
Instead, I just find the part number (maybe something like "XT2041-7") and search for that instead.
This excludes a lot of listings straight away, and that's fine: I don't want to stumble through listings from people who don't know what they have. I only want to buy what I want to buy, and what I want is an XT2041-7.
sexeriy237|3 months ago
vjerancrnjak|3 months ago
It sounds like Qualcomm has to do everything from scratch on their hidden Linux software for every new chip.
dang|3 months ago
This blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46049981
clueless|3 months ago
mceachen|3 months ago
(or maybe be able to use recovery zip that requires effort after every reboot)
ActorNightly|3 months ago
Simple root, with a custom degoogled rom, and termux is all you need.
zoobab|3 months ago
You don't need root if you webserver is listening on a port over 1024.
Termux plus some webserver like nginx is all you need.
Now to make it reboot resistant is another story.
hatmanstack|3 months ago
codethief|3 months ago
leobg|3 months ago
Any ideas what I can do with it to give it some purpose?
bdbdbdb|3 months ago
mixologic|3 months ago
Exposing a port isn't exactly a safe thing to do nowadays, and I'd be wary of the security posture of an "old phone". Proceed with caution.
erremerre|3 months ago
Assuming you are using an old phone with termux to serve de webpage. What could be an attack vector?
The phone will be running Android 7.1
justmee|3 months ago
layer8|3 months ago
agentifysh|3 months ago
ive been looking to build and serve my own servers and i have been considering to use old android phones to outright racks but the part I am still struggling to figure out is how to serve it publicly without ISP catching on as they require business plans for that and its not cheap
lelandbatey|3 months ago
ISPs will have rules (maximum data volume per month) and restrictions (ISP equipment auto-drops all sending/receiving packets on port 25, 80, 443, or 456), but within those limits the ISPs do not care as long as you cause no problems for them.
Also, one of the easiest ways to expose e.g. port 80 of your in-house server is to just have your local server do an SSH port-forward to a remote server like a cheap VPS. Note that by default it'll bind to a localhost port on the remote, so on the remote you'd need to have an HTTP server reverse proxying to the remote localhost:8080, or you need to enable `GatewayPorts: yes` in sshd on the remote. Assuming you turn on GatewayPorts on remote.example.com, here's how you could expose port 80 of localhost:
You can make the above connection permanent by setting up `autossh` on in-your-house-computer.rlupi|3 months ago
https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/networks/co...
Although, you may also go with a 5$ virtual host (e.g. Linode Nanode 1 GB) and wireguard to build your own tunnel (or just the 5$ virtual host to run your server)
Nextgrid|3 months ago
No. No ISP who desperately tries to grow marketshare at all costs and lock their customers into a year-long contract will intentionally ban users. I'm not even sure where this misconception comes from, it's not like ISPs led a massive PR campaign warning people of the dangers of running a server.
The only way you will get banned is if you cause disproportionate strain on their network, which means you'd need to exceed the usage of the typical gamer (downloading games worth hundreds of gigs regularly), streamer (streaming 4k video for hours at a time), cloud backup customer (uploading gigabytes regularly), Windows user (in its default configuration Windows can use P2P to share updates), torrenter (sustained full-duplex bandwidth usage), and unlucky idiot with a compromised device spewing DoS traffic at line-rate.
Saturate the pipe consistently for several days by hosting video? Yeah sure you could get a warning and eventually disconnected, assuming they don't already have traffic shaping solutions in place to just silently throttle you to an acceptable level and leave it up to you to move your homebrew YouTube clone elsewhere when you realize it's too slow.
Hosting a website which will have a few mbps worth of traffic with the occasional spike? That's a rounding error compared to your normal legitimate usage, so totally fine.
The reason most consumer ISPs have a clause against running servers (not even defining what counts as a server) is to preempt a potential business starting a data center off a collection of consumer connections and then bitching about it or demanding compensation when it goes down or they get cut off. Nobody cares about a technical user playing around and hosting a blog at home.
whynotmaybe|3 months ago
Some may block port 80 and 443 "For Security", but you can sometimes contact the support and they'll open it, even if you're not a business.
I have a webserver running at home and use the free dynamic dns from noip.com.
shevy-java|3 months ago
Not sure what changed, but things got more complex - and more expensive, too.
edbaskerville|3 months ago
(I'm lucky to have Sonic, in the SF Bay Area. A local ISP that actively campaigned for net neutrality and has 1Gps symmetric as the standard basic fiber plan. Pretty sure they're not shutting down anybody's servers.)
louismerlin|3 months ago
Friends from other countries, India for example, have had different experiences though, where IPs were on a much more frequent rotation and required scripted solutions.
jeroenhd|3 months ago
No? I mean, I'm sure there are ISPs out there that do it, but that's a ridiculous thing to do.
1bpp|3 months ago
prmoustache|3 months ago
zoobab|3 months ago
Right now you have to find a skopeo binary for your arch, but that's WIP.
Jemm|3 months ago
denysvitali|3 months ago
shevy-java|3 months ago
misiek08|3 months ago
iberator|3 months ago
guluarte|3 months ago
phonkd|3 months ago
dominojab|3 months ago
[deleted]
karlkloss|3 months ago
tonetheman|3 months ago
The battery will swell and explode if you run 24x7 on a phone.
danishSuri1994|3 months ago
[deleted]
slipperybeluga|3 months ago
[deleted]
hn_acc1|3 months ago
unknown|3 months ago
[deleted]
KetoManx64|3 months ago
unknown|3 months ago
[deleted]
4k93n2|3 months ago