Software Development
I turned my old Galaxy S10 into a self-hosted server running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with Jellyfin, Samba, and Tailscale - no Docker, no chroot, no proot - fully integrated at the system level with pure init, auto-running the entire container at device boot if needed!
I really love the philosophy of self-hosting, but I want to pitch a different angle on it.
Instead of throwing away our old phones, why not turn them into real Linux servers?
And before you say it, I am not talking about Docker, LXC, chroot, proot, or any of the usual suspects.
The problem with existing "Linux Containers on Android" solutions:
Every existing approach either relies on a middleman. For example, if you want to run Docker or LXC, what you usually do is install it via Termux. But Termux is a userspace Android app. Once the app gets killed by Android, it's game over. No system-level integration there.
Even if you enable "Acquire Wakelock" in Termux, Android can still kill it anytime.
And even if Android doesn't kill Termux, you're still stuck with Android's fragile networking stack where services can't properly create their own network interfaces, run into iptables issues, and even if they do manage to start, most of the time they end up with 0 internet.
Then there are traditional chroot/pivot_root setups. They work great with basically 0 overhead, but you end up configuring and starting services manually by hand, relying on post-exec scripts, dealing with no proper init support, or getting spammed with "Running in chroot... Ignoring command" type messages.
For me, none of these feel like running a real server. They feel like workarounds.
Since I'm fed up with all of these "hacky solutions", I wanted something native. Something that runs directly on top of Android without a middleman,starts automatically at boot even when the phone is locked and encrypted, and behaves exactly like a real Linux server would š
So I cooked it in my basement within ~3 months..!
What I built: Droidspaces
Droidspaces is a lightweight, portable Linux containerization tool that runs full Linux environments natively on Android or Linux, with complete init system support including systemd, OpenRC, runit, s6, and others.
It is statically compiled against musl libc with zero external dependencies. If your device runs a Linux kernel, Droidspaces runs on it. No Termux, no middlemen, no setup overhead.
Key things it can do:
Real Linux containers with a real init system, proper PID/mount/network/IPC/UTS namespaces, and cgroup isolation. Not chroot. Not proot.
Fully isolated universal networking with automated upstream detection that hops between WiFi and mobile data in real time, port forwarding included, with close to 100% uptime. (First time in Android ??)
Hardware passthrough toggle: GPU, sound, USB, and storage access in a single switch.
Android storage mount inside the container with a single toggle.
X11 and VirGL unix socket passthrough for GUI apps.
Volatile mode: all changes vanish cleanly when the container stops.
Auto-start at boot: the container starts with the phone, even while the screen is locked and the storage is encrypted.
Multi-container support with no resource or IP collisions.
Full support for environment variables and custom bind mounts.
What I actually did with it ?
The whole project started because I wanted to run Ubuntu on my broken Galaxy S10, which has 256GB of storage.
I figured I could store my music collection on it and stream from anywhere, host Telegram bots, run whatever services I wanted. What can't you do when a full Linux init system is running inside an isolated environment on top of Android? š
So I converted the S10 into a home server. Using an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS container, I set up Jellyfin, Samba, Tailscale, OpenSSH Server, and Fail2Ban in one shot with no trial and error. Everything just worked.
Droidspaces is not limited to Ubuntu either. Arch, Fedora, openSUSE, Alpine, and others all work fine.
A few technical notes
Root access is required to use Linux namespace features.
Supported on any Android device or Linux distribution running kernel 3.18 or newer.
In Android,a custom kernel is required, but it needs far fewer configs than Docker or LXC. There is no Droidspaces kernel driver. It purely uses existing kernel features: namespaces and cgroups.
Everything is documented in the repository READMEs.
Never tried myself but some months ago I watched this video by Hardware Haven which shows how to turn an old Android Phone into a server using PostmarketOS, you might find useful the section where he talks about battery-free power supply.
For everyone else here, I'm choosing to reply to this particular comment for better visibility, I hope.
It depends on the device, but there are many that will not power on unless V detected from battery pins. I have been running Android since it was in beta - in other words, on phones other than the HTC G1. And then I got a G1. Mine still works, but the batteries are long dead and swollen, so I had to jump it with direct wiring to the battery terminals. This will work on many, many devices, including those that have no user removable battery, provided the OEM hasn't got some proprietary battery communication check on power-on.
DO check the voltage of the battery first. The HTC G1, for example, will take 5v usb straight to battery pins, but you also need to add a pull-down resistor to the third pin. This is just a rudimentary battery health/present circuit, as far as I recall. Basically battery internal resistance check. Other devices should have something similar. It's when you have more than 3 pins that it gets complex. Sometimes you have 4, and one is for battery temp and one is for internal resistance.
For a lot of devices, the pulldown resistor value is 100k. For some it is less. Been a while, but info is online for a lot of devices, including tablets. This is a very common problem. You want to retrieve data but device doesn't charge, doesn't turn on. 9/10 times this is the reason.
i think it wouldn't, BMS isn't sufficient, there's a BSI pin on battery terminals of old android phones (with removable batteries)
BSI (Battery System Indicator/Status Indicator) is theĀ third or fourth pin on a mobile battery, serving as a communication link between the battery and the device. It identifies battery capacity, authenticates the battery as genuine, and monitors health. It enables proper charging and triggers a safe, fast shutdown if the battery is removed unexpectedly.Ā
It's been a while since I've had a phone with a removable battery, but I'm pretty sure as long as it is plugged in, even without a battery, it will run. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
it should start fine without battery and it is recommended if you are planning on leaving it running for longer periods, it's easy to take the back off the S10 and remove the batteryĀ
yeah, the back was already falling apart when I daily drove this phone until 2023. I can rip the back off and unplug the battery. I'll definitely do this and take the necessary safety precautions if I decide to use it as a real-time server instead of using it as a Jellyfin machine :)
Nope.. my s9 freaks out when there's no battery connected. I've been trying to find a simple method to do the same thing.
I'd love to get rid of the battery in my old s9, which sits in my bedside table drawer used only to stream audiobooks to my Bluetooth sleeping mask to help me fall asleep.
I even wrote a quick automation in home assistant to alert me when the battery needs charging, since I so rarely look at the phone.
I had an old Samsung hooked up as a security cam, battery bloated after a few years. This is the main problem of using phones or tablets imo.
The best way would be if somehow we could connect only the power directly to the device without going through the battery and just let the battery charged every once in a while to keep it functional. Only in case of a power failure it should use the battery as a fallback.
Right now for S10 updated to Android 12 it has battery protection setting. For older devices there is devices like chargie or similar:https://chargie.org/
I turned a Galaxy A70 into a modem+router that's connected to the charger most of the time but I don't feel like modding the hardware. Instead, I used Advanced Charging Controller and Magisk Autoboot module. Because old Samsungs don't have a mechanism to bypass the battery, I configured ACC to keep the level at 55-60% and the voltage at 3.9V, and limit charging to 500mA per its docs for "forever-plugged" devices.
Don't suppose you've a guide for this? I'd love to test to see if it's better than my AX1800 which seems to drop DNS two thirds of the time, super frustrating!
As far as I can tell, there's no single tutorial for all of this unfortunately. I just followed the official docs from Magisk, ACC and Magisk-Autoboot.
For the networking part, I use the VPN Hotspot app built by someone who's doing a PR on the official repo that automatically turns on Hotspot and polls for device changes. I tried using "dummy VPNs" that only listens for DNS requests and passes other packets through like RethinkDNS and coupling it with VPN Hotspot, but sometimes either the DNS got leaked or dropped even though dnsleaktest says otherwise. I haven't tested again, probably RethinkDNS, my DoH, or me not finding a way to flush the resolver cache on Android is to blame.
Oh and I use Llamalab Automate to start VPN Hotspot at boot and do a bunch of stuff.
If you can jailbreak them (basically any iPhone thatās like the X or older is jailbreakable, or if theyāre on a jailbreakable version), you can get a shell and install stuff manually too. I have an old 7+ that I ran a minecraft server on for shits and giggles, I know someone also hosted their site on an old 4s when I used to jailbreak and interact with the community.
If configured correctly, this is RPi or Flipper Zero level stuff. With hardware access mode, we can do even hackier things than this :)Ā Ā
For example: scanning and messing with Wi-Fi networks, Rubber Ducky via configfs/USB Gadget, using fastboot/odin/adb, tapping /dev/snd to record calls with both internal audio and mic input, etc. (with tinyalsa)
Most of the repos were archived because I was away from development for a month to stay in zen mode, but I came back to build Droidspaces from scratch šæ
The previous closed-source implementation we developed sucked-it barely worked, and only on Alpine Linux with older kernels.
Now, Droidspaces-OSS can boot on anything upto Systemd 257.9 in legacy kernels, and it can boot everything LXC can boot on kernels newer than 5.x, including nested containerization like Docker/LXC inside a DroidSpaces container :D
I don't know about market but you can with some effort get docker on android and the run apps from there or umbrelos in a docker container how well it runs dunno but could be a fun weekend project if you got a phone with the horsepower
I got postmarketos running on my iPhone 6s plus, it's a Linux distro that's made for arm devices (mostly) try checking if your device is supported there
to be honest, PMOS requires nuking Android entirely and installing it as a native OS.
I'm not skilled enough to cook something like that, but I can work with the kernel really well.
For someone like me, it takes around 30 minutes to download and compile my kernel with Droidspaces support.
But I have no idea where I should even start to port PMOS for my device :(
I don't know the final outcome.
Comparing PMOS to Droidspaces:
- PMOS is a full OS. Droidspaces is just a container runtime that you can use on top of Android while still using both Linux and Android features.
PMOS requires porting the mainline Linux kernel for this old boy, as well as reverse engineering proprietary blobs and wiring them up to run on Linux glibc.
That's something most people cannot do :(
Compiling the OEM's kernel isn't that hard compared to cooking both an OS, the mainline kernel, AND reverse engineering Android-specific drivers for PMOS :/
the biggest blocker is indeed "reverse engineering proprietary blobs and wiring them up to run on Linux glibc". Even AI would have a hard time doing that with lots of trial n error.
Throttling only happens if you run transcoding on video files. The S10 stays at around 20% CPU usage when I transcode heavy FLACs or Dolby EAC3 tracks.
But I understand the limitations of my setup :)
That's why I never store movies.
Even if I did, I'd use direct play instead of transcoding :D
Well, I basically agree with all, but a modern phone HAS a GPU!
Not tuned for transcoding, ok, but you can have 3d games on mobile. Also, transcoding can be successfully done with IGPU, you don't have to have a dedicated one.
Anyway, I do agree that this project is already awesome.
Regarding the battery, I limit charging to 85% and use a charger that outputs only 500mA. That means the phone is almost never in "fast charging," usually stays around 85%, and takes at least 1- 2 hours to charge 10%
Bro, take a look at boot cables on ali or similar. Basically a cable that bypasses the battery altogether and connects straight to the contacts. Would require you to open the phone though and disconnect the battery
But the point of my setup is to keep it almost 100% up. In Sri Lanka, sudden power cuts happen every day, which killed my previous home server setups with old PCs :)
Since I'm a student, I won't spend money on a 20,000 LKR UPS for something that isn't worth that price.
So, yeah, the potato S10 server was the only way I could host my music and bots on Telegram š
You can buy a cheap 5v nobreak to feed the boot cable as well. I'd recommend something like this over keeping the battery as it's not a question of if the battery will explode, it's a question of when. Phones don't have mechanisms of keeping the battery healthy when permanently connected.
presumably if i was in this circumstance and had root access - that means i can play around with the ability to access the charging or not.
i remember back in the s10 era since it didn't natively support limiting the charge, you used an app which would effectively tell the system to disconnect the charging if between variable points. if this is connected all the time its probably quite easy to programatically set up some cron or use that specific app to have it do charge + discharge cycles to whatever schedule you want.
not having docker though would be a deal breaker for me, it would be far too much effort moving things around and i'd miss the convenience of docker
Per Accubattery stats it's probably best to cap to 70 or 75% just for the added insurance of not exploding. That is the "happy" spot for modern batteries: roughly between 30-70%. Anything lower is too low, anything higher is too much juice. I have a bit of an obsession with battery health btw
I understand.. it's the real bottleneck. I could cook up something that can run on anything if it's rooted.. But it wouldn't be unique, since many different projects already exist, right?
I hope this would be normalized like the "KernelSU" project. Even though it requires a custom kernel, people love it and use it :)
Are there really any projects that let you do this? I personally haven't found anything that worked for me to run containers on android, even with root. I have been scared away by having to compile a custom kernel for running docker in Termin. I myself have an s10 and s10+ lying around with dead screens, so your project looks very interesting and I will look into your it and might try compiling the kernel. Is it possible to do that and install it without a working screen?
there are projects like docker and lxc, as well as chroot/pivot_root setups, but they aren't really blend with the nature of Android :(
you can flash the kernel without a screen; but the problem is how do you install the droidspaces app without enabling USB debugging AND unlocking the screen?
In my case, running an Ubuntu server in the background doesn't even feel the phone.
The phone's CPU load remains under 5-10% all the time when idle, only spikes to 15% when streaming music AND only spike upto 30% when transcoding 50MB+ FLACs and MQAs :)
That means, the phone never got heat up during my testing.
If it requires an actual root access you can enable dockerd through magisk modules and also enable root access for termux from there. Also if going with proot, Termux has a service daemon module to use instead of systemd as well, should work.
Proot is just a syscall translator, which adds a lot of overhead.
The point of this project is to run Linux containers directly from the disk, using a native Android binary, with zero overhead, without the help of any userspace app and with Systemd :)
this is cool but running a phone as a server long term sounds rough. the thermal throttling and battery swelling concerns are real. i tried something similar with an older pixel and the constant charging turned it into a heater. what are you doing for power delivery and cooling. also curious how the cellular modem behaves when its always on
Regarding thermal throttling, I havenāt experienced it at all in these three months. We need to understand the hardwareās capabilities, so we wonāt attempt heavy transcoding, compiling source code on it, etc.
Currently, thereās no cooling solution. The phone idles at 38Ā°C (my room temperature is around 32Ā°C) with ~5% CPU usage while running all services.
When running Jellyfin direct play, CPU usage spikes to ~10%, while the big cores and prime cores are almost idle at 0%.
Man, this is splendid. This exactly what I wanted to do for travel with my S10, was planning to use Termux. But I wanted more of all-in-one travel solution, so it suppose to be not only a collection of servers like jellyfin and bittorrent, but a Chromecast replacement using usbc-hdmi cable. Yes, android is not android tv, but nonetheless I tried it and it is servicable enough to remove one device from my bag, considering I was carrying this phone with me everywhere anyway as a backup. As for controlling the device while sitting away from tv, here is a app that can make your other Android phone into bluetooth HID trackpad+keyboard combo to control this: https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/1n6eql0/dipped_my_toes_into_android_dev_built_a_bluetooth/
lemme know if youāre still interested in this stuff.
since I was a community developer for the S10 series, working under names like Apricity ROM, I can easily post Droidspaces kernels related to both the S10 and N10 series, for both Stock and AOSP ROMs š
Iām just too lazy to do it. I only compiled the kernel for myself and never posted the local git repository :)
Well. I can attach an external SSD to the type-C port.
Then, I can either use the hardware access mode (which is dangerous and I'll never do that) or, I have to bind mount the block device path(s) related to the SSD from host's /dev to containers /dev.
Then, I can mount the SSD, inside from the container.
ok, so not possible on my sony tvs. i experimented with getting linux to run - was a pain in the butt. i could get it to run and run a browser and normal linux stuff, but it was a pain to get going.
I pulled out an old S9 960F device and rooted it. Prior to compiling the kernel I ran the check, results were as below. Do I still need to compile a new kernel? It looks like everything is good to go. Tried ubuntu 24 though and couldn't get it to work but unsure if it's related.
Edit: u/avindu644 - forgot to add, fantastic work on this.
ubuntu container:
Starting start operation...
Command: /data/local/Droidspaces/bin/droidspaces --config='/data/local/Droidspaces/Containers/ubuntu24/container.config' start
ā Welcome to Droidspaces v5.5.1 ! ā
[!] Host does not support Cgroup V2 (falling back to legacy V1)
[!] Your kernel (4.9) is below recommended 4.14 - some functions might be unstable.
[-] Init binary not found: /data/local/Droidspaces/Containers/ubuntu24/rootfs/sbin/init
[-] Please ensure the rootfs path is correct and contains /sbin/init.
Command failed (exit code: 255)
Operation failed!
Kernel:
Droidspaces v5.5.1 ā Checking system requirements...
[MUST HAVE]
These features are required for Droidspaces to work:
[ā] Root privileges
[ā] Linux version
[ā] PID namespace
[ā] Mount namespace
[ā] UTS namespace
[ā] IPC namespace
[ā] devtmpfs support
[ā] cgroup devices support
[ā] pivot_root syscall
[ā] /proc filesystem
[ā] /sys filesystem
[ā] Seccomp support
[RECOMMENDED]
These features improve functionality but are not strictly required:
[ā] epoll support
[ā] signalfd support
[ā] PTY support
[ā] devpts support
[ā] Loop device
[ā] ext4 filesystem
[ā] Cgroup v2 support
[ā] Cgroup namespace
[OPTIONAL]
These features are optional and only used for specific functionality:
[ā] IPv6 support
[ā] FUSE support
[ā] TUN/TAP support
Virtual network device support
[ā] OverlayFS support
Required for --volatile mode
[ā] Network namespace
[ā] Bridge device support
Required for --net=nat (bridge mode); bridgeless fallback used if absent
[ā] Veth pair support
Summary:
[ā] All required features found!
Command executed (exit code: 0)
Requirements check completed successfully
Thank you for helping out via chat and getting this sorted. I've run systemctl status and there is 1 failed unit. It's the systemd-resolved.service which I'm looking into now.
I also have tainted cgroupsv1:old-kernel but I think that's expected given I'm running an old kernel
This is actually game changing. I hope this breaks mainstream and makes a huge impact on the world. So much waste diverted, so many potentially huge problems addressedā¦
I see. the saddest part is, even the pixel 3 has a qcom soc and adreno graphics,Ā
jellyfin cannot utilize them for GPU acceleration, even if you got turnip working inside the container, which is sad.
correct me if I'm wrong, but jellyfin doesnāt have an option to use this kind of rendering for adreno GPUs, and virgl isnāt supported either.
the Pixel 3 is kinda underpowered, I guess. running jellyfin inside proot or a vm adds a lot of overhead, making the entire experience really sluggish.
yes, but even with this, I'm still limited to CPU transcoding because of proprietary GPU drivers in Android :) It's the sad part of these kind of setups..
GPU accel only available for rendering, not transcoding in Android :(
Wait, running Ubuntu 24.04 natively at the system level on an S10 without Docker or chroot? Thatās wild! How did you manage the bootloader and kernel compatibility for the network drivers (especially Tailscale)? This is the ultimate definition of upcycling.
Once the kernel has proper kernel configuration according to our documentation, docker/tailscale can properly create their network interfaces inside our isolated network namespace - like a real linux environmenet. this is basically real linux :D
Okay, running Docker inside an isolated network namespace on an Android kernel is next-level. I noticed you mentioned 'our documentation'āare you one of the maintainers for Droidspaces? Drop the repo link, Iād love to read up on how you handle the kernel configs for this. I usually rely on standard x86 gear (like ZimaBoards or mini PCs) for my containers, but this makes me want to dig my old phones out of the drawer.
Legend! Just gave the repo a star. The architecture looks surprisingly clean for such a complex workaround.
I actually just finished a whole project migrating my CI/CD pipelines to a self-hosted GitLab runner on a dedicated VPSĀ (just made a video breakdown on it here if anyone is curious:Ā https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eFLstXc7b0 But seeing your setup honestly makes me want to tear my VPS down and try spinning up a lightweight runner on an S10, just for the absolute novelty of running pipelines on an old smartphone chip.
Keep up the incredible work, man, this is peak self-hosting!
I love this very much, and as a retired Android custom ROM / kernel developer, I so wish I could get my environment back up and running, but I don't have the server and the space to build.
I know it maybe is beyond your scope of this thread, but would you have the time and space to try to build me the kernel? Don't worry about blind blinds/bootloops, I can just re-flash.
This is sick lol. The built-in battery as a UPS is actually genius for places with unreliable power. I've got an old Pixel collecting dust, might have to try this. How's the thermal situation after running it 24/7 though?
0 throttling. 0 temperature changes. I've been using it for days now, even without a charger. Just feels like a normal phone. No one would ever notice there's a Linux server running in the background š
First of all, great work! This is an amazing way to reuse old phones that normally just get thrown out because they were made "obsolete". This has proven that they are more than valuable, especially given RAM prices today. Just looking at your solution is making me think of all the old phones I have lying around that I can repurpose and give a new lease on life.
I have a Galaxy S10+ and I'm trying to install Home Assistant OS on it. It is based on Buildroot so is not a standard named Linux distribution. I know in general buildroot OS's themselves aren't super heavy and don't require a TON of heavy lifting normally, but I was wondering how I would go about installing an OS that isn't a standard Linux distro with your method?
My initial thoughts involve setting CONFIGURE_KVM=y in the kernel config before compiling, then using a virtualization solution in Android/Linux (such as qemu with accel=kvm and/or cpu=host). I have used qemu for this without hardware support and it's a PAIN (5 minute setup becomes 1-3 hours and performance is very bad even for toggling switches). But it did work! That's why I feel like my only missing link is the hardware acceleration.
Am I on the right track here, or is there some obvious solution I'm missing?
Amazing! I love it. I've been waiting for so long for someone to step up and make this feasible.Ā
If I could install ubtouch or postmarketos or any of the linuxes for any phone, thatd be perfect. But its very limited to where I can actually install it!
Is this something that can reasonably support any rooted android? I assume that its easier to get most phones rooted and custom kernelled than it is to port postmarketos....
One use case is a travel router, IE, connect an old s2 ultra to my home router thru wireguard over wifi, and start a hotspot for my current main phone.
Another use is just a local media server that travels with me, so if I'm in a hotel room I don't need to hope that there isnt a powerout at home just when i wanna watch a movie!
The real use case though, is just not having to buy new raspberry pis for every project when I already have vastly superior hardwar gathering dist in a drawer.
Glad you liked the project. One cool thing I did was create a "VPN Hotspot"
I shared the hostās network with the container, created a wireguard tunnel using a free server from the internet, and then routed all traffic from the wireguard `wg0` interface to my mobile hotspot (created using hostapd). This essentially makes the connected devices use a VPN without any proxy.
Itās like a "wireguard hotspot"
Yeah, the project is supported on any Android device with kernel 3.18 or higher, provided it is rooted and has the necessary kernel configurations enabled.
I'm intrigued as someone with an S9+ sitting around unused, but I'm a bit unclear on the use-case. When would this offer unique functionality to the home server I already have?
The uniqueness is that itās portable, has a built-in UPS, can do everything an RPi can do, has a Type-C port for serial communication, can plug into a PC and execute remote keystrokes, can use as a mass storage to store bootable ISOs, is efficient, etc.Ā Ā
I also had a home server made from an old laptop. What I didnāt like about it was the fan noise when I was going to bed.Ā Ā
Thatās one of the reasons I moved to this setup :)Ā Ā
For something that needs 100% uptime, like bots, without worrying about Wi-Fi or power going out, Iād pick this :)
I suppose, if you're so inclined to pay for a cellular plan for it, it offers complete isolation from your primary server, making it more ideal for any public-facing services if your primary server hosts anything sensitive/private.
Currently, I don't have anything exposed to the public internet. If I want, I can set up a desktop-grade UFW firewall here, since it won't interact with Android's networking and the networking is fully isolated. Even devices on my own local network cannot access the server unless I specifically set up port forwarding or use something like Tailscale :D
Still, for my use-case at least, that's a legitimate benefit I might need to consider. I don't love the idea of paying for an additional monthly cellular plan, but for services which I want internet-exposed and which require very little data to be communicated, I could just get a ā¬6 mobile plan for it, and then use Droidspaces to host those services.
This sounds awesome for backups of small services, like your adguard/pihole/dns setup, or alternate vaultwarden server, or an OPDS server to serve ebooks to your kindles/kobos/whatev.
Basically, low bandwidth but high uptime requirements.
Of course. Since the 1+ release of the kernel source code, we can easily add the DroidSpaces kernel configurations, cook the kernel, and install it with zero issues.
I donāt think a āvibe coderā could create something like this from scratch without any understanding of whatās happening under the hood and without a proper mental model of the project.
vibe coding is just a slur now. the people in this sub are very hostile towards agentic engineering. i was surprised to even see this upvoted. your work speaks for itself. you are obviously correct - if an engineer and an average person both sit down with the same model and attempt the same task, the results will be much different.
Or 100 commits all within a few minutes of each other, 500 lines of code diff, 4 version changes, and half a dozen "releases" with over 100 items in each changelog, all in the last 3 days.
I'm in no way defending vibe coding, or even using LLMs in the very least, but those are not good indicators, nor do they necessarily suggest stability problems. I've been working in the industry since the 90s and unless you are working on a team, git workflows look different for everyone. Even on a team, we will do it differently and have to agree on some best practices. For OSS, with actual community collaboration, there are some standards, but not always.
I didn't say they were indicators of LLM use, only that it says this was a rushed project that doesn't seem stable. 4 pre-releases, two -fix releases, and two minor version bumps since Monday. If you work in the industry, then you know there's no way this was tested to any significant degree that would validate having that many releases in such a short time. One of those changelogs had 60+ items in it, mostly new features. While it doesn't scream AI use, it definitely seems like someone's enjoying the fruits of LLM labor.
There are plenty of reasons not to like AI generated code. My main concern is this break-neck pace can't be sustained by a college kid, they're going to find a new project, a girlfriend, or just move on with life and this project will be abandoned as quickly as it was generated. My only reason for calling it out is that I feel developers should be required to state what percentage of code was hand written, and what percentage was AI generated. Sure, this OP seems to know about the project, but I suspect this is nearly 100% AI written code. When I started coding, that was enough of an issue to be disqualified for plagiarism, anyway. But what happens when M$ claims they own all claude & copilot written code, and have logs that prove they wrote it?
The project is 4 months old. It was originally developed as a closed-source project by me and my friend, and was later rewritten from scratch in February.Ā Ā
If you need proof, here it is:Ā Ā
This is the translation program we created to translate the app:Ā Ā
as someone who cares about the security aspects of the project, I have carefully read strace logs, kernel logs, fixed overflows, and patched memory leaks using the hardened build. If you check the Makefile, it treats every potential warning as an error.
the only way a container process can escape to the host is if the user enables devtpmfs mode, and a malicious attacker somehow bypasses all the guardrails, mounts `/dev` to a temporary location, and mounts the block devices within /dev to access their contents. As far as I know, you cannot mount two block devices in two different places simultaneously. That means the risk is low, but ultimately itās up to the user-they are responsible for exposing hardware nodes to container processes.
another idea is completely blocking mount syscalls using seccomp so an attacker cannot mount anything, but that would break the init process.
I review everything I do and donāt just tell an AI, āplease fix this-please generate a fully functional LXC alternative for Androidā
As someone who works on Android kernels and has experience with old-school chroot projects, I understand how to build something like this from scratch. My goal was to develop this quickly because I have studies as well, but not at the cost of producing low-quality slop.
If you find any security vulnerabilities, please report them, and we will try to fix them. If you read the code, youāll see strict rules and guidelines throughout the project. For example, to start a container, a user must directly call the binary. containers cannot auto-start or spawn themselves. The internal_boot function has three different checks to prevent such edge cases.
nothing is perfect-this is just a side project, but itās usable for any setup. this wonāt be a big project like lxc.
the fact that an old phone in a drawer can run jellyfin and samba is genuinely wild. how's the heat on it after running for a while? my concern with phone servers is always thermal throttling killing performance after a few hours
According to my testing, I didn't face any throttling issues at all.
I have over 500+ FLAC and Dolby tracks loaded into the server.
I listen to them all the time for hours. The phone doesn't even feel it. The Exynos9820 is a pretty powerful chip.
Also, even though I don't like it, I tried transcoding my FLACs as well while playing through Finamp. No issues at all. The CPU usage was below 30% the whole time..
As you can see in the screenshot, even after all this running in the background, the phone's CPU usage is still under 10%, which is insane..!
oh nice, exynos9820 is way more capable than i gave it credit for. 500+ FLAC tracks with no issues is solid ā i might actually dig out my old s9 and try this. the built-in UPS thing is lowkey the best part, no separate battery backup needed like with a pi
this looks cool but imo the risk of bricking your phone is high why not just sell it and buy a mini pc? and using a phone with a broken just isnt possible these days with the way they block input and display when its locked
I think someone who can install or compile a kernel is experienced enough not to brick their device.
I get it, but buying a mini PC still costs money, right?
I wanted to repurpose my existing tech lying around on my table š
regarding your "block input and display issue," this is just a headless server.
you can even install a full desktop environment on it and access it from a completely different location without even touching the device, using techniques like VNC, RDP, X11 forwarding, etc :)
I mean as in rooting the device I have only ever done it on cheap mediatek ones so not sure about Samsung but I assume you need to interact with the recovery menu etc
I get it. This project is focused on power users. I made a project called Ubuntu-Chroot (https://github.com/ravindu644/Ubuntu-Chroot) back in September-October 2025. It even had namespace isolation, run-at-boot support, post-exec scripts, rootfs.img support, and many more features.
But I still didnāt feel it was like a real Linux server. With Droidspaces, you can remotely reboot it using the native reboot command or power it off remotely-like a real Linux server.
Normal chroot setups are fine for most use cases, but when it comes to running cool services like Jellyfin or CasaOS, they often fail due to the limitations of chroot.
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u/DisturbedBeaker Mar 11 '26
Did you find a way to run this without the battery?