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Every phone should be able to run personal websites

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Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#361

Post by scarface_74 »

roxil wrote: post #298

I see at least one very good reason why this shoud be possible: old phones. Reusing old phones as a webserver seems like a good idea to me, since they were built for power efficiency (unlike old PCs) and would otherwise simply end up as e-waste in a landfill or discarded, forgotten in a drawer somewhere. Maybe it's because I use LineageOS (and Cyanogen mod before that), but I never even knew that there were problems…

Any Android phone already doesn’t usually get security updates after a year or two and you want to run a web server on it?

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#362

Post by Moldoteck »

mulmen wrote: post #183

If it was lan/wifi/bluetooth/local only then I could see it being kinda neat. Could have a little personal profile page for the people in your immediate vicinity. Could even update it by location. Like a kind of hyperlocal Tinder. But if this is a WWW page doesn’t it open up individuals to D/DoS attacks? What happens when an angry ex nukes your battery on a Saturday night? I don’t see why hosting from a phone should…

But if this is a WWW page doesn’t it open up individuals to D/DoS attacks- don't use it then, just like when ppl don't use sideload and the feature is locked unless they allow it

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#363

Post by Moldoteck »

t0mas88 wrote: post #123
fsociety wrote: post #113

I would much rather have a locked down phone which is secure, as I rely on it for many important functions in my life. I’ll leave the cheap web servers to a Raspberry Pi, CDN, or VPS thank you very much.

I used to be a big Android advocate years ago when I wrote a lot of code myself. Now I prefer a locked down iPhone that always works at maybe a bit higher cost. It feels like many more people have gone through that switch. Even though I'm not idealistically aligned with the locked down App Store approach Apple takes, their ecosystem just works well for my needs.

Soon ios will allow sideload, so not sure if www server will be a problem then

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#364

Post by Moldoteck »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #70

You really don't want your phone's radio activating to serve random http requests, most of which are probably going to be bots, and people loading websites really don't want to wait for the latency that would be involved with your phone serving web requests.

Don't use the feature then, no? Just like ppl that want pristine google play experience will not use sideloading

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#365

Post by lofaszvanitt »

jeroenhd wrote: post #12
crazygringo wrote: post #5

Please no. Phones go into tunnels, run out of battery, and go indoors where there's a poor signal or none at all. They make terribly unreliable servers. Not to mention how much faster this would chew up battery life. If you want to keep a spare phone plugged in all the time in your closet, connected to Wifi/Ethernet, and hack it to be a webserver, then go ahead. But webservers on mobile devices, being used in a mobil…

Nobody is saying that everyone should host websites on your phone. The author is saying you should be able to, if you so choose. Android and iOS put restrictions on what applications on a phone are able to do, often for arbitrary reasons. You can't hack a web server in your closet to run on port 80 without jailbreaking your phone/unlocking the bootloader and rooting your phone, and I can't really think of a reason wh…

The author is saying you should be able to,

---

But why?

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#366

Post by ghoshbishakh »

jonplackett wrote: post #237

Even if you want to run a website on your phone (seems pointless…) Wouldn’t you need some kind of ngrok service to allow it to be accessible from the wider internet? In which case you could use whatever port you want and forward. But then you’re kinda using a host aren’t you… and you may as well just cache it…

https://androidblog.a.pinggy.io/

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#368

Post by kureikain »

In 2012, I need to sync data between a set-top box device(a karaoke machine) and an ios/android device to transfer SQLite data between them.

The ios/android app literally spin up a HTTP server run on the phone, the device just hit it to download file up to 20MB. I was dumb and didn' think much, and it just works. It works so well I never pay attention to it. Eventually the app evolve where the entire config is push this way, one can open the app, edit config, and it save these into XML file. The setipbox will download that XML file.

Then even better, there is a webserver run on the phone, where one on the same wifi network can hit it and edit all the config on a very simple website instead of using the app UI. Such as upload file from your desktop into the phone(the song book).

Of course, the app needs to be running for all this to work. When the app close, the webserver is also shut down.

So yes, even in 2012 on those cheap devices, one can run a full feauted webserver on the web server.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#369

Post by beebeepka »

NullPrefix wrote: post #339
roxil wrote: post #298

I see at least one very good reason why this shoud be possible: old phones. Reusing old phones as a webserver seems like a good idea to me, since they were built for power efficiency (unlike old PCs) and would otherwise simply end up as e-waste in a landfill or discarded, forgotten in a drawer somewhere. Maybe it's because I use LineageOS (and Cyanogen mod before that), but I never even knew that there were problems…

>[phones] were built for power efficiency most of that power efficiency is based on deep sleep modes and network packet batching. Opposite of what servers do

I don't think the guy is suggesting phones are great general purpose servers people should host online services on.

On their own, they are small and efficient. Proper servers need 10x, 100x, or more power just to boot. Sure, AMD has some amazingly efficient Zen 4 cores now. But cores don't exist in a vacuum. Just spinning the fans on such a machine consumes more power than a phone could even dissipate.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#370

Post by beebeepka »

ehutch79 wrote: post #254
jeroenhd wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is not that everyone should, it's that some people who want to, should be able to. Phones are quite powerful and can be excellent web servers on a budget.

But now you’re talking about a niche enough audience, that existing ways of running a web server on your phone are fine, and they’ll jump over the proverbial hurdle. This still doesn’t remove the issue with running a server via mobile connectivity. Especially when there’s free options, or inexpensive options that won’t run up your mobile data bills.

It's clear you're against the very idea and you are just coming up with ways why it shouldn't be done.

Do phones not have WiFi? Yeah, it's not ethernet but you intentionally made it sound like mobile data is the only option.

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