Dust0741Android Self hosting
Lmao this is amazing. The future is now…
That’s cool! I’ve always had the idea of a small k3s cluster on old phones with postmarketOS. I guess it doesn’t work with older phones which don’t have the latest Android Version but given the homelab trend generally goes towards small, low power devices, this could continue the trend with super small and low power phones. Probably in 2 years when current gen phones rotate out of company leasing contracts?
Oh man that’d be super cool. An ARM cluster of androids would be awesome. Battery backups built in!
Make sure you utilize the 80% charge feature
mesaDebian is supposedly coming to android. That would be cool.
That’s Debian in the screenshot
Oh nice! I can't see very well on phone.
Um, what does that even mean?
Edit: Looks like it runs a VM. So some overhead, but still cool.
Oh nice! I’d love to run an ad blocker/dns/reverse proxy on something with a little more beef than the Pi zero I’ve got now.
Jellyfin and or Pi zero does not like streaming through the video.local address I’ve got setup, so i have to use IP address to get anything without stuttering.
This VM eats through the battery, that’s the only hangup I have with this. Otherwise that’s a fantastic idea.
If I trusted the battery tech more, I would use an old phone. But I’ve had one of those white plastic Mac books hooked up to power so long, the battery swelled out of its enclosure :/
Maybe there’s a way to disconnect the battery, or an app that switches off charging, so it drains enough to keep that from happening
There are root apps that can limit battery charge level. If you have an older phone that’s rootabke, I would look into that.
pi zero for streaming is insane not gonna lie. What sort of resolution do you stream it at?
A decently newish phone would blow even a pi 5 out of the water I bet. Modern GPU drivers from snapdragon or mediatek plus core designs that arent 7 years old out of the factory would be a godsend for low-watt homelabbers
Dang, I just realized I didn’t explain the setup well enough:
An old laptop runs the Jellyfin server, but the Pi runs the reverse proxy. For some reason, trying to use the reverse proxied address causes problems, but connecting directly to the laptop via IP address and port runs fine.
I tried a Jellyfin server with a pi 2 or 3 and it couldn’t serve more than one client at a time. So i imagine a zero wouldn’t even be able to load the app, much less serve anything :/
My main reason for running my DNS/ad block/nginx through the zero, sometimes the laptop goes down, freezes, or fails to clear the transcodes folder, so having that stuff separate keeps at least part of the network running.
Are you using DNS Rewrites for jellyfin? I am using that (via AdGuard Home) w/ my Reverse Proxy (Zoraxy) and most of the apps work outside of jellyfin. Wondering if I need to configure the domain in the compose/env file 🤔
Just installed arch with chroot on my old rooted phone.
Seeing this is great because it means there’s no need to complicated workarounds or even root access! Plus the distro runs natively and not with difficulties like with chroor :D
TiukuNative in what sense? As I understand it that uses a VM of some sort
You’re right actually it’s not native I don’t know what I’m on about 😅
Still it’s much easier to have a baked in terminal app than having to install proot on top of termux, hopefully it will have less of a performance impact than proot as well.
Impressive! Can you please link the instructions you followed? Some time ago I was hosting the full ARR suite, bitwarden, AdGuard etc, but it was usually a mess with direct installs. With docker it might be worth revisiting it.
My only advice, buy a usb-ETH dongle, it will make a huge difference in stability
docs.docker.com/engine/install/debian/#install-us…
That’s it lol. To turn on the terminal, it’s a developer option for now, and is very alpha, just search for Linux in settings after turning on dev mode
shortrounddevI wish all the logs at my company were as beautiful as these terminal logs
Please no. I can’t grep that. (Nor ingest it to splunk for more powerful searching.)
If its an application I run locally, I rarely grep logs (they’re small enough that I can just ctrl+f). If it’s something running in production with millions of lines of logs, then I agree
confuserHow do we activate this feature? I have it enabled after going into the developer settings menu but nothing seems to happen, I see mentions of an app but idk what the app is.
I am on grapheneOS though instead of normal android so there could be something with that here.
MrPistachiosGet steam-headless running on there
shadowtofuWhile this is very exciting, I just tried it, and the network connectivity seems to be broken. No IPv6.
Hmm I was messing with its networking. Eternal vpns break stuff on GrapheneOS.
Its internal IP was 192.168.0.2, and my network is different.
Yes, Linux is running in a VM, and the network interface is a virtualized veth interface connected to a host bridge. The host android system has IP address 192.168.0.1, and this network interface is called avf_tap_fixed (as seen from termux).
Any other tips for the VM and/or GrapheneOS compatibility? Ie: did you use a different profile? I run Debian throughout my house as is, but plan on integrating the VM for better integration but was a little hesitant to be an early adopter due to the potential nuances. (lemme know if you have a blog/gist/etc covering it too)
I used the owner profile. Idk much about it tbh, I have yet to do more in depth testing as my phone doesn’t have displayport functionality so I am a little discouraged to be an early adopter too. I couldn’t get SSH setup so typing a lot on the small keyboard wasn’t ideal.
I’d check Google/GOS docs for more info for now. I’ll bet there’ll be a lot in the coming years as fast as usecases
I can’t get it to have network connection while my phone is on cellular data. On wifi it’s fine.
I just checked, and I have connectivity while on cellular. Maybe (just wild speculation) your mobile network is IPv6-only? Android (not Linux) should list 192.0.0.4 as an IP address in that case.
It’s probably that. While on cellular my IP isn’t 192.0.0.4 (but it is in 10. space), but there’s probably some v6 somewhere in the way.
latest release of android
Does that mean 15?
Yea kinda. Android is switching to quarterly releases, so my phone now says “Android 15” but this was QPR2 specifically
Thanks. My phone is on 14 and won’t get another update, oh well.
“Android 15” but this was QPR2 specifically
How can we bring that to a real world (read: cheap Chinese) phone?
Not sure, but if LineageOS supports it, that should be all you need
That’s super cool! I’ve been wanting to setup an offsite backup rig at my parents place and using an old phone to run it would be super ideal but I just don’t have any hardware that’s compatible with postmarketOS. Maybe one day ill bit the bullet and just buy a compatible used phone to do it with.
my friends complaining that my plex server because I left my phone on the bus and it ran out of charge
The lines between mobile device and server get blurred even more.
Tbh a laptop is a “mobile” device
It’s a server with integrated UPS and KVM console.
Except for that time I took out the battery because it was swollen and took the screen off to help with cooling. At least I still have my K and M
Andres@towerful @baatliwala For real though, I use old laptops for self-hosting so that I never have to dig up a monitor & keyboard.
In all seriousness, I think a “mobile server” in laptop-like form would be pretty nice. Have a giant battery attached to the bottom and program the controller to run on AC as it’s primary power source while treating the battery as a secondary source. Definitely niche, but cool nonetheless.
With the latest release of android it now supports some Linux functionality.
Wait, it does? Gonna have to check that out.
Early alpha, but yea it’s full on Linux in Android. Quite slick
Dope, seems to not have landed yet in LineageOS but the Terminal app is already installed. Just missing the toggle in the developer options.
AppoxoIs it an app I should be able to just find in my installed apps or do I need to enable it?
Because as of now (Pixel 7, Android 15) I can only find Termux.
Because as of now (Pixel 7, Android 15) I can only find Termux.
You have to be on the March update, then go to Developer options -> Linux environment, and enable it. Then ‘Terminal’ will appear in your apps drawer.
I’ve had a terminal app on my phones since the S2, is there anything actually different?
What is the current wisdom about having an android device always plugged in? Some people say that it will kill and pillow the battery, but does it really?
I don’t know. I think they are pretty good at managing battery, and have a new setting for maxing it out at 80% charge, but I don’t think I’d put it near anything expensive for years on end.
In the past people used tasker to charge at a certain threshold. Check with homeassistant people to see what they do.
Lyra_LycanThe trick of retrofitting any battery powered device into a wired one is to remove the battery. No matter what, Li-ion batteries cannot sustain permanent power. Expensive adapters and new Androids can regulate power well, as can automations, but the best worry-free option is battery removal.
kratoz29I can see my 5 year old android mobile struggling being a suitable self hosting machine… (Because of the battery).
But not gonna lie, having it working as a more advanced travel router connect to Tailscale sounds like a neat idea (which I think it is already possible? The other day I saw the client app that supports subnet routers? I just haven’t tried it, and it has a disclaimer that it drains the battery… So I didn’t end up doing that at that moment when I was away).
node815Maybe your own adblocker, I thought about doing that myself, I use the public one from adguard on my phone (dns.aguard-dns.com) but having it on your own device would be pretty slick perhaps. But thinking about it more, Google wouldn’t just let you use an internal IP for the private DNS. I have tried it with my locally hosted adblocker and it rejects it.
Or you could set up a dashboard like Homepage or Dashy, or Flame or ? Ultimately, your imagination would do! :)
Unfortunately, from trying this myself, I don’t think you can forward port 53 to the Android host, so that won’t work (easily). It seems that privileged ports aren’t allowed to be forwarded.
I’ll have to give this a shot with pi-hole later tonight.