Off-Topic » Hosting Machines

Hey guys,
I am curious, how do you host your bots and how are you running them?

My goal was to create a 24/7 botting machine with 10+ accounts, and I have succeeded.
I went through a few different stages.

Story time:

As a starter and newbie, I was playing around with Cygwin on my PC running Windows. However, it was not reliable since I only had a laptop back 10 years ago. Using the laptop was not a good idea as I had to take it to University, put it to sleep, and deal with battery issues.

So, I had a very old PC, maybe 25 years old, which I called Dusty Frankenstein. It was a collection of parts from 5 separate machines. Surprisingly, it was running Linux because Windows was too heavy for it. I stuck with Debian 9 as my operating system just to set up my first bot account.

I encountered some troubles from the beginning, but thanks to the help of Harry and jbond47, I was able to get into it and fix the issues. In return, I started helping them with some translations. They are truly amazing and talented people!

Now, back to the story...

So Frankie was running my first bot... Pentium II, 1GB RAM... but I had another issue - power. I could not let a 350-watt supply run only one bot 24/7. Way too excessive. So I created another farm. Haha, sounds weird... and another... and another... In the end, I stood in front of the monitor with 9 farms running on Pentium II, 1GB RAM, and a 350W power supply. Such a mess.

Some custom scripting and auto start procedures with Terminator (terminal emulator) let me see all 9 split in a grid - real-time over the 20 kg monitor.

Left it running for a month. Some small issues as a scripting newbie, power grid issues, and log piles, but it was alright. Then the electricity bill came... It was not a great day... Then I had to stop it for a while and got the idea to build a Raspberry Pi server.

Never happened, just wait...

For me personally, RaspPi is an okay machine to do what I have tested it for. But why spend extra cash for that? Just to run a bot? Yes, some of us with the time became obsessed with running, patching, scripting... it may be convenient. A low-power SBC to do the job is okay. But there is another solution that I have ended up with.

Back to my path...

I had to leave home and change countries, and yes... I had to take my bots with me. I did not want to pay for cloud services to run my scripts, and I did not want to leave a machine back home running in my mom's house. So I had to think of a solution. I got my laptop back to work for a while in the new country. Still, it was not the best option as working full time and leaving the machine running in a shared house was not a good idea. My laptop was and still is a beast - collecting dust. It's a Dell Latitude E6410 maxed out with an i7 and 8GB of RAM, with a 180W power supply. Shyly, it's only half of the Frankie. Not good. Again, I may sound like a cheapskate, but the electricity bill doesn't lie. I nearly subscribed to a cloud service and ran the thing there, but no. I'm being stubborn like a donkey.

Then I had to move again. One of my flatmates had a NAS server, and he let me use it. I created a separate virtual machine with 2GB of RAM and ran my abomination on it for around 2 years. There were no issues as the machine was built for that purpose.

And then I had to move again... we're getting there. Now I'm living with my family in a flat, away from other people and shared houses - la la la...

Three years ago, I had an idea. Why can't smartphones, which are so powerful nowadays, be used as small servers? They could replace the need to buy single-board computers or build small machines to run simple scripts, home automation, etc.

I started reading and researching - what a journey! Everything started in my head when I had Frankie. I had an old ZTE Android phone that was being used as a CCTV with an SSH server for accessing the footage and a web server for displaying a gallery.

I was amazed that the phone could handle the number of services I had installed on it. But it got old, the battery died, and there were no more replacements available... So...
I have a Huawei P10 Plus laying around. It has a Kirin processor with 6GB of RAM. I started experimenting with it and found a brilliant software called Termux - a terminal emulator for Android. I discovered the option to run a container with Linux inside the app using the Andronix app. It wasn't perfect, but it did the job for some small home automation lights. However, it was power-hungry and the phone constantly overheated. Eventually, some software updates helped to alleviate these issues.

Maintaining Andronix was a pain as their pre-built Linux containers were awful. The system lacked proper execution, had no root access, and essential packages were cut off. It was really bad.

Fortunately, the Termux team at Github pushed amazing updates, plugins, and patches. They optimized their base, making the app a powerful tool in my hands. So, I made a decision! I will build a home server for my bots using this old smartphone!

It has been quite a journey. There is nothing quite like recycling an old device and turning it into something so beautiful in my eyes. So...

My bots at the moment (all 10 MFFbashbots) and some other Upj**s games + 2 SSH servers, VNC, full Linux Debian are running on:

Huawei P10 Plus - Kirin 960, CPU Octa-core (4x2.4 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A53), 6GB RAM

The Android base stopped updating on Android 9. I did some bloatware removal, GAPPS removal, and some other tweaks over it (to give some more CPU boost). But no root! Huawei is a pain to be rooted.
Installed Termux and within a few configs and tweaks, I have managed to run Debian (no more Andronix). Installed SSH and VNC server with some port forwarding (as non-rooted Android needs it) and voila! Linux container inside the Android device. Access from anywhere, wireless, battery backup, and using a 10W power supply. Such a success! Running and setting up the bots was the big thing. As those Linux distros provided were cut off from loads of packages. But in the end, I have managed to find workarounds.

At this very moment, I am seeing all my consoles running in real-time next to my monitor as decoration, like The Matrix - running code every now and then. It is so satisfying.

So, I am curious, how do you run your bots?

Do you prioritize power efficiency and a steady flow? Any recommendations for devices? Unix is freedom!

I can support any enthusiast tweaker/geek if there are any questions.

Thank you for allowing me to be a member of this community. It will be fun to help and support any minds that are willing to do something different. <3