• What is this workshop about?
• The mobile phone as an entry point
• Let’s begin !
• Before we start — What do we need?
• A smartphone
• Alternatives
• Factory Reset your phone + Google’s FRP (optional)
• Smartphone set-up
• The (real) shape of the Internet
• What is a server?
• Talking “server” to my phone : the terminal
• WTF is a Terminal?
• Install Termux
• My phone as a web-server
• Installing a web-server
• Downloading NGINX and running it
• Is my server serving?
• A webpage of one’s own
• Our custom webpage
• Where does my server live?
• WTF is an IP address?
• Local vs. Global network
• Browsing the local network
• Going online in the big Internet?
• What about my website’s name?
• URL - A webpage’s full address
• Proxy configuration
• Conclusion
• Going further

What is this workshop about?

In this workshop we collectively examine the infrastructure behind the Internet by building a our own (prototype) server on an old smartphone.

Since the democratisation of the Internet in the 90s, the operations and communications we perform on the Internet have kept rising massively. Nowadays, we often hear about the cloud, as a way to describe all the online services that we access daily, such as emails, social media, data storage, video-streaming, AI chat bots, etc. But what does the Internet look like behind this fog screen?

Although it might seem light and airy, the Internet’s virtual world is actually made of tangible infrastructures with a rising ecological footprint.

The mobile phone as an entry point

This investigation into the materiality of the internet starts by the most intimate and familiar object: the smartphone. This device is also our “window” to the internet since it is so dependant on the so-called “cloud”: our modern phone’s power lies in all the servers it’s accessing remotely. Nowadays it sometimes feels like a phone without an online connection isn’t much use. However, a smartphone is also an highly optimised, low-power computer——a device capable of computation——just in a different form factor than that of a laptop or a rack server. Actually tablets, a smart vacuum cleaners, and even some e-cigarettes are also computers etc.

Although planned obsolescence pushes us to replace our devices every few years, those “retired” smartphones and tablets still hold a lot of computing potential. Because a smartphone’s embodied energy is so high (the energy used for its construction), it’s essential to think about giving them a second-life, which is exactly what we do in this workshop.

Let’s begin !

Do you want to follow this tutorial online?

In this case, click on the button below to start or head directly to the step-by-step instructions here

Are you a workshop participant?

In this case, you can follow online or download and print hand-out version: visit the Participant Hand-out Page and press ctrl + P or File (browser ) > print > destination > Save to PDF to download and print the PDF.

Are you planning and/or facilitating this workshop?

Head to our workshop preparation section to read some tips. You can also download the Facilitator Hand-out (simply press File (browser )> print > destination > Save to PDF to download and print the PDF).

Before we start — What do we need?

A smartphone

This tutorial is made for Android smartphones and tablets from the last 10 years (2015-2025). In case your phone is older than 10 years, not an Android phone, or you are working with a laptop, look below at the alternatives. 

You can use your daily phone or an older “retired” device. It can be a bit damaged but the following features are necessary:

• Android 5 or above (Android 7 or above is preferable) (check in Settings > About Phone)
• The Wi-Fi functions.
• The charging port works. 

Optional but better: 

• The touch screen works, even though it could be shattered. If you don’t have a working screen, check out these solutions.
• The battery functions, or you have an external battery.

Alternatives

iPhones and iPads

Termux — the app we use in this tutorial — is not available on iOS but there is an alternative app called iSH available on iOS 11 and +. Some web-server tutorials are available online (using iSH and python web-server).  

PostMarketOS

If your Android phone is simply too old, cannot update or you are looking for a different (radical) approach, check out PostMarketOS. 

PostMarketOS is an alternative Linux OS that is free, open-source and community maintained. You can install it as a replacement for Android and extends your phone’s lifespan beyond its programmed software obsolescence (lack of updates). You can then easily install the web-server software of your choice, following a linux web-server tutorial.

more info will be added here. 

Laptops

If you don’t have a spare phone but a spare laptop, you can install Linux on it and deploy a web-server too. Simply look for “installing nginx on Linux” tutorial.

Factory Reset your phone + Google’s FRP (optional)

This step is optional, but it might be handy to clean up your phone before deploying it as a web-server. It will give you more storage space, and prevent other apps to overtake computing power.

To do this, online search your device model + factory reset. You will find some instructions to access the boot mode of your computer, from which you can select wipe phone or factory reset. A good website is Hard Reset.

Before you reset your phone:

• Back-up the the contents your want to save, it will be erased.
• Make sure to disconnect any Google Account in Settings > Accounts. Otherwise you risk facing Google’s FRP protection prompting you to login again to the previous Google account, which would make your phone (almost) unusable. This makes it harder to start with a phone you bought or got from someone else.

Smartphone set-up

Make sure your phone is:

• Accessible (you have the password)
• Connected with the internet on a Wi-Fi network
• Equipped with a web-browser (for example, Mozilla Firefox or Chromium).

The (real) shape of the Internet

The following image series gives an introduction to what the internet really looks like, beyond the usual diagrams and icons we often see.

Now that we have a better images of the different types of infrastructure that compose the Internet, we ask ourselves: what precisely is a server?

What is a server?

Now that we have seen a bit what the Internet is made of, let’s zoom-in the part we are interested in today: servers

Talking “server” to my phone : the terminal

To be able to turn our phone into a server (that is a computer that can send back information when asked to), we have to install a couple apps on there.

The main app is called Termux. You can access its technical documentation on this wiki. Termux is an terminal emulator and package collection. The app enables us to give direct commands to the computer (or phone) and download other software (piece of code packaged in folders).

WTF is a Terminal?

Before we just into the instructions for downloading Termux, let’s take some time to understand what we are doing. As we said, Termux is a terminal emulator but what is even a Terminal?

A CLI, Command Line Interface, also known as a terminal is an walk to communicate to the computer using text, instead of buttons or voice. It goes like this:

1. A user types a line of command with his keyboard and presses enter
2. The computer answers with an other line corresponding to the command: executing a task, providing information, downloading a package (pkg)

For example:

pkg update 
...
[Installing package......99%]
Package successfully updated.

Every computer can be accessed via the CLI instead of the more familiar GUI, the Graphical User Interface that we are used to, with buttons, images, a mouse, a touch-screen, etc. On Linux and MacOS we can use the default Terminal app, on Windows there is _Windows Powershell or PUTTY.

The command line is also how we communicate with computers that don’t have a screen and/or are far away, like servers!

Before the democratisation of home computers and the subsequent invention of the Graphical Interface, all tasks performed on the computer were executed through text command. Actually clicking on buttons, menus and folders is just a “user-friendly’ layer hiding what is really going on. Every “click / tap” triggers a command, or a series of commands to the computer too, we just don’t see the text anymore.

Termux is also a command-line interface but for Android phones. Because we are trying to turn our phone into a server, which is not its main function, we have to do it directly by typing command in a Terminal window, which is why we install Termux.

Install Termux

What is my Android version?

To install the correct version of Termux, we first want to determine our phone’s version of Android (the operating system that runs a smartphone).

1. Go to your phone’s Settings, all the way to the bottom and look into About phone.
2. You should find a line with the Android Version.

Go to F-DROID

We will download Termux via F-Droid. F-Droid is an App store with only open-source apps. That means their code is visible to everyone so they aren’t any hidden trackers collecting your data.

1. Go to Termux | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository or download F-droid and then download the app from there.

2. Scroll all the way to the bottom: Download the stable (suggested) version (not beta) by selecting Download APK.  !!! warning “Android 5 or 6” If your phone runs Android 5 or 6, Download the universal package from here (select termux-app_v0.119.0-beta.3+apt-android-5-github-debug_universal.apk)

3. Once downloaded, tap the APK on your device. If you don’t find it go to your Files app, under Downloads.

4. Click install and accept.
5. Tap allow installation of apps from unknown sources (you will need it for later) or go to the phone’s Settings to enable apps to launch from third-party apps and go back.
6. Once installed, you will see the Termux launcher on your home screen and in your App Library.

Install Termux API (optional)

For more advanced uses, Termux works best in combination with its sister app, Termux API Termux API allows you to control some of the phones’ hardware features, such as vibration, the camera, etc. Find documentation here.

If you would like to install Termux API, follow the instructions here before continuing to the next step.

Last configuration

Before we can start giving commands to our phone via the Termux Terminal, we make a final configuration for storage. Set-up Termux storage helps keep track of your files and folders (more info here)

1. Make sure everything is up to date (package update and package upgrade)

pkg update && pkg upgrade -y

2. Setup storage:

termux-setup-storage -y

3. Allow access of Termux to the phone storage, photos, etc.

My phone as a web-server

Installing a web-server

Now that Termux is installed, we can give instructions/commands to our phone outside of the existing apps. To make a server, we need a webserver software, a package of code that can receive request from clients (other computers) and send back web content. We will use NGINX {‘Engine X’}, which is widely used.

Downloading NGINX and running it

Open Termux on your phone, type + enter the following and wait:

1. Install nginx

pkg install nginx -y

2. Start-up NGINX with this command.

nginx

Although nothing shows up on your phone (except if you have an error), you server should now be running in the background!

Is my server serving?

To check if you server is running, open your browser app, and type the following into the search bar: <http://localhost:8080> and press enter. You should see the NGINX default page pop-up saying “Welcome to nginx!”

Now, let’s customize this default webpage.

A webpage of one’s own

Now that our server is live, let’s understand what we are seeing. When we open a website in the browser, we are actually getting a file from the web-server’s folder on that computer.

Essentially, a website is just a folder made of different file types on a remote computer.

Usually the main file composing a webpage is called index.html. index because it’s a list of all the content of the page, but also all the external resources needed to display the page, such as images, videos, fonts, etc. HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language) is the programming language used for webpages and the main file format. There are also other languages:

• HTML is made to structure content and give it hierarchy.
• CSS is for styles: the layout appearance of our webpage (colour, size, creating columns, etc.)
• Javascript (.js) is for interactivity: animating and toggling buttons, dropdown, get remote content, etc.

Our custom webpage

Finding our webpage

Let’s locate our webpage on our phone. We will navigate through folders using Termux. We use the command cd path/to/folder/ to get to our website folder, created by our webserver. cd stands for “change directory” (directory is another word for folder).

1. Type + enter

cd $PREFIX/share/nginx/html  

2. Now you want to list what is in this folder, using ls, which stands for “list”.

ls

3. You should see 2 files: index.html and 50x.html. index.html is the main page while 50x.html displays if there is a specific error.

Viewing our webpage.

index.html is the webpage we see in our phone’s browser. Let’s open it.

1. We use the command nano file-name.extension. “nano” is a very basic text editor in the terminal.

nano index.html

2. We have opened the html file in the terminal. Similar to opening a .docx file in Office.

   <!DOCTYPE html>
   <html>
   <head>
   <title>Welcome to nginx!</title>
   <style>
   html { color: dark; }
   body { width: 35em; margin: 0 auto;
   font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; }
   </style>
   </head>
   <body>
      <h1>Welcome to nginx!</h1>
      <p>If you see this page, the nginx web server is successfully installed and
      working. Further configuration is required.</p>

      <p>For online documentation and support please refer to
          <a href="http://nginx.org/">nginx.org</a>.<br/>
      Commercial support is available at
          <a href="http://nginx.com/">nginx.com</a>.</p>
   </body>
   </html>

HTML structures information with different value inside “elements” surrounded by <tags>: opening tag <p> and closing tag.</p>. Here we see several elements, that we find back on the rendered browser page. Inside the <body> element, there is an <h1> tag with a header, some <p> paragraphs, and some <a> links.

Inside the <head>, we find information regaring the page but that isn’t the content:

• <title>...the title here...</title>: is the title that shows up in the browser tab.
• <style>color: blue;<style> is where we put CSS code to give information about the layout, color, etc.

Editing our webpage.

Let’s change some text inside the page.

1. Using the < > arrows in nano, navigate and change some text.

<h1>This webpage is on my old dad's phone</h1>
   <p>If you see this page, you are ON MY PHONE!</p>

2. Change the text color in the <style>

<style>
html { color: orange; 
background: limegreen;
}
</style>

Save, quit and reload

Now, let’s save and see our update:

1. tap CTRL and type xin Termux’s keyboard.
2. You will get the question “Save modified buffer? [Y/n]”
3. Type y for yes and press enter. (Type no to quit without saving).
4. Go to your browser and refresh the page [http://localhost:8080/index.html].

Ok, great! But that’s no so exciting is, it? I can view my webpage on my own web-server machine. I could also just open that file in the file manager, I don’t need to web for that. Actually, your webpage is already accessible by other clients (other computers), you just need to give them your IP address.

Where does my server live?

WTF is an IP address?

IP address stands for Internet Protocol address, which is the method of communication used by all types of computers/servers across the internet (web-servers, emails, file transfers, etc.). Since the internet is a massive network of computers, we need a unique way to identify each server, so we can send requests to it and the server can send information back to the correct device.

Think of it like a street address: each IP address is unique and is a way to tell where that servers “lives” and how to get there.

Traditionally IP addresses are made of a series of four sets of numbers (0 to 255) separated by a period. Therefore there are addresses ranging from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255, that’s over 4.3 billions unique addresses! However, with the exponential rise of devices connected online, we are starting to run out of addresses to give away, which is why some devices now use a new longer IP address format called IPv6 (it looks like that: 2600:1f1c:446:4900::259)

Local vs. Global network

What is my server’s IP address?

In Termux, there is a command to determine the current IP address of my device. We use the command ifconfig to test the reachability of a server.

1. Type and enter:

curl ifconfig.me

2. We get something like this:

200.300.304.304

Now, everyone phone that is connected to the same wifi should get the same address. Why is that? This is actually the Wi-Fi router’s public IP address, which is the unique address used by the router to access the Internet. All the requests we make to remote servers (through the internet) travel through our wi-Fi router, which is the gateway to the big internet, the global network.

However, all the devices connected over Wi-Fi or cable to the router also form a network: the local network. If you played multiplayer videogames in LAN (Local Area Network), like having a minecraft server with your friends at home, it might be familiar. This local is also how we can talk to our printer remotely, while we are connected the same Wi-Fi network.

In this local network, each connected device also has a unique IP address, so the router knows who is sending requests (to the internet or to other devices) and can direct the trafiic. This local IP address is called the *private IP address.

In short of public IP address is the address of our router when it’s browsing the internet, while a private IP address is the local address of each device on our home network.

What’s my phone’s private IP address?

In the terminal we use ifconfig to know our device private address:

1. Type and enter:

ifconfig

2. In the output we look for the line starting with wlan0....inet, this relates to the Wi-Fi interface. After inet, there is an IP address that should look like:

192.168.1.255 

3. Write this address down. This is your devices IP address as long as your remain connected. (It might change if you disconnect then reconnect).

Browsing the local network

Now that we know our web-server local (private) IP address (where our server lives), we can let other devices on the network visit our webpage!

1. Using another device than your phone server, visit your phone’s servers over the local network.
2. In the browser type + enter: http:// + 192.168.XX.XX+ :8080
3. Make sure you use http:// and not https:// (we don’t have the secure SSL certificate yet).
4. You can now view your custom webpage.

Going online in the big Internet?

While a local network already holds potential, the ultimate (at least the original) goal of the Internet is to connect remote places and give users access to information all over the world.

There are several ways to open a local server to the public over the Internet. Essentially it consists in explaining to other servers at which public IP address your website can be found so visitors can be directed there.

What about my website’s name?

Wait a minute! When we I go online, I never use an IP address. I just type an address in the search bar, or look for it with a search engine. Indeed, since IP addresses are hard to remember and change (for security reasons or because a site moves from 1 server to the other) we use domain names in web addresses.

A domain name is made of at least two parts: the domain name, like Wikipedia and the extension, like .org, or (.com, .net, .nl, .fr, etc.). Sometimes there is also a subdomain like in or . A subdomain usually points to a subpart of a website.

Exercise: IP address of famous websites

In the terminal (Termux) we can use a simple command to know the IP address of a website (its server). We use the command ping to test the reachability of a server.

1. Type and enter:

ping wikipedia.org 

2. If we are connected online, we should now be receiving information back within a few ms of delay! We also see the IP address of wikipedia.org, so 185.15.58.224 (last time we checked). Entering this IP address in your browser should get you to Wikipedia too: http://185.15.58.224

3. To quit ping, tap CTRLand c on the keyboard.

Exercise: Where does Wikipedia live?

Using service like IP location, we can match an IP address to a location and see where famous websites have their servers.

1. Go to IP location
2. Type an IP address (like 185.15.58.224 for wikpedia)
3. Look on the map where it is :)

URL - A webpage’s full address

A url is the name of the complete web-address. It’s made of 3 parts. For example we have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet/index.html

• https:// is the protocol of communication of the web (webpages in websites, on web-servers)
• en.wikipedia.org is the domain and sub-domain
• /wiki/Internet/ is the path, the folders and subfolders we have to go through to get to the location where our file is.
• index.html is the file we are requesting, the file that contains the content of this page and the list of all the resources needed to display this page (fonts, images, stylesheets, databases, etc.). By default it’s index.html, so no need to write it.

There are several ways to go “public”: using a fixed public IP address and opening the ports to the public (ports forwarding), using a dynamic DNS tool or using a reverse proxy server.

We will be using a reverse proxy. A reverse proxy is an intermediate server that is already public and acts as a intermediary between our local web-server and potential clients (other devices).

In this tutorial, we use comphost.club’s reverse proxy server, that is based in the Netherlands, so we can keep this somewhat local.

Proxy configuration

Comphost.club runs the reverse-proxy softare SirTunnel which runs with the communication protocol SSH.

1. We install an SSH sotfware in our phone: OpenSSH:

pkg install openssh -y

2. We customise our own SirTunnel command based on the following:

ssh -tR XXXX:localhost:8080 comphost@comphost.club ./sirtunnel.py xx-my-subdomain-name-xx.comphost.club XXXX

3. We replace XXXXby a unique port number (each participant must have its own), for example 4567

4. We replace xx-my-subdomain-name-xx by an original subdomain address, for example brokensamsung

5. Type + enter the custom command in Termux:

ssh -tR 4567:localhost:8080 comphost@comphost.club ./sirtunnel.py brokensamsung.comphost.club 4567

6. If connecting for the first time, confirm the authenticity of host by typing “yes” and enter.

7. Enter the password and press enter.

8. Other devices can now visit your webpage at brokensamsung.comphost.club

All the mobile-servers currently up are listed on comphost.club’s index page.

Conclusion

The mobile web-server tutorial stops here! Thank you for following it. If you have any feedback or questions, don’t hesitate reaching out (see About page for contact details).

Going further

There are additional resources in the Going further Section. You can also check the Comphost’s Git repository for extra code and examples.

We will be posting some updates as we develop the documentation further.