Homelab, Linux, JS & ABAP (~˘▾˘)~
 

[DerpFest] Xiaomi Pad 5 (nabu)

I recently bought a used Xiaomi Pad 5 for 139.99€ from homezesting.com. It arrived in perfect condition.
The latest official Android version by Xiaomi is Android 13 with MIUI 14.0.5. This is kinda old, and I directly ran into an issue due to the old webview version in combination with the Home Assistant app (see here).

I therefore looked for a custom ROM and the first ROM I found for this device was DerpFest. I’ve never used it before, but flashing it shouldn’t be too different from other ROMs.
There are not much information on their website, but I found everything needed to know in their related telegram group: https://t.me/c/2284318430/8189

Unlocking the bootloader for Xiaomi devices can be annoying, but turned out, the bootloader of my purchased Pad 5 was already unlocked. Great!
(Update 10.02.2025: I asked the customer support and apparently they already sell all devices unlocked. Good to know!)

To make my life even simpler, I used the Auto-Installer shell script to install DerpFest 15. Unfortunately, it was running into an error, but it was easy to fix. (Seems like there is already a fixed version when downloading from GitHub here).

# make it executable
sudo chmod +x install_derpfest_linux.sh         

# start script
./install_derpfest_linux.sh  
# resulted in the error: /bin/bash^M: bad interpreter

# fix
sudo apt-get install dos2unix
dos2unix install_derpfest_linux.sh   
./install_derpfest_linux.sh                                                                                

Then the script ran without any issues.

When starting the device the first time, I skipped the Google Login step, so I wasn’t able to use the Play Store. But since not even a web browser is installed by default (which I think is really great to not be bloated from the beginning :-), I had to enable USB-Debugging mode and sideload F-Droid to install basic apps like a file explorer and browser.

adb install F-Droid.apk 

The Tablet is running super smooth and so far I could not find any issues! 🙂

[Android] Gadgetbridge

“Gadgetbridge is a free and open source Android application that allows you to pair and manage various gadgets such as smart watches, bands, headphones, and more without the need for the vendor application. So in short, you can use Gadgetbridge instead of relying on your gadget’s own proprietary app.”

https://gadgetbridge.org

[LineageOS] When someone calls, my own number is appended to the caller’s number

I had an issue with my Xiaomi Mi 8 phone, which really annoyed me. For some callers, my phone number was somehow appended to the caller’s phone number. This also meant that the number was not matched with my contacts. It looked like this:

When searching, I found a reddit post (as always) where someone had the exact same problem, even using the same phone. Therefore, I’m not sure if the issue is Phone or Lineage related.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LineageOS/comments/inud0m/incoming_calls_caller_id_issue

The suggested solution is to disable VoLTE. To be honest, I didn’t even know what VoLTE was exactly. After reading a bit, I found the required setting under: Settings → Network and Internet → SIM cards → 4G calls.
And fortunately, it also helped in my case. I could not really notice a difference regarding the phone quality, therefore I’m fine with it.

YouTube ad-free consumption and other helpful addons

When I was at a friend’s house the other day and a YouTube playlist was playing on the TV, I was really shocked. After every video, there were one or two ads (and some of them even in between). I was not aware how extremely many ads you get when using YouTube without an ad blocker. Therefore, a small collection of apps, add-ons and links that help to make YouTube a bit more enjoyable:

Browser

AndroidTV / FireTV

Android

HTPC

DNS Blocking (i.e. with PiHole)

Update 15.01.2024: When using YouTube in a Browser in combination with uBlock, you likely receive the following message right now: “Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”. The only working solutions to prevent this message and to continue watching ad -free is disabling uBlock on YouTube and use this Script with Tampermonkey (at least for me).

Update 25.01.2025: I found Chrome Mask very helpful, as I continue to experience problems when using uBlock in combination with Firefox on YouTube.

[Wireguard] Wireguard on Android

Update 11.05.2020: I recommend using the PiVPN script (especially when using a unprivileged container). https://nocin.eu/wireguard-set-up-wireguard-using-pivpn-inside-lxc/

In the F-Droid Store you’ll find the wireguard android app.

To get wireguard running, add a new peer to your server. So ssh into your sever (in my case an lxc on proxmox) and create a new key pair.

wg genkey | tee privatekey | wg pubkey > publickey

Now create the android.conf. Define the interface and add your server as peer.

[Interface]
PrivatKey = <android_privat_key>
Address = 192.168.1.3/24
DNS = 192.168.1.102
 
[Peer]
PublicKey = <server_public_key>
AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0
Endpoint = my.doamin.org:51820
PersistentKeepalive = 25

Then add the new android peer to the server config.

[Peer]
PublicKey = <android_public_key>
AllowedIPs = 192.168.1.3/32

Now restart the wireguard interface to load the new config:

wg-quick down wg0
wg-quick up wg0

The fastest way to get your config on the android client is using a QR-Code. I used greencode for this.

apt install greencode
qrencode -t ansiutf8 < android.conf

Open your wireguard app, scan the QR-Code and connect to your server.