6 ms·

What I would like to do is use my phone as portable storage device and then plug it in to external processing unit and boot from my phone. The external processi

What I would like to do is use my phone as portable storage device and then plug it in to external processing unit and boot from my phone. The external processing unit could be desktop computer, laptop or tablet. The reason? When sitting behind my desk at home or office I don't like to be limited with the mobile CPU. I have the required kWhs to power a proper CPU, GPU and run 64GB of memory. I also don't want to run separate computers on each location, because keeping these in sync (OS settings, applications, databases etc) is painful. Technically we are almost there. We can put reasonably fast flash storage to the phone. USB-C should provide enough bandwidth. On OS software side we would need some work to make plugging in/out convenient. I don't want to do a full reboot every time I "unplug" the phone from desktop processing unit and move it somewhere else. As I move between processing units I would like to keep my apps open, maybe just doing a hibernate/sleep and then waking the system up connected to a different processing unit. This solution means double spending on CPUs and memory, but desktop hardware is relatively cheap.

jordache 9y ago
We really need robust USBC drivers. Even Apple, being in the forefront of USB C connectivity, is vastly lacking in robust USB C operations. Plug in/out of usbc cables causes dramatically high crash rate on the new MBPs
- jonaswi 9y ago
  Ah so I am not the only one! My MacBook Pro was regularly crashing completely when I unplugged my dock while it was closed. I now always have to wake up my MacBook before I unplug the dock.
- fragmede 9y ago
  By "forefront of USB-C connectivity", you mean the new iPhones still use the proprietary lightning connector, to the detriment of progress.
  - jordache 9y ago
    first mass market laptop to be exclusively on USBC? Yeah if anyone, you'd get expect them to get the USB C stuff right... But it wasn't the case. It's downright infuriating to use.
mahrain 9y ago
Google could easily enable this on their Chromebooks, that run Android apps. Especially the ARM versions should be able to run the same code and use the same apps.
dpark 9y ago
> I don't want to do a full reboot every time I "unplug" the phone from desktop processing unit and move it somewhere else. How do you expect this to work? You can’t hibernate an OS and swap out all the hardware and expect it to actually wake back up. You’re going to have to do a full boot.
- clhodapp 9y ago
  That's true, but we're getting close: Linux ostensibly supports power-toggling and hot plugging CPUs, memory, and disks at this point. I think it's more focused on allowing VMs to be resized and replacing bad components in servers, but I know that some systems are already using some of this tech to improve power management and support better hibernation. I think there's still quite a ways to go to make graphical sessions robust enough to be suspended and then brought up on different hardware (I don't think things are presently set up to allow for changes to the pci controller and X sessions expect things to be pretty static, as evidenced by the hoops you need to jump through for switchable graphics), but we may get there if a major company ever decides to take an interest.
  - dpark 9y ago
    It’s probably solvable with enough resources. I don’t honestly know why anyone would fund this, though. The “let me plug my phone into random machines” crowd is pretty small. People who want roaming state are probably better served in general by cloud apps, which don’t require that the user carry a dedicated device to boot with.
- Hello71 9y ago
  CRIU
- emidln 9y ago
  Actually, you probably could. If you write the hibernate image to a place using a machine-id of some sort. Imagine you have images like /hibernate/machine/5c76f5e0-9117-4e33-8093-9de2e2f1b6de /hibernate/machine/d755fe2c-2b13-4436-8a5b-ba3363b9c642 When your kernel boots up, it grabs its machine-id and looks for a hibernation image to map into its memory. If it finds one, great, you have an "instant wake". If it doesn't, you boot as normal. Now imagine that your kernel tries to mount a specific device to `/hibernate` prior to looking for hibernate images. Upon hibernating, it writes its image to its machine-id. You could easily share the disk between two machines (even of different architectures) and keep two separate hiberante images on disk. You wouldn't be sharing the processes, but you could share your data. With a sophisticated enough setup, you could probably even dual-install binaries (although this would be much involved with ELF where you must have separate binaries compared to something like Mach-O) to something like /usr/bin_x86_64/ and /usr/bin_arm64/ and then use your shell to select your path. This might work on a system level, but would certainly work on a per-install basis manually.
srcmap 9y ago
One solution is use rdnis over usb. It allows ethernet connection over USB. Once ip network is setup, you can easily run nfs, samba, vnc over that network interface. A few years back when I worked on AOSP project, I dislike the tools from Android. I put a "ubuntu for arm" rootfs in a subdirectory inside a cell phone platform, chroot to that subdir. I have full ubuntu environment inside a cell phone. xfce4-terminal, ddd, nfs, samba - ~40k ubuntu packages all available with a simple apt-get install command. As long as you have enough RAM, CPU cores, storage space inside a cell phone, it is very easily to setup. If you keep the vnc server running, you can plug and unplug that cell phone to any desktops, thin client and your can instantly log back into the same GUI environment.
- theposey 9y ago
  I think you mean RNDIS?
nialv7 9y ago
This is a brilliant product glitch that will make developers cringe...
digi_owl 9y ago
I seem to recall there is an app like that for Android, but it requires a rooted device. Basically it presents ISOs over the USB connection as if they were storage devices, allowing them to act as boot media for a connected PC.
- d_k_f 9y ago
  I just googled this, do you mean https://softwarebakery.com/projects/drivedroid https://softwarebakery.com/projects/drivedroid? Sounds rather nice, especially considering I've been installing various systems over the last few days and flashing images to a thumb drive gets old really fast. Thanks for mentioning this, it'll probably save me a few hours in the future!
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Yep, i think thats the one.

jordache 9y ago

We really need robust USBC drivers. Even Apple, being in the forefront of USB C connectivity, is vastly lacking in robust USB C operations. Plug in/out of usbc cables causes dramatically high crash rate on the new MBPs

jonaswi 9y ago
Ah so I am not the only one! My MacBook Pro was regularly crashing completely when I unplugged my dock while it was closed. I now always have to wake up my MacBook before I unplug the dock.
fragmede 9y ago
By "forefront of USB-C connectivity", you mean the new iPhones still use the proprietary lightning connector, to the detriment of progress.
- jordache 9y ago
  first mass market laptop to be exclusively on USBC? Yeah if anyone, you'd get expect them to get the USB C stuff right... But it wasn't the case. It's downright infuriating to use.

mahrain 9y ago

Google could easily enable this on their Chromebooks, that run Android apps. Especially the ARM versions should be able to run the same code and use the same apps.

dpark 9y ago

> I don't want to do a full reboot every time I "unplug" the phone from desktop processing unit and move it somewhere else. How do you expect this to work? You can’t hibernate an OS and swap out all the hardware and expect it to actually wake back up. You’re going to have to do a full boot.

clhodapp 9y ago
That's true, but we're getting close: Linux ostensibly supports power-toggling and hot plugging CPUs, memory, and disks at this point. I think it's more focused on allowing VMs to be resized and replacing bad components in servers, but I know that some systems are already using some of this tech to improve power management and support better hibernation. I think there's still quite a ways to go to make graphical sessions robust enough to be suspended and then brought up on different hardware (I don't think things are presently set up to allow for changes to the pci controller and X sessions expect things to be pretty static, as evidenced by the hoops you need to jump through for switchable graphics), but we may get there if a major company ever decides to take an interest.
- dpark 9y ago
  It’s probably solvable with enough resources. I don’t honestly know why anyone would fund this, though. The “let me plug my phone into random machines” crowd is pretty small. People who want roaming state are probably better served in general by cloud apps, which don’t require that the user carry a dedicated device to boot with.
Hello71 9y ago
CRIU
emidln 9y ago
Actually, you probably could. If you write the hibernate image to a place using a machine-id of some sort. Imagine you have images like /hibernate/machine/5c76f5e0-9117-4e33-8093-9de2e2f1b6de /hibernate/machine/d755fe2c-2b13-4436-8a5b-ba3363b9c642 When your kernel boots up, it grabs its machine-id and looks for a hibernation image to map into its memory. If it finds one, great, you have an "instant wake". If it doesn't, you boot as normal. Now imagine that your kernel tries to mount a specific device to `/hibernate` prior to looking for hibernate images. Upon hibernating, it writes its image to its machine-id. You could easily share the disk between two machines (even of different architectures) and keep two separate hiberante images on disk. You wouldn't be sharing the processes, but you could share your data. With a sophisticated enough setup, you could probably even dual-install binaries (although this would be much involved with ELF where you must have separate binaries compared to something like Mach-O) to something like /usr/bin_x86_64/ and /usr/bin_arm64/ and then use your shell to select your path. This might work on a system level, but would certainly work on a per-install basis manually.

srcmap 9y ago

One solution is use rdnis over usb. It allows ethernet connection over USB. Once ip network is setup, you can easily run nfs, samba, vnc over that network interface. A few years back when I worked on AOSP project, I dislike the tools from Android. I put a "ubuntu for arm" rootfs in a subdirectory inside a cell phone platform, chroot to that subdir. I have full ubuntu environment inside a cell phone. xfce4-terminal, ddd, nfs, samba - ~40k ubuntu packages all available with a simple apt-get install command. As long as you have enough RAM, CPU cores, storage space inside a cell phone, it is very easily to setup. If you keep the vnc server running, you can plug and unplug that cell phone to any desktops, thin client and your can instantly log back into the same GUI environment.

theposey 9y ago
I think you mean RNDIS?

nialv7 9y ago

This is a brilliant product glitch that will make developers cringe...

digi_owl 9y ago

I seem to recall there is an app like that for Android, but it requires a rooted device. Basically it presents ISOs over the USB connection as if they were storage devices, allowing them to act as boot media for a connected PC.

d_k_f 9y ago
I just googled this, do you mean https://softwarebakery.com/projects/drivedroid https://softwarebakery.com/projects/drivedroid? Sounds rather nice, especially considering I've been installing various systems over the last few days and flashing images to a thumb drive gets old really fast. Thanks for mentioning this, it'll probably save me a few hours in the future!
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Yep, i think thats the one.