[HN Gopher] Turn your old, cracked Android phone into a backup s...
___________________________________________________________________
Turn your old, cracked Android phone into a backup server
Author : thunderbong
Score : 211 points
Date : 2021-06-21 03:47 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hannahtech.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hannahtech.co)
| jablan wrote:
| Another cheap solution is buying a used router and then
| installing OpenWRT on it. Get one with USB.
| CTOSian wrote:
| used routers?!
|
| someone can find 10+ yrs NAS really cheap nowadays.. I ve got a
| ..bucket of Netgear's (most of them ReadyNAS Duo v2) for PS5
| each!!!
| gattilorenz wrote:
| > ReadyNAS Duo v2
|
| don't you have problems with SSL certificates and accessing
| the interface via browser?
|
| In general, both a router and a NAS do lack the backup
| battery, unless an UPS is also used...
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's possible to install Debian on an Android phone without root,
| by using Termux.
|
| Would this software also work in that environment?
| OJFord wrote:
| If you have Debian why would you choose.. 'UrBackup Server'
| when you could use anything?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Step 1 of TFA is basically "install Debian using Linux Deploy
| on a rooted phone", I was asking whether I can use Debian
| installed via Termux, on a non-rooted phone.
| justusthane wrote:
| Somewhat off-topic, but the article uses UrBackup. I came across
| UrBackup a couple years ago when I was looking for a free
| workstation backup solution with centralized control.
|
| It's pretty neat! Check it out if you have a need for it.
| fulafel wrote:
| Unfortunately this is also a recipe of dropping an unpatched
| unmaintainable Linux machine on the network to provide
| interesting security challenges in the future.
| atatatat wrote:
| So...most Android phones?
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| Aren't most dedicated home NAS units basically 'an unpatched
| unmaintainable Linux machine' also ?
| Wronnay wrote:
| I think most ppl here have something like a Synology which
| isn't too bad with updates...
|
| Of course, my Buffalo NAS can't compete with that and got
| fewer updates than my old phone...
| techrat wrote:
| My Lenovo NAS, despite continuing to be sold well past when
| Linux Kernel v4.19 was released... is still on 2.6.32
|
| It is no longer connected to an internet facing network.
| BelenusMordred wrote:
| Something like PostmarketOS is likely a better choice if it is
| supported for your device.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| For people that are not aware: ArchLinuxARM [1] is an
| unofficial Arch based distro for all kinds of ARM devices.
|
| Using it for my router, firewall and NAS hardware - and can
| totally recommend it.
|
| [1] https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms
| cunidev wrote:
| postmarketOS has much more active mainline work though
| outsomnia wrote:
| Right, they are at least trying to use current, updatable
| kernels.
|
| Vendor kernels are a continual security apocalypse that never
| ends.
|
| https://source.android.com/security/bulletin
| ProtoAES256 wrote:
| The first thing that come to my mind is: "How will this fare for
| a long term daily backup?" A few of my old phones and SD cards
| died due to the flash being used up(can't write new data, ro
| only).
|
| That said, with some magic linux command sauce, external drives
| can be used(part 2 of link), then software RAID, offloading data
| to them to prolong flash writes lifetime, then more stuffs like
| AnLinux can instead be used to add functionality to it.
|
| Interesting read indeed.
| imvetri wrote:
| How to make the ports available in internet ?
| pmlnr wrote:
| Get on your router and follow the instructions for port
| forwarding.
|
| READ the documentation though, because opening devices up for
| the internet can be nasty, especially when it's your first time
| doing so.
| omginternets wrote:
| This is a bit of a tangent, but is there a way to get low-level
| access to an Android phone's radio without installing Android? I
| have an old OnePlus One and I'd really like to use it as an SDR
| for weekend projects. Ideally, I'd have it run some sort of
| minimal linux installation. If such a thing exists, I'm betting
| someone on HN knows about it.
| schrijver wrote:
| I think PostmarketOS intends to be that linux installation: "a
| sustainable, privacy and security focused free software mobile
| OS that is modeled after traditional Linux distributions."
| https://postmarketos.org/ No idea how easy it would be to
| access that radio though.
| omginternets wrote:
| This is a fine start. Many thanks.
| moftz wrote:
| With the right USB adapter, you can plug an RTLSDR into an
| android phone.
| ev1 wrote:
| What's keeping a plugged in unremovable battery charging on power
| 24/7 like
| pmlnr wrote:
| Depends. If the power source is decent enough, it's fine. If
| not, you'll end up with a swollen battery, like I did, and
| you'll get rid of it as fast as possible.
| rollcat wrote:
| You don't need to continue charging the battery past given
| percentage. It just happens that by default batteries don't
| charge past 100%, you can tell the firmware to stop at e.g. 40%
| which is a perfect compromise between having a bit of backup
| power and considerably extending its lifespan.
| dendriti wrote:
| Charge your battery to 40%, so that it will be able to charge
| to 100% for more charging cycles...
|
| I know you're joking, but I've seen this logic at play
| elsewhere.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Is there a standardised way to do that on old Android
| devices? I've got a tablet that I'd like to run continuously
| at some point as a touch interface to my house but I'm wary
| if hooking up the battery 24/7 after seeing what happened to
| other people's devices when they did that.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| I've been using this fantastic work for years without side
| effects
|
| https://github.com/Magisk-Modules-Repo/acc
|
| I had my phone plugged in for almost 3 years, and the
| battery still lasts for 3 days on its own. Highly
| recommended.
|
| As a side note, can someone tell me if something like this
| can be made for postmarketOS? I installed it couple months
| back and this is really bugging me. Apart from constant
| vibrations.
| MayeulC wrote:
| > As a side note, can someone tell me if something like
| this can be made for postmarketOS? I installed it couple
| months back and this is really bugging me.
|
| In theory, if changing charge thresholds is supported by
| the PMIC (power-management IC) driver, it should be
| exposed in the sysfs. It is device-specific though, and
| might not be exposed by the driver.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Doesn't the battery controller bypass the battery once it's
| full and supply power directly from cable?
| lmns wrote:
| I've never heard of a phone that does this.
| ev1 wrote:
| I wish I could find a power bank for USB devices that will
| just pass through power when the battery is full.
| develatio wrote:
| While, from a technical POV, this sounds fun, I'd really
| recommend against using an old and cracked phone (which, to add
| insult to injury, is probably running very outdated and
| vulnerable software) for backup purposes.
|
| Please, run your backup servers on machines designed to do so,
| capable of receiving regular software updates, etc...
| Anunayj wrote:
| if one backup is no backup, a backup on a old cracked phone is
| a backup with a timebomb.
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| Root required, darn. I have 2 or 3 android phones with bad
| screens sitting in a drawer I'd like to do something with.
| Unfortunately they a.) don't have USB debugging enabled and b.)
| don't support any sort of external display.
|
| If anyone had some tips on how I could get into these machines it
| would be much appreciated.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| I have a rooted phone that I use to get information I need root
| for with a broken touchscreen. The other day I was stupid
| enough to try to reset it to see if I could part of the screen
| working. Obviously that didn't work.
|
| Re-enabling USB debugging was the following process:
|
| 1. use USB-OTG to go into the bluetooth menu to connect a
| bluetooth device to.
|
| 2. enable usb debugging using mouse
|
| 3. connect to PC and use the bluetooth keyboard to allow USB
| debugging
|
| 4. use scrcpy to control the device
|
| Obviously this only works reasonably well if you can see at
| least some portion of the screen.
| sippeangelo wrote:
| It also only works if your phone is on an old enough Android
| version where they haven't put OTG behind a manual toggle
| yet.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| What versions of Android have a toggle to allow USB OTG?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Look up Termux, it doesn't require root.
| ce4 wrote:
| You could order replacement screens and try to fix it yourself.
| Depending on the model it's often cheaply available on
| Aliexpress or ebay.
| Aulig wrote:
| Not sure if it helps you to get root, but to enable debugging
| you could use something like this guide:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPJcR_Iosm4
|
| Once you have usb debugging, I can recommend Vysor, super easy
| to use to control your phone from the pc.
|
| I'd also recommend turning on Talkback (assistive technology)
| and VoiceAccess as that can help you use the device even if you
| cant see anything on your screen. That helped me a lot with my
| phone that has a broken screen where nothing but the
| touchscreen works.
| khimaros wrote:
| also scrcpy
| butz wrote:
| Depending on device you have, you might be able to build a
| serial cable for it:
| https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Serial_debugging
| BelenusMordred wrote:
| Not sure about this guide but you should be able to install a
| linux rom through fastboot instead of a recovery. You won't
| need a working screen to do that.
| MayeulC wrote:
| If they have their bootloaders unlocked, I'd look into
| postmarketos. If not... well, I guess you really need to fix
| the screen up first, unless you had enabled adb. It could even
| be a temporary fix (for instance, a single screen if the 3
| devices are the same.
| dehrmann wrote:
| You're better off getting a single-board computer for this.
| You'll be able to install your own mSATA drive, and it'll run
| most distros without any fuss. That said, this quickly
| escalates to just set up a real NAS box. You don't really want
| to use an SSD for backup because they can lose data when not
| used. Alternatively, just go with a cloud provider.
| KronisLV wrote:
| As funnny as this is, i never really go the whole concept of
| a "real NAS box" - do people usually mean specialized
| hardware in combination with something like the FreeNAS OS?
|
| Because right now i'm just using consumer hardware (an Athlon
| 200GE for its low 35W TDP, some cheapo RAM and a number of
| Seagate BarraCuda HDDs) in combination with Debian, which
| also runs on my other cloud servers. It's all mounted on my
| other devices either through SFTP or a Nextcloud instance
| that's also running on them for easier file replication. I
| don't even have RAID or ZFS/XFS/Btrfs file systems, just ext4
| because any sort of clustering would introduce unneeded
| complexity to the setup - instead, a cron job with rsync
| backs the data from the "primary" HDDs to "secondary" ones
| every day in an incremental manner (well there's also
| BackupPC that does network rsync backups across servers).
|
| What purpose would running a NAS oriented OS distro even
| serve, for simple uses cases like that? It feels like the
| current "ad hoc" setup is really affordable and easy to
| operate.
|
| I think a SoC would also be nicely suited for this, as long
| as there is sufficient I/O capability. In regards to phones,
| however, i feel like drivers for obscure devices could
| probably become problematic quickly.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Regular people usually buy something like a Western Digital
| NAS from the shopping mall on the neighbourhood.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| To me choosing a specialized hardware was motivated by
| these two factors:
|
| - power management
|
| - semi-closed source applications
|
| On power management, I don't use the NAS box continuously,
| and there can be long gaps between accesses. Having the box
| "sleep" for 95% of the day, and wake up the disks only for
| one or two bursts of activity is interesting to me.
|
| I tried doing that with DIY solutions, including Raspberry
| Pi+SATA disk type of arrangements. Overall it didn't work
| great and was a PITA.
|
| On the semi-proprietary apps, I am thinking about
| Synology's apps. I could totally live without them, but
| it's a nice addition to the package, they're easy to
| install, seem to be well maintained and work decently well.
| dkarp wrote:
| As someone who normally rolls their own and has a half
| dozen raspberry pis around the house, I have a Synology
| NAS.
|
| As you said, it's very low energy and zero noise (rubber
| feet and quiet fan).
|
| It's also effortless to set up and run with their RAID
| system and syncing etc is very good. It'll let me know if
| there is a problem with a drive, it keeps itself updated
| and I've never had to reboot it.
|
| I do not use it for Plex as it wouldn't be able to handle
| it. They are a bit under powered but they're very
| optimised for their main purpose, Network Attached
| Storage, and that's the most important thing for me.
|
| It is also very neat and tidy, unlike most home made
| solutions.
| NortySpock wrote:
| Would OpenMediaVault on a Raspberry Pi have met your RAID
| and sync needs?
|
| I keep eyeing OMV but haven't splurged on running a NAS
| with multiply-redundant drives separate from my
| application server; currently it's just an RPi4 as a
| docker host, with rsync keeping two USB drives in sync
| with each other.
| dkarp wrote:
| Probably, at least on the software side!
|
| But then I'd need to find a RAID enclosure and a
| something to run OMV on. The NAS was around PS150 with
| all that built in
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'm obviously not very good at this, but my issue with
| OpenMediaVault was less the software side than finding
| hardware to reliably work with it.
|
| For instance trying with an old low profile PC, wake on
| lan didn't work half of the time so I gave up, and just
| let the drives sleep. But they would also fail to wake up
| sometimes.
|
| All in all a NAS is not that expensive (I have one I
| bought for 400 or so, and it's lasting for 15 years
| now...), so it's hard to justify the endless tweaking of
| a solution that could work the same if done well.
|
| BTW even with a commercial NAS , ssh access is
| configurable, major scripting languages are there, and
| recent ones have docker I think. For the really custom
| stuff, like you I use Raspberry Pis that mount the NAS
| files as needed.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _Having the box "sleep" for 95% of the day, and wake up
| the disks only for one or two bursts of activity is
| interesting to me._
|
| Have you really managed to get that to work? I got a QNAP
| TS-230 a few months ago hoping I could do just that, but
| it turns out that even this smallest NAS box they are
| offering isn't really designed with this "occasional use"
| in mind. There are so many user questions about this
| (https://www.qnap.com/en-us/how-to/faq/article/why-are-
| my-nas...) that they even built a half-baked utility
| that's supposed to give you a hint which process is
| preventing the drives from going into sleep mode, but
| it's not a great help. I have disabled all services
| (photo indexing with face recognition and other such
| crap) except for the most basic ones, but still the
| drives are happily chugging along, flashing their LED
| every few minutes, not spinning down. I know that it's
| basically a Linux computer, and there are probably
| utilities I can install to diagnose the issue better than
| with the above-mentioned software, but isn't this
| something that's supposed to work out of the box, or at
| least be easy for an average user to accomplish?!
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I have an old Synology, so it miht be different.
|
| I run relatively few stuff on it too, with no client that
| consistently access the shares though samba/nfs (I
| cluster the scripts that run automaticaly around the same
| range of time, and they unmount after they're done).
|
| I wonder if your system is not writing logs from a
| monitoring service (something checking your dynamic DNS,
| or waiting for remote connections, or pinging the
| internal servers to see if they're alive).
|
| I stopped most default services, including sync (it's
| done more rarely via a user script instead), and yes, it
| can be a PITA to understand what's running out of the
| box.
| hansel_der wrote:
| yea, normies do just buy a ready-built nas appliance, if
| you know what you are doing or like to tinker, use old
| consumer hardware.
|
| just one nitpick with your setup:
|
| if your primary hdd corrupts, rsync will not notice/care
| and corrupt your backup as well. zfs is all the rage
| because it aims to have two sources for the data aswell as
| a checksum, so it can tell which data-source is flawed AND
| fix it.
| KronisLV wrote:
| Oh, another person also mentioned using ECC memory, which
| may not be awfully important until it suddenly is.
|
| Right now i have incremental backups over the network
| with BackupPC: https://backuppc.github.io/backuppc/
|
| That software solution sort of dances around the issue,
| because if any files were to become corrupted, i could
| just go back in time to their older versions, though that
| approach isn't necessarily good either - since that means
| having to store the original "full" backups for a long
| time and also takes up more storage, which i do for the
| essential data, but not the stuff that i'm willing to
| lose. And, since the data stored can be arbitrary and
| therefore checking for corruption would have to be done
| manually, there are serious drawbacks to that, in regards
| to even knowing when things have gone wrong.
|
| Of course, there's also the possibility to use additional
| sources of redundancy, like versions within Nextcloud
| should the actual file contents of a particular version
| become corrupt, however for certain scenarios file
| systems like you've described indeed do become the way to
| go. Maybe not for every homelab out there, though.
| neartheplain wrote:
| To me, a real NAS box means:
|
| - ECC RAM, to avoid corruption on write
|
| - Software RAID, to avoid data loss due to drive failure
|
| - Some kind of checksumming and error-correcting
| filesystem, e.g. ZFS, to prevent data loss due to bad
| sectors
|
| - Enough CPU to transcode media in real-time
|
| - Vanilla distro with SSH, SMB filesharing, Plex, and
| networked printing
|
| - A spare PSU in the closet
|
| I explicitly avoid:
|
| - Hardware RAID (unnecessary, expensive, harder to fix)
|
| - Any OEM prebuilt NAS products (more expensive, less
| capable, less user control)
|
| - Any specialty NAS-oriented distros or OSes (more feature
| bloat, bigger attack surfaces)
|
| I use plain old Debian for my home NAS. I'd switch to
| OpenBSD in a heartbeat if it supported a checksumming and
| error-correcting filesystem.
| Miraste wrote:
| > Any specialty NAS-oriented distros or OSes (more
| feature bloat, bigger attack surfaces)
|
| So you recommend ZFS but not TrueNAS? It more or less is
| FreeBSD with zfs and NAS-oriented defaults+utils. There's
| not much I'd count as bloat.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Software RAID, to avoid data loss due to drive failure
|
| Ok it's old but: raid is not backup.
|
| I've personally worked for a small online shop that was
| selling digital items and shut down when their raid
| failed. Of course, they had ignored my warnings to build
| a mirror system or do copies on removable drives or ...
| anything resembling an actual backup.
|
| Edit: that said, I do have a box that's pretty similar to
| what you're describing.
| neartheplain wrote:
| Yes, for actual backups I have M-DISC BluRays [0] which I
| keep in a fireproof box. They're limited in capacity
| compared to the full NAS, but big enough for really
| important stuff like photos and scanned documents (which
| conveniently are intrinsically write-once).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC
| khimaros wrote:
| encrypted, deduplicated offsite backups are another
| approach. borgbackup on free tier cloud services can be
| useful for this.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| Serious question: are there free tier cloud services with
| enough storage to be worthwhile?
| justin_oaks wrote:
| It probably depends on how much you need to store. But if
| you need ongoing backup that will get larger and larger
| then the answer is probably "No".
|
| I back up my family photos and other important files to
| Amazon S3 using Restic. My 150GB of data ends up costing
| me about $1.50/month. I could get the price down lower if
| I use, say, the Infrequent Access storage tier, but at
| that price point I just can't be bothered to deal with
| it.
|
| A free tier often isn't worth it if you have to put any
| time into thinking about whether you'll exceed the limit.
| I'd just go with a cheap pay-as-you-go service and not
| worry about it.
| poisonborz wrote:
| > You don't really want to use an SSD for backup because they
| can lose data when not used
|
| Not (really) true, there is not much hard data backing this
| up as I see it, and for what there is, the retention would be
| 1+ year. The thread is not about offline backups, but an
| always powered backup server anyway. And SSD does make sense
| for a lot of reasons: HDD speeds are likely slower than local
| CAT cable, the higher IOPS helps on parallel workload cases,
| not to mention the way lower power draw and zero noise (no
| moving parts for the rest of the setup), compared to a
| chirping HDD.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Obviously solid advice, but I think the point here is about
| reusing old electronics. I also have a couple of old phones
| I'd like to try this with.
| rawbot wrote:
| Depending on how broken the screen is, you could navigate
| Android with a USB keyboard/mouse.
| anilgulecha wrote:
| This is over-engineering IMO. If you want to use an old phone,
| simply setup syncthing, and add in the folder from the connected
| hard disk. Instantly available synced folders from other places.
|
| No root, no fuss.
| tolbish wrote:
| Looks promising, thanks for the info!
| jeroenhd wrote:
| For those looking for backup servers on Linux, using the backup
| tool built into many Linux distros (Deja-Dup or Duplicity) you
| can make file level backups without setting up backup software at
| the server side by using SFTP. Backups are encrypted and through
| a few (admittedly hidden) settings you can enforce a period after
| which full backups are made rather than diffed backups.
|
| That's the system in currently using, at least. I'd be happy to
| read about other open source solutions if anyone has a better
| solution. My backup system is geared towards a service that
| exposes nothing more than SFTP or WebDav as a backup location
| because of a cheap cloud storage subscription I've managed to
| get.
| khimaros wrote:
| i personally recommend borgbackup
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| I have two gripes with Deja Dup (or rather had, the last time I
| reviewed my backup setup several years ago):
|
| - It can only do one set of backup settings and consequently
| only one backup destination without additional tooling, which
| is not Right(tm).
|
| - It cannot add different prefixes to the names of index and
| data files, making it impossible to set up S3 lifecycle rules
| for dumping the latter to Glacier. (Duplicity requires the
| former to be hot for some reason, I don't know why.)
|
| Both of those are things you can do with the underlying
| Duplicity tool and a scheduler, but the UI does not expose
| them. Thus I sadly had to discard Deja Dup's shiny GNOME UI,
| and I know of no other backup tool with a shiny GNOME UI (and
| am too lazy to write one so far).
|
| Have any parts of this become false?
| teddyh wrote:
| Any Internet-connected device is, in fact, a server, and must be
| seen and managed as one. This means strict control of installed
| services and, first and foremost, regular _updates_ of all its
| software components (including firmware). If you acquire and
| install such a server which either can't be updated or one which
| you know, realistically, won't get any updates six months after
| installation, that's asking to lose.
|
| -- Me, 21/2 years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18019343
| pmlnr wrote:
| > regular updates of all its software
|
| NO.
|
| You need security patches. The current "regular updates"
| bullshit where the Play Store wants to update and app I updated
| an hour ago is insane.
| orf wrote:
| We've discovered that backporting security fixes to a large
| matrix of (outdated) versions isn't generally sustainable
| outside of a few specific cases.
|
| So... YES. Regular updates to all of its software is how you
| stay on top of security updates.
| Black101 wrote:
| Yes and that is really bad... hopefully someone, one day,
| will solve this problem. I don't auto-update Android apps
| that what I need, because as a rule of thumb, app quality
| declines over time...
| orf wrote:
| Then by definition you are not receiving security
| updates. Android sandboxing obviously helps here, but
| it's still not a sensible position to take in the general
| case and definitely not an idea you want to give to your
| less technical friends or family.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Then it is unfortunate that the general behavior of (some
| big?) app developers has made it so necessary to eschew
| updates by default to avoid change-for-the-sake-of-change
| workflow breakages (e.g. how Mozilla went about rolling
| out Fenix) and to dodge the threat of user hostile
| changes (e.g. the ad and tracking nonsense we see so
| often on Windows updates).
|
| This is a problem of their own creation, trying to tell
| users to accept it anyways is a non-starter for many.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > definitely not an idea you want to give to your less
| technical friends or family.
|
| That's a load of garbage.
|
| I don't do updates and zapped all google services except
| the playstore. Been looking good since.only whatsapp is
| the only culprit that demands me to update by force.
| Black101 wrote:
| > Then by definition you are not receiving security
| updates.
|
| There are certain apps that I will update though, like
| Element, but I don't even update Firefox because the new
| engine breaks too many things for me, like extensions and
| bookmarklets. IE: Last time I checked you could only
| choose between 12 extensions on the latest Firefox
| Mobile.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Of course... IT DEPENDS on the type of app, if the app
| doesn't share user input with other users and doesn't
| download or run untrusted code, then you probably don't
| need to update it.
| tarsinge wrote:
| And that's how you introduce new vulnerabilities too.
| pmlnr wrote:
| > isn't generally sustainable outside of a few specific
| cases.
|
| WordPress can do it. Others also could, if they wanted to.
| orf wrote:
| > if they wanted to.
|
| But for various reasons they don't, and that's the
| problem.
| slim wrote:
| I'd add any system with an uptime of more than one month is a
| decent server. Android has nothing to shy of
| teddyh wrote:
| Uptime is not the only gauge of significance. Security is one
| of the most important ones, as is reliability.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Without needing to "root" the "phone", the user can install
| primitive ftpd from f-droid. Works great.
| slim wrote:
| Also termux is the best software you can have for android
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Earliest version of termux on f-droid in the internet archive
| requires android 5.0 or later. Current versions require
| andoid 7.0 or later. How does the user with old android
| phone, e.g., 4.x, use termux. Current versions of primitive
| ftpd will work with android 4.0.3 or later.
| seniorivn wrote:
| if your old phone has no unofficial support for more or
| less modern on version, either forget about it or go all in
| native linux route postmarketos etc
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "... either forget about it or..."
|
| Will forget about it. Not really that interested in
| wireless anyway.
| fnord77 wrote:
| what's a good phone to try this with?
| pmlnr wrote:
| The lesson of the cracked screen is: always pair you phone for
| adb as one of the first steps in setting it up, and if possible,
| root it.
|
| You might need it if the screen cracks and you want to save data
| off it.
|
| Sometimes there are ways around it by dirty booting a recovery
| image, but it's not as simple as it sounds, and you'd need an
| unlocked bootloader to do so:
| https://petermolnar.net/article/save-files-from-a-dead-scree...
| techrat wrote:
| Probably unnecessary at this point.
|
| Nearly every phone today is sold with a USB C port.
|
| "But this phone is older than..."
|
| My Moto Z Play was released in 2016. That phone is now 5 years
| old. It came with Nougat... and I can mirror the screen with a
| USB C hub with Built in HDMI. Plug in a mouse and you're done.
|
| No need to leave adb enabled, which is a security hole that can
| be exploited by unsafe USB ports and bad actors. (Also,
| police.)
| fulafel wrote:
| A lot of phones don't have video over the USB C port (eg
| Google Pixels).
| lkois wrote:
| Pixel 5 does. I tried with one recently and noted it only
| does mirroring, unlike Samsung and Huawei which launch some
| pseudo desktop OS when plugged in.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| Pixel 4a does not.
| pmlnr wrote:
| Moto E series doesn't have MHL.
|
| No, adb is still needed.
| techrat wrote:
| MHL largely was for MicroUSB. Chances are what you need is
| a USB to DP or USB to HDMI adapter. Some work in one but
| not the other and vise versa. In the end however, Moto Es
| ARE designed to be the most cut down, least featured phone
| in the Moto line.
|
| You would still be able to use a mouse or keyboard to input
| a pin or passphrase if the screen was still semi readable.
| silon42 wrote:
| Also the Pixel ones don't have it (or DP alternate mode), I
| think. This is why Nexus 5 is still the best Google phone
| so far.
| pmlnr wrote:
| The Nexus 5 years produced good phones.
| techrat wrote:
| Pixels support DisplayLink mode.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iw4YJpiBVo
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iw4YJpiBVo
| qkqk wrote:
| Why does a USB C port mean you don't need ADB or help with a
| cracked screen?
| Evidlo wrote:
| I think the implication is that video output is usually
| available on these devices.
| techrat wrote:
| It's bad to leave ADB enabled in general.
|
| With a USB C port, there's a near absolute certainty that
| you can simply plug in a USB hub with HDMI built in to hook
| your phone up to a mouse and monitor to get around the
| cracked screen issue.
| ufmace wrote:
| The recent versions of Android seem to have gotten way
| better on ADB security. It seems to generate a keypair on
| every computer with ADB and require a user with the
| unlocked phone to authorize the keypair for each device
| manually. It also auto-revokes authorization if you
| haven't connected that device with ADB in 7 days by
| default.
| goda90 wrote:
| I had a double whammy of a corroded display connection and a
| loose usb-c port, meaning recovering data from the phone was
| a very sensitive and frustrating affair.
| OJFord wrote:
| Can you unlock it (pin/password I mean, not finger/face) with
| a keyboard and mouse though?
| techrat wrote:
| Yep.
|
| Even did a video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qkh4oagFfb8
|
| Got out my old Moto Z Play which was retired. Restarted the
| phone so I couldn't use fingerprint to unlock.
|
| Plugged in a mouse, clicked pin. Unlocked.
|
| Moto Z Play runs Nougat, stock but rooted. You don't need
| root to be able to do this nor do you need ADB to be
| enabled.
|
| Also confirmed to be working on Razer Phone (stock, 9/Pie)
| and Essential Phone (stock, 10). Also works with Keyboard
| instead of mouse. Just type in the pin and hit enter.
|
| Pattern unlock will have to be done with the mouse for
| obvious reasons.
|
| So if your digitizer is completely busted, you can still
| use a mouse and keyboard. If your display is completely
| busted, you likely will be able to get video alt mode with
| USB C out.
|
| I tried it on a few other devices that I had in my pile.
| Chances are, if it's Micro USB, you won't get video on
| boot, even with a proper MHL adapter.
|
| * Sony Xperia J (Jelly Bean): Nothing, Micro USB
|
| * Sony Xperia Play (Gingerbread): Nothing, Micro USB
|
| * Marshall London (Lollipop): Mouse and Keyboard Works,
| Micro USB
|
| * Asus Zenphone 3 Zoom (Nougat): Mouse and keyboard works,
| USB C
|
| IIRC, Displaylink and OTG support was officially added in
| Lollipop, so that kind of jives with my experience here. As
| always, YMMV.
| wongarsu wrote:
| On my android I can enter pin/password per keyboard, or the
| swipe pattern per mouse. Some early android phones had
| slide-out keyboards (like a Blackberry), so good support
| for physical keyboards isn't that surprising. I wasn't
| expecting the mouse support tough.
| megous wrote:
| It's all standard HID interface these days.
| [deleted]
| salawat wrote:
| See I did that, but got the one-two punch of death.
|
| Cracked screen AND USB-C port failure. No charging or data
| transfer possible.
|
| Apparently at one time google opted me in for Google Photos, so
| I have a backup of those, but recent contacts were totally
| lost.
|
| Still have the board lying around and am tempted to continue
| tinkering with it... Or would be if I had any clue where to get
| insight on how to do advanced debugging on why a mobile phone
| wouldn't even register as connected over USB-C. Assuming some
| sort of handshake failure.
| sp332 wrote:
| And set a password as soon as you root it for cryin' out loud.
| LMYahooTFY wrote:
| Isn't rooting it blowing a giant hole in the security model?
|
| There's obviously benefits to doing so, but it has some big
| costs?
| pmlnr wrote:
| Isn't no root a giant scam for not allowing you to actually
| own your device?
|
| All arguments have multiple sides to them.
| gruez wrote:
| Rooting a phone doesn't give all apps root access. You still
| need to approve each app.
| ufmace wrote:
| At the level of running apps, yes. But unless I'm way
| behind on my rooting tech, all of the usual methods leave
| the phone in a state where anyone who connects it to a
| computer via USB can access everything on it. AFAIK,
| Android has gotten way better at having phones with the
| stock OS locked down hard, with signed bootloaders, OS
| level encryption keys stored in secure media, etc, and
| rooting blows that all away.
| pmlnr wrote:
| > Android has gotten way better at having phones with the
| stock OS locked down hard
|
| eeeeerm, no. It didn't get better at all. It basically
| wiped out a vibrant 3rd party android development culture
| by making it extremely hard for them.
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