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Root required, darn. I have 2 or 3 android phones with bad screens sitting in a drawer I'd like to do something with. Unfortunately they a.) don't have USB debu

Root required, darn. I have 2 or 3 android phones with bad screens sitting in a drawer I'd like to do something with. Unfortunately they a.) don't have USB debugging enabled and b.) don't support any sort of external display. If anyone had some tips on how I could get into these machines it would be much appreciated.

BelenusMordred 5y ago
Not sure about this guide but you should be able to install a linux rom through fastboot instead of a recovery. You won't need a working screen to do that.
dehrmann 5y ago
You're better off getting a single-board computer for this. You'll be able to install your own mSATA drive, and it'll run most distros without any fuss. That said, this quickly escalates to just set up a real NAS box. You don't really want to use an SSD for backup because they can lose data when not used. Alternatively, just go with a cloud provider.
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  Obviously solid advice, but I think the point here is about reusing old electronics. I also have a couple of old phones I'd like to try this with.
- KronisLV 5y ago
  As funnny as this is, i never really go the whole concept of a "real NAS box" - do people usually mean specialized hardware in combination with something like the FreeNAS OS? Because right now i'm just using consumer hardware (an Athlon 200GE for its low 35W TDP, some cheapo RAM and a number of Seagate BarraCuda HDDs) in combination with Debian, which also runs on my other cloud servers. It's all mounted on my other devices either through SFTP or a Nextcloud instance that's also running on them for easier file replication. I don't even have RAID or ZFS/XFS/Btrfs file systems, just ext4 because any sort of clustering would introduce unneeded complexity to the setup - instead, a cron job with rsync backs the data from the "primary" HDDs to "secondary" ones every day in an incremental manner (well there's also BackupPC that does network rsync backups across servers). What purpose would running a NAS oriented OS distro even serve, for simple uses cases like that? It feels like the current "ad hoc" setup is really affordable and easy to operate. I think a SoC would also be nicely suited for this, as long as there is sufficient I/O capability. In regards to phones, however, i feel like drivers for obscure devices could probably become problematic quickly.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Regular people usually buy something like a Western Digital NAS from the shopping mall on the neighbourhood.
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    To me choosing a specialized hardware was motivated by these two factors: - power management - semi-closed source applications On power management, I don't use the NAS box continuously, and there can be long gaps between accesses. Having the box "sleep" for 95% of the day, and wake up the disks only for one or two bursts of activity is interesting to me. I tried doing that with DIY solutions, including Raspberry Pi+SATA disk type of arrangements. Overall it didn't work great and was a PITA. On the semi-proprietary apps, I am thinking about Synology's apps. I could totally live without them, but it's a nice addition to the package, they're easy to install, seem to be well maintained and work decently well.
    - dkarp 5y ago
      As someone who normally rolls their own and has a half dozen raspberry pis around the house, I have a Synology NAS. As you said, it's very low energy and zero noise (rubber feet and quiet fan). It's also effortless to set up and run with their RAID system and syncing etc is very good. It'll let me know if there is a problem with a drive, it keeps itself updated and I've never had to reboot it. I do not use it for Plex as it wouldn't be able to handle it. They are a bit under powered but they're very optimised for their main purpose, Network Attached Storage, and that's the most important thing for me. It is also very neat and tidy, unlike most home made solutions.
      - NortySpock 5y ago
        Would OpenMediaVault on a Raspberry Pi have met your RAID and sync needs? I keep eyeing OMV but haven't splurged on running a NAS with multiply-redundant drives separate from my application server; currently it's just an RPi4 as a docker host, with rsync keeping two USB drives in sync with each other.
- poisonborz 5y ago
  > You don't really want to use an SSD for backup because they can lose data when not used Not (really) true, there is not much hard data backing this up as I see it, and for what there is, the retention would be 1+ year. The thread is not about offline backups, but an always powered backup server anyway. And SSD does make sense for a lot of reasons: HDD speeds are likely slower than local CAT cable, the higher IOPS helps on parallel workload cases, not to mention the way lower power draw and zero noise (no moving parts for the rest of the setup), compared to a chirping HDD.
ce4 5y ago
You could order replacement screens and try to fix it yourself. Depending on the model it's often cheaply available on Aliexpress or ebay.
butz 5y ago
Depending on device you have, you might be able to build a serial cable for it: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Serial_debugging https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Serial_debugging
rawbot 5y ago
Depending on how broken the screen is, you could navigate Android with a USB keyboard/mouse.
rjzzleep 5y ago
I have a rooted phone that I use to get information I need root for with a broken touchscreen. The other day I was stupid enough to try to reset it to see if I could part of the screen working. Obviously that didn't work. Re-enabling USB debugging was the following process: 1. use USB-OTG to go into the bluetooth menu to connect a bluetooth device to. 2. enable usb debugging using mouse 3. connect to PC and use the bluetooth keyboard to allow USB debugging 4. use scrcpy to control the device Obviously this only works reasonably well if you can see at least some portion of the screen.
- sippeangelo 5y ago
  It also only works if your phone is on an old enough Android version where they haven't put OTG behind a manual toggle yet.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    What versions of Android have a toggle to allow USB OTG?
Aulig 5y ago
Not sure if it helps you to get root, but to enable debugging you could use something like this guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPJcR_Iosm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPJcR_Iosm4 Once you have usb debugging, I can recommend Vysor, super easy to use to control your phone from the pc. I'd also recommend turning on Talkback (assistive technology) and VoiceAccess as that can help you use the device even if you cant see anything on your screen. That helped me a lot with my phone that has a broken screen where nothing but the touchscreen works.
- khimaros 5y ago
  also scrcpy
HPsquared 5y ago
Look up Termux, it doesn't require root.
MayeulC 5y ago
If they have their bootloaders unlocked, I'd look into postmarketos. If not... well, I guess you really need to fix the screen up first, unless you had enabled adb. It could even be a temporary fix (for instance, a single screen if the 3 devices are the same.
jamexcb 5y ago
I had a similar problem. But I could see part of the screen. So o used a usb OTG cable with a mouse to enable BT and connect a second mouse using BT. Then I was able to enable USB debugging to use with scrcpy. Now I use the phone as a "security" cam.

BelenusMordred 5y ago

Not sure about this guide but you should be able to install a linux rom through fastboot instead of a recovery. You won't need a working screen to do that.

dehrmann 5y ago

You're better off getting a single-board computer for this. You'll be able to install your own mSATA drive, and it'll run most distros without any fuss. That said, this quickly escalates to just set up a real NAS box. You don't really want to use an SSD for backup because they can lose data when not used. Alternatively, just go with a cloud provider.

hungryforcodes 5y ago
Obviously solid advice, but I think the point here is about reusing old electronics. I also have a couple of old phones I'd like to try this with.
KronisLV 5y ago
As funnny as this is, i never really go the whole concept of a "real NAS box" - do people usually mean specialized hardware in combination with something like the FreeNAS OS? Because right now i'm just using consumer hardware (an Athlon 200GE for its low 35W TDP, some cheapo RAM and a number of Seagate BarraCuda HDDs) in combination with Debian, which also runs on my other cloud servers. It's all mounted on my other devices either through SFTP or a Nextcloud instance that's also running on them for easier file replication. I don't even have RAID or ZFS/XFS/Btrfs file systems, just ext4 because any sort of clustering would introduce unneeded complexity to the setup - instead, a cron job with rsync backs the data from the "primary" HDDs to "secondary" ones every day in an incremental manner (well there's also BackupPC that does network rsync backups across servers). What purpose would running a NAS oriented OS distro even serve, for simple uses cases like that? It feels like the current "ad hoc" setup is really affordable and easy to operate. I think a SoC would also be nicely suited for this, as long as there is sufficient I/O capability. In regards to phones, however, i feel like drivers for obscure devices could probably become problematic quickly.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Regular people usually buy something like a Western Digital NAS from the shopping mall on the neighbourhood.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  To me choosing a specialized hardware was motivated by these two factors: - power management - semi-closed source applications On power management, I don't use the NAS box continuously, and there can be long gaps between accesses. Having the box "sleep" for 95% of the day, and wake up the disks only for one or two bursts of activity is interesting to me. I tried doing that with DIY solutions, including Raspberry Pi+SATA disk type of arrangements. Overall it didn't work great and was a PITA. On the semi-proprietary apps, I am thinking about Synology's apps. I could totally live without them, but it's a nice addition to the package, they're easy to install, seem to be well maintained and work decently well.
  - dkarp 5y ago
    As someone who normally rolls their own and has a half dozen raspberry pis around the house, I have a Synology NAS. As you said, it's very low energy and zero noise (rubber feet and quiet fan). It's also effortless to set up and run with their RAID system and syncing etc is very good. It'll let me know if there is a problem with a drive, it keeps itself updated and I've never had to reboot it. I do not use it for Plex as it wouldn't be able to handle it. They are a bit under powered but they're very optimised for their main purpose, Network Attached Storage, and that's the most important thing for me. It is also very neat and tidy, unlike most home made solutions.
    - NortySpock 5y ago
      Would OpenMediaVault on a Raspberry Pi have met your RAID and sync needs? I keep eyeing OMV but haven't splurged on running a NAS with multiply-redundant drives separate from my application server; currently it's just an RPi4 as a docker host, with rsync keeping two USB drives in sync with each other.
poisonborz 5y ago
> You don't really want to use an SSD for backup because they can lose data when not used Not (really) true, there is not much hard data backing this up as I see it, and for what there is, the retention would be 1+ year. The thread is not about offline backups, but an always powered backup server anyway. And SSD does make sense for a lot of reasons: HDD speeds are likely slower than local CAT cable, the higher IOPS helps on parallel workload cases, not to mention the way lower power draw and zero noise (no moving parts for the rest of the setup), compared to a chirping HDD.

ce4 5y ago

You could order replacement screens and try to fix it yourself. Depending on the model it's often cheaply available on Aliexpress or ebay.

butz 5y ago

Depending on device you have, you might be able to build a serial cable for it: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Serial_debugging https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Serial_debugging

rawbot 5y ago

Depending on how broken the screen is, you could navigate Android with a USB keyboard/mouse.

rjzzleep 5y ago

I have a rooted phone that I use to get information I need root for with a broken touchscreen. The other day I was stupid enough to try to reset it to see if I could part of the screen working. Obviously that didn't work. Re-enabling USB debugging was the following process: 1. use USB-OTG to go into the bluetooth menu to connect a bluetooth device to. 2. enable usb debugging using mouse 3. connect to PC and use the bluetooth keyboard to allow USB debugging 4. use scrcpy to control the device Obviously this only works reasonably well if you can see at least some portion of the screen.

sippeangelo 5y ago
It also only works if your phone is on an old enough Android version where they haven't put OTG behind a manual toggle yet.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  What versions of Android have a toggle to allow USB OTG?

Aulig 5y ago

Not sure if it helps you to get root, but to enable debugging you could use something like this guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPJcR_Iosm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPJcR_Iosm4 Once you have usb debugging, I can recommend Vysor, super easy to use to control your phone from the pc. I'd also recommend turning on Talkback (assistive technology) and VoiceAccess as that can help you use the device even if you cant see anything on your screen. That helped me a lot with my phone that has a broken screen where nothing but the touchscreen works.

khimaros 5y ago
also scrcpy

HPsquared 5y ago

Look up Termux, it doesn't require root.

MayeulC 5y ago

If they have their bootloaders unlocked, I'd look into postmarketos. If not... well, I guess you really need to fix the screen up first, unless you had enabled adb. It could even be a temporary fix (for instance, a single screen if the 3 devices are the same.

jamexcb 5y ago

I had a similar problem. But I could see part of the screen. So o used a usb OTG cable with a mouse to enable BT and connect a second mouse using BT. Then I was able to enable USB debugging to use with scrcpy. Now I use the phone as a "security" cam.