With the latest release of android it now supports some Linux functionality. I got docker installed simply by following Docker’s docs.
Any thoughts or uses for a mobile homelab? What would be useful to have mobile?
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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?
The 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.
Edit: I’ve just remembered Fairphone, they’re bossing the mobile repair ability front and have removable batteries like pre-2012. Could get one of those
In the past people used tasker to charge at a certain threshold. Check with homeassistant people to see what they do.
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.
Lmao this is amazing. The future is now…
Debian 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.
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!
I 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).
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
https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/debian/#install-using-the-repository
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
Just installed arch with chroot on my old rooted phone a week ago.
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 chroot :D
Native 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.
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.
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
The 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 rootable, I would look into that.
I dont think I so much want this for my phone as for my homemade AndroidTV boxes. Losing the Linux functionality after switching from Kodi/libreelec had been my biggest pain point.
Can’t wait to see my TV boxes show up in my Beszel dashboard!
I 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.)
I’m assuming your phone has to be rooted for this right? Or is docker running without root? I didn’t realize anything like this was possible. This is interesting.
I’ve never tried it on Android, but running Docker in rootless mode is doable, and is encouraged for security reasons. https://docs.docker.com/engine/security/rootless/
Nipe! Not rooted. In a VM though
The change maker feature would be to arrive home and plug your phone in a dock station and have a desktop to use as a pc
This has been supported on Samsung devices for years - it was first added to the Galaxy S8 (2017). It’s called Samsung DeX. You can plug a phone or tablet into a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and it gives you a full screen experience.
They have docking stations, but you can also just use a USB C hub.
I have a Steam Deck dock specifically for this. Except the mouse comes up on the phone screen instead of the monitor. Weird bug.
I’ve been talking about this for years! I got the idea from razer but I’m imagining the laptop chassis adds a nice screen, enormous battery, better IO, and then it just uses the touch screen as the track pad.
It could be so cool
these are the times when I get jealous, as an iOS user
You’re free to join us
I dont know how you can stand using iOS. Its just so unintuitive, theres no back button and I can’t even figure out copy/paste.
Copy paste is easy. You just tap on the, no wait you tap on the, fuck hold on. You tap, there we are, on the word and hold until it highlights. No wait hold on. Fuck. There we are. Ok now you tap on the highlighted word to copy, fuck wait Ah fuck it just type it again yourself
Haha my feelings exactly, I can work in Linux cli and program rust with ease, but I can’t copy and paste on an iPhone.
I feel this. My work phone is an iPhone 12, and typing is a pain compared to Android.
How 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.
Oh nvm I figured it out, it just took a bit for me to realize there was a new terminal app on my phone
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 bite the bullet and just buy a compatible used phone to do it with.