posted in Selfhosted

tradicije@tradicije@lemmy.zip
edited

Home server on old android phones?

Update is here: lemmy.zip/post/72142441

Hey guys, since I got into hosting my own servers, any electronic device I see I wonder - can it become a server?

This is probably not a crazy and new idea with android phones, but I had to share it with you. If you don’t know, there’s this thing called postmarket OS, full linux experience on an android phone.

Of course, not all phones are supported, but a phone like Galaxy Note 9 is a great candidate - it supports LAN over usb, postmarket OS fully supports it (the Exinos version) and setting up a phone as a selfhosted server has it’s real perks. Pis got really expensive, not to mention they don’t have a built-in UPS (phones have batteries), they use slow SD cards, while phones have faster UFS memory, phones draw way less power.

What do you guys think? I will for sure get a used Galaxy Note 9 and explore this idea, and if all goes well, I might even buy more of them and create a cluster.

FridaVermercury@FridaVanMercury@discuss.tchncs.de

Replying to @⁨tradicije@lemmy.zip⁩

This has been discussed many times already, and I am not saying that to scold you but if you look for the right keywords you’ll find a lot in the search.

E.g. the most recent one I know of is this lemmy.world/post/52120798

But that was posted in an android community, so not visible here.

lemmy.worldGiving an old Pixel 3a XL new life as an offline, battery-powered web server running postmarketOS - Lemmy.Worldcross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/52120691 [https://lemmy.world/post/52120691] > I had an old Google Pixel 3a XL sitting around and decided to see if it could handle running as a fully offline, self-contained web server. > > > I flashed postmarketOS 26.06 (headless Alpine Linux base) to it and set up a portable media node that broadcasts its own Wi-Fi AP, serves static pages, and streams video over a captive portal - no cell data or upstream internet needed. > > > Quick Hardware/Tech Stack Breakdown: > - Device: Google Pixel 3a XL (2019) > - OS: postmarketOS 26.06 (CLI base with OpenRC) > - Networking/AP: hostapd for the AP, dnsmasq for DHCP & wildcard DNS routing > - Firewall: nftables redirecting port 80 requests to trigger the captive portal popup automatically > - Web Server: Lighttpd handling HTTP requests and MP4 video range requests > > > Performance & Power Draw: Under a test load streaming 720p video to 4 concurrent devices, total CPU usage averaged around 5% (load a
Edited ⁨⁨Sep⁩ ⁨21⁩, ⁨2026⁩, ⁨04:51⁩⁩en