
Fedora on non-rooted Android phones – 2016 update - cujanovic
http://nmilosev.svbtle.com/fedora-on-nonrooted-android-phones-2016-update
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david-given
GNURoot is amazing --- it's a non-root chroot which uses ptrace to fake being
in a multiuser root environment while being in a single, normal user --- but
it doesn't _always_ work. Something about the security systems of modern
Androids can cause it to fail in a variety of ways.

Weirdly, the exact failure mode seems to vary from device to device, so one
person's tablet will work fine, while another's will report incorrect errnos
on any system call which refers to a nonexistent file, while another will fail
to load binaries, etc.

I used GNURoot heavily on a Nexus 7 for a while. Worked beautifully. I used it
to write on, with a USB keyboard and a word processor what I wrote myself
(<plug> [http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder](http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder)
</plug>). But then I unwisely upgraded it to Android 5.1 and everything
stopped working. These days I use a Chromebook with Crouton.

~~~
the8472
why doesn't it just use user namespaces?

~~~
Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd
I don't think that Android uses those anywhere, so I would assume that most
Android kernels are compiled without support for user namespaces. (The 1-2
year old Cyanogenmod kernel for Nexus 4 I had randomly lying around on this PC
certainly doesn't have it enabled.)

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solnyshok
could you share what you use it for? My usecase is converting my android
tablet into lightweight html/js dev machine - adding Arch/xfce and bt keyboard
and mouse. I also got it on various android phones, but still struggling to
find a valid usecase. you know, other than just tinkering with it, which is
also great :) BTW, I think that the current easiest way to try Linux on
Android is app called Linux Deploy by meefik. its dev is very active. It
allows you to raise arch, debian, ubuntu, slack, kali, opensuse, gentoo, and
custom rootfs and spice it up it with lxde/xfce/gnome/kde, as well as adds
ssh/vnc/xserver access for you.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Bring your phone in your pocket, connect display (HDMI), mouse+keyboard
(Bluetooth). Abracadabra - a Linux desktop!

~~~
solnyshok
is someone really doing this on daily basis?

~~~
Piskvorrr
Daily basis? I don't think I've ever said that; I have pretty useful desktop
computers in places where I need them daily, this is just a fallback. Although
the device is quite beefy enough to work like a netbook, it's only strong
enough to work like a netbook (i.e. reasonably powerful for a phone but
underpowered for a desktop computer).

I do use my smartphone on a daily basis, but not the same set of apps every
day. This one is an app that comes handy every once in a while, but when it
does, it's a tremendous help (desktop paradigm doesn't really translate well
to Android, so "plug in and use your normal Android apps like it's a desktop
computer" is not really an option for me).

That's the whole point - I don't need to lug _another_ physical device around,
only an app on the phone. This way, I have an e-book reader (Google Books+And
Bible), a map (Locus Pro), a music player (VLC), a good-enough camera, a retro
gaming console (DosBox), a sky chart (Google Sky Map), the whole of Wikipedia
(Kiwix), a calculator (RealCalc), and a netbook as well; no network required
for any of that, just electricity. Now that would be a pretty hefty backpack
for things I _might_ need - or a 6" device in my pocket.

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ck2
This somehow makes me want to be able to run CentOS on my smartphone someday
as a live, busy webserver.

Given the exponential power growth of smartphones I am sure this will be
possible by the end of the decade. Actually we already have 2.5ghz octacore
smartphones now, so probably already possible.

~~~
wingerlang
Apart from the 'cool' factor, what could possibly be good about running a
webserver on a device with very brittle battery life as it is now?

That being said, what stops you from running a server on your phone today?

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monk_e_boy
When you're distributing something that the government doesn't want you to
distribute.

Could be a super cool mesh network thingy, (wasn't Diaspora supposed to do
this?) bitcoin?

~~~
eru
> When you're distributing something that the government doesn't want you to
> distribute.

Mobile phones (and their networks) are under heavy surveillance.

~~~
monk_e_boy
https and ssh?

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Aissen
I successfully installed it on my Nexus 6P (using gentoo; wheezy couldn't be
unpacked, and I had permissions errors in aboriginal).

Problem: "dnf update" simply fails with a "KeyError: 'armv8l'". I guess this
is isn't 64 bits ready yet…

 _Edit_ : Fedora 23 does support Aarch64, this image does not.

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jamstruth
So I'm a little confused by this. Is he running Fedora as the main boot
operating system or something on top of/beside Android (which he can switch to
like an app within Android)?

~~~
ekianjo
on top, since it's using a chroot.

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josteink
> The only missing bit is the Fedora 23 image, so I created one which you can
> download from my Google Drive here ... It’s an untouched Fedora minimal ARM
> image rootfs tarball, with some stuff removed (like kernel, boot partition
> etc.).

That stuff like this is possible and with as little hacking/messing around as
this is actually pretty cool.

Also props for the mention of the X-server app. I've been doing VNC server +
client so far, and have always been a little unhappy about the result.

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pascalo
he said a sony phone, but which one did he use?

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solnyshok
the more ram you got, the better. I have it on one phone with only 512 MB of
Ram, and CPU 2x1.3GHz. CPU is ok. XFCE with Iceweasel struggles with 2-3 tabs.
So it is only useful for GUI-less tasks. The second phone I use it on - has
Snapdragon 800 - 4x2.3GHz and 2GB RAM. Debian with XFCE flies on it.

~~~
pascalo
Well I have two candidate devices, a Z3 and a Samsung galaxy tab s2. Is there
a way to hook up a second screen somehow?

~~~
solnyshok
Anything that works for your phone - hdmi, mhl, widi?

~~~
rodgerd
[http://www.sonymobile.com/global-
en/products/accessories/mhl...](http://www.sonymobile.com/global-
en/products/accessories/mhl-to-hdmi-adapter-im750/)

~~~
solnyshok
beware of 2 mhl specs. 5pin/11pin. Look very similar. I did not read it very
carefully, so now I own both

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chei0aiV
The phrase "non-rooted" in this article title is disconcerting.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Why? There is no exploit; to the device, this behaves as any other Android
app, subject to its restrictions.

This is indeed very useful, as not all phones _may_ be rooted (an issue of
legal permission between owner and user, not of technical possibility), and
this app enables a pseudo-root, sandboxed system that can be seamlessly
uninstalled like any other Android app.

Also, the attack surface of a rooted phone is siginificantly larger (by
necessity) than that of an unrooted one; plus you may want to give your users
a portable desktop computer without necessarily giving them a rooted device.

~~~
chei0aiV
It is disconcerting because it is a reminder of the war on general purpose
computing and devices where the user of the device does not have control of
what software is running on the device.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Are you saying that the "rooted/non-rooted" distinction should never have
appeared, and that all devices should be "rooted" (for a lack of better word)
by default, giving control to the owner/user? If that's what you're saying, I
would certainly agree.

~~~
chei0aiV
Of course :)

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marknadal
Woah, this is amazing! But I'm somewhat baffled, I really want to switch back
to Fedora but I can't even get it installed on my Macbook Air (
[https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1282244](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1282244)
), anybody have tips? So I'm somewhat perplexed how they managed to get it on
a phone - still, pretty cool.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Considering that it's piggy-backing off an existing Android Linux distribution
with all the proper drivers already present, it's not so surprising when you
compare it against proprietary Apple hardware.

