4 ms·

A few example of the top of my head: - DriveDroid to boot a PC, I haven't used a USB stick to boot off in... years? - /etc/hosts - Viper4Android for system w

by lawl 4y ago

A few example of the top of my head: - DriveDroid to boot a PC, I haven't used a USB stick to boot off in... years? - /etc/hosts - Viper4Android for system wide EQ - Messing with user hostile apps such a firefox when they disable your addons although they still work, proven by the fact that I was able to make them work again as root Edit: more things - Wireguard kernel module - Adding a CA to the trust store to MITM yourself you can add as many of these as you want, i'm not giving up root. The crippled API model that's in fashion these days kills innovation.

iggldiggl 4y ago
- Adding a CA to the trust store to MITM yourself <-- or to work around Let's Encrypt's old certificate root expiring by manually adding the new one - GravityBox for various UI tweaks and making volume control a little more fine-grained - UMS Enabler to expose your external SD card as an USB drive (accessing it via MTP isn't really fun and doesn't work everywhere [1]) - proper local backups and therefore the ability to e.g. relatively painlessly revert borked app updates - sometimes due to bugs cruft accumulates in data directories that as a regular user can only be cleaned by – depending on the nature of the bug – clearing the whole application data [2] (which is already annoying enough as it of course also means wiping all your settings and other stuff you might actually want to keep), completely uninstalling and reinstalling the app [3], or even wiping the whole phone [4]. [1] E.g. the local state library has a nice book scanner available for public use. You can either e-mail yourself the results (but that only works reliably up to a certain file size), or else save them on an USB drive. I didn't have an USB drive with me, but thanks to UMS Enable I could just plug in my phone, switch my external SD card to USB mode and voila. [2] It seems that e.g. possibly as a result of /etc/hosts blocking via AdAway some apps accumulate telemetry data that they cannot send (Fabric / Crashlytics seems to be the particular culprit here) and after a few weeks that amount of data can reach a notable size. Another example was that due to some sort of bug Google's TTS app (Speech Services) kept accumulating TTS voice packs after updates and wouldn't delete the old versions, and by the time I noticed they were occupying a few hundred MB. [3] Don't know of a current example, but during the days of Android 4.1.2, Android had a bug whereby if a native library was removed from a future APK version (respectively renamed), then Android wouldn't remove the old copy of the library when installing an update. Skype was a particular culprit there, because their native library was around 25 MB and included a version number in its filename, so each time that library was upgraded an additional 25 MB file was plonked onto the file system, with the old file remaining behind. Without root, the only way to remove those superfluous files was by completely uninstalling the app. [4] I occasionally find system RAM dumps appearing under /data/ss-ram-dumps. I've got no idea whether they eventually get cleaned up automatically, or if they would just accumulate and take up more and more space until you're forced to wipe the whole phone.
- anotherevan 4y ago
  > proper local backups What do you use for your backups? I've used Titanium Backup in the past, but it has some issues in Android 11 and seems to no longer be maintained. Trying OAndBackupX (recently rebranded as NeoBackup) but the results are not great. Hoping the next major version cleans it up.
  - iggldiggl 4y ago
    I tried looking for a replacement app for that last year or so, but didn't find anything really satisfactory, either. Didn't try OAndBackupX, though, because my phone's currently too old, but "the results are not great" doesn't sound very encouraging, I guess :-) So while it's a bit clunky, for now I'm relying on a combination of Titanium Backup (at least on my phone it's still working fine except for split APKs) + SAI to do an extra backup of split APKs.
kaba0 4y ago
So what should have firefox do then? Plenty of addons don’t work and they don’t have metadata on which do and which don’t. I don’t see how whitelisting is problematic (though I do agree that since then they should have improved the status quo)
- lawl 4y ago
  > So what should have firefox do then? Plenty of addons don’t work and they don’t have metadata on which do and which don’t. I don’t see how whitelisting is problematic Here's how niche indie software handles this: https://i.imgur.com/6m809SB.png https://i.imgur.com/6m809SB.png (excuse the sarcasm) I don't care anymore though. I've switched browsers since, Mozilla is beyond help. Still, in that moment i was very glad to have root to override their bullshit.
ce4 4y ago
Ha, havent heard from that app in years! DriveDroid's file-backed USB-thumbdrive emulation is marvellous. Pick your .iso or whatever image, insert & boot your machines from it. No more searching for and fiddling with usb drives needed. It needs usb-gadget+mass storage module support in the Android kernel though. Miss it.
- fencepost 4y ago
  If you don't want to be leaving your phone plugged into PCs that you've booted, you might look into the "iodd" brand devices - either enclosures that you can put your own SSD into or the Mini series that comes with (I think) an mSATA drive already installed. The Mini has a better screen for switching between ISOs and virtual disks.
darknavi 4y ago
> - Adding a CA to the trust store to MITM yourself This is possible on iPhones isn't it? I definitely remember Fiddlering my self a few years back on my iPhone.
- xienze 4y ago
  Yes, you can definitely do this on iOS. Mitmproxy for example works by installing a trust profile (or something like that, can’t remember the name).
  - lawl 4y ago
    You used to be able to do this on android, and then they changed it that you can only sort of do it, unless you have root. Root is an insurance (to a degree) against apple changing their mind, like google did.

by lawl 4y ago

iggldiggl 4y ago

- Adding a CA to the trust store to MITM yourself <-- or to work around Let's Encrypt's old certificate root expiring by manually adding the new one - GravityBox for various UI tweaks and making volume control a little more fine-grained - UMS Enabler to expose your external SD card as an USB drive (accessing it via MTP isn't really fun and doesn't work everywhere [1]) - proper local backups and therefore the ability to e.g. relatively painlessly revert borked app updates - sometimes due to bugs cruft accumulates in data directories that as a regular user can only be cleaned by – depending on the nature of the bug – clearing the whole application data [2] (which is already annoying enough as it of course also means wiping all your settings and other stuff you might actually want to keep), completely uninstalling and reinstalling the app [3], or even wiping the whole phone [4]. [1] E.g. the local state library has a nice book scanner available for public use. You can either e-mail yourself the results (but that only works reliably up to a certain file size), or else save them on an USB drive. I didn't have an USB drive with me, but thanks to UMS Enable I could just plug in my phone, switch my external SD card to USB mode and voila. [2] It seems that e.g. possibly as a result of /etc/hosts blocking via AdAway some apps accumulate telemetry data that they cannot send (Fabric / Crashlytics seems to be the particular culprit here) and after a few weeks that amount of data can reach a notable size. Another example was that due to some sort of bug Google's TTS app (Speech Services) kept accumulating TTS voice packs after updates and wouldn't delete the old versions, and by the time I noticed they were occupying a few hundred MB. [3] Don't know of a current example, but during the days of Android 4.1.2, Android had a bug whereby if a native library was removed from a future APK version (respectively renamed), then Android wouldn't remove the old copy of the library when installing an update. Skype was a particular culprit there, because their native library was around 25 MB and included a version number in its filename, so each time that library was upgraded an additional 25 MB file was plonked onto the file system, with the old file remaining behind. Without root, the only way to remove those superfluous files was by completely uninstalling the app. [4] I occasionally find system RAM dumps appearing under /data/ss-ram-dumps. I've got no idea whether they eventually get cleaned up automatically, or if they would just accumulate and take up more and more space until you're forced to wipe the whole phone.

anotherevan 4y ago
> proper local backups What do you use for your backups? I've used Titanium Backup in the past, but it has some issues in Android 11 and seems to no longer be maintained. Trying OAndBackupX (recently rebranded as NeoBackup) but the results are not great. Hoping the next major version cleans it up.
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  I tried looking for a replacement app for that last year or so, but didn't find anything really satisfactory, either. Didn't try OAndBackupX, though, because my phone's currently too old, but "the results are not great" doesn't sound very encouraging, I guess :-) So while it's a bit clunky, for now I'm relying on a combination of Titanium Backup (at least on my phone it's still working fine except for split APKs) + SAI to do an extra backup of split APKs.

kaba0 4y ago

So what should have firefox do then? Plenty of addons don’t work and they don’t have metadata on which do and which don’t. I don’t see how whitelisting is problematic (though I do agree that since then they should have improved the status quo)

lawl 4y ago
> So what should have firefox do then? Plenty of addons don’t work and they don’t have metadata on which do and which don’t. I don’t see how whitelisting is problematic Here's how niche indie software handles this: https://i.imgur.com/6m809SB.png https://i.imgur.com/6m809SB.png (excuse the sarcasm) I don't care anymore though. I've switched browsers since, Mozilla is beyond help. Still, in that moment i was very glad to have root to override their bullshit.

ce4 4y ago

Ha, havent heard from that app in years! DriveDroid's file-backed USB-thumbdrive emulation is marvellous. Pick your .iso or whatever image, insert & boot your machines from it. No more searching for and fiddling with usb drives needed. It needs usb-gadget+mass storage module support in the Android kernel though. Miss it.

fencepost 4y ago
If you don't want to be leaving your phone plugged into PCs that you've booted, you might look into the "iodd" brand devices - either enclosures that you can put your own SSD into or the Mini series that comes with (I think) an mSATA drive already installed. The Mini has a better screen for switching between ISOs and virtual disks.

darknavi 4y ago

> - Adding a CA to the trust store to MITM yourself This is possible on iPhones isn't it? I definitely remember Fiddlering my self a few years back on my iPhone.

xienze 4y ago
Yes, you can definitely do this on iOS. Mitmproxy for example works by installing a trust profile (or something like that, can’t remember the name).
- lawl 4y ago
  You used to be able to do this on android, and then they changed it that you can only sort of do it, unless you have root. Root is an insurance (to a degree) against apple changing their mind, like google did.