Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

far.computer

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 122 posts

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#41

Post by munk-a »

ActorNightly wrote: post #29
jjice wrote: post #27

The thing that holds me back from this is always the battery. I want to have my battery removed so that it doesn't eventually become a time bomb, but it's a pain on modern phones and I'm not even sure if they boot without. The mobile hardware reuse space can suck for hobbyists.

Most phones can have battery removed somewhat destructively, but without affecting the rest of the phone. Generally, as long as you keep the phone plugged in, the battery should be safe virtually indefinitely - the battery management on board will keep it in a state where its a constant charge which means the chemistry will be stable.

There were several generalizations in that statement that align with my similar fears to the OP. Most firmware should minimize the charge cycling, most batteries should be stable at constant charge... most isn't great for something that I want to sit in the corner undisturbed for a decade just chugging along - I have a few old desktops I use whenever I need a stand alone server or to host something web-live for a while. They'll eventually have hardware failures, but I have a lot more confidence that when they fail it won't be dramatic or destructive - ditto with old laptops, the serviceability expectations are much higher than phones so I have yet to meet a laptop I can't pop open and just pull the battery out of to run on AC alone - in the case of a power failure the UPS can't cover I'd rather the machine just power off rather than needing to deal with the possibility of dramatic failure.

I think if you're considering re-harvesting old devices to use for hosting and get far enough down your list to get to phones then you've likely got enough constant maintenance costs in overseeing things that the additional worry of fire risk just isn't worth it.

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#42

Post by retrac »

If the device can run PostmarketOS with a mainstream kernel, then it can run any Linux distribution. (I put Arch ARM on such devices, since I like that distro.)

That's the big hurdle though - mainstream kernel support.

For most devices, even if they can be rooted and jailbroken, you're stuck with the kernel they come with. Doesn't have a new feature you need? A horrible security flaw in the network stack? You're out of luck. Most "repurpose your old phone" approaches have this problem. You can make it a server but you wouldn't want to expose it to the public Internet.

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#43

Post by n4bz0r »

aziaziazi wrote: post #30
jjice wrote: post #27

The thing that holds me back from this is always the battery. I want to have my battery removed so that it doesn't eventually become a time bomb, but it's a pain on modern phones and I'm not even sure if they boot without. The mobile hardware reuse space can suck for hobbyists.

Place the "server" into a shoebox. Place another shoebox on top, filled with sand. Tape together and hide behind a furniture.

So the phone effectively becomes a 4U rack server that's probably not much of a fire hazard. We'll tuck it away behind some wood for extra safety. Never liked sleeping with my eyes shut anyway!

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#44

Post by hn_acc1 »

lelandbatey wrote: post #17
agentifysh wrote: post #2

so once you have a web server on the phone how are you able to make it available publicly on the internet? don't ISPs detect these and ban? are you using wireguard or something like that? ive been looking to build and serve my own servers and i have been considering to use old android phones to outright racks but the part I am still struggling to figure out is how to serve it publicly without ISP catching on as they…

ISPs don't care, actually. They care about operational problems, but you serving a constant stream of web traffic is probably not going to matter to them; web traffic for even a pretty successful blog is going to be a tiny volume compared to you streaming 4k movies from Netflix. ISPs will have rules (maximum data volume per month) and restrictions (ISP equipment auto-drops all sending/receiving packets on port 25, 80…

If you're already paying someone monthly to "forward" ports, why not just pay for a blog somewhere? Way more secure.

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#45

Post by hn_acc1 »

ActorNightly wrote: post #29
jjice wrote: post #27

The thing that holds me back from this is always the battery. I want to have my battery removed so that it doesn't eventually become a time bomb, but it's a pain on modern phones and I'm not even sure if they boot without. The mobile hardware reuse space can suck for hobbyists.

Most phones can have battery removed somewhat destructively, but without affecting the rest of the phone. Generally, as long as you keep the phone plugged in, the battery should be safe virtually indefinitely - the battery management on board will keep it in a state where its a constant charge which means the chemistry will be stable.

Depends on your phone. Just has to replace the battery on a generally always-plugged in Moto (at least after a certain age). Battery had pillowed out. It's acting as our "landline" with a link2cell on some old DECT handsets.

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#46

Post by 6510 »

jjice wrote: post #27

The thing that holds me back from this is always the battery. I want to have my battery removed so that it doesn't eventually become a time bomb, but it's a pain on modern phones and I'm not even sure if they boot without. The mobile hardware reuse space can suck for hobbyists.

Red Magic can be set to not use the battery when the power cable is plugged in. (it is to avoid heating issues and not degrade the battery)

Re: How to repurpose your old phone into a web server

#49

Post by Gabrys1 »

rlupi wrote: post #4
agentifysh wrote: post #2

so once you have a web server on the phone how are you able to make it available publicly on the internet? don't ISPs detect these and ban? are you using wireguard or something like that? ive been looking to build and serve my own servers and i have been considering to use old android phones to outright racks but the part I am still struggling to figure out is how to serve it publicly without ISP catching on as they…

A CloudFlare tunnel? https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/networks/co... Although, you may also go with a 5$ virtual host (e.g. Linode Nanode 1 GB) and wireguard to build your own tunnel (or just the 5$ virtual host to run your server)

at this point you don't need the phone :D
Post reply on HN