this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
101 points (73.5% liked)

Selfhosted

40360 readers
415 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The future of selfhosted services is going to be... Android?

Wait, what?

Think about it. At some point everyone has had an old phone lying around. They are designed to be constantly connected, constantly on... and even have a battery and potentially still a SIM card to survive power outages.

We just need to make it easy to create APK packaged servers that can avoid battery-optimization kills and automatically configure an outbound tunnel like ngrok, zerotrust, etc...

The goal: hosting services like #nextcloud, #syncthing, #mastodon!? should be as easy as installing an APK and leaving an old phone connected to a spare charger / outlet.

It would be tempting to have an optimized ROM, but if self-hosting is meant to become more commonplace, installing an APK should be all that's needed. #Android can do SSH, VPN and other tunnels without the need for root, so there should be no problem in using tunnels to publicly expose a phone/server in a secure manner.

In regards to the suitability of home-grade broadband, I believe that it should not be a huge problem at least in Europe where home connections are most often unmetered: "At the end of June 2021, 70.2% of EU homes were passed by either FTTP or cable DOCSIS
3.1 networks, i.e. those technologies currently capable of supporting gigabit speeds."

Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/broadband-coverage-europe-2021

PS. syncthing actually already has an APK and is easy to use. Although I had to sort out some battery optimization stuff, it's a good example of what should become much more commonplace.

cc: @selfhosted
#selfhosted #selfhosting

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've already heard of people using Termux to host services on their old phones. Seems to work well.

[–] TCB13 -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Think about it, those phones might work right now but in 10 years their Android versions will not support anything, they wont even have root certificate updates breaking SSL, the kernel will be missing support for whatever people need and whatnot. Maybe the phones won’t even boot because some key will expire somewhere… let alone security vulnerabilities.

[–] beirdobaggins 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most people get a new phone every 2-3 years. If people use their 2 most recent phones as simple servers, then these are not 10 year old devices.

[–] TCB13 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Damn, what a fucking waste of resources.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

in 10 years? Is that a big deal? I've never had a single computer for 10 years.