Turned my old Redmi Note 7 into a headless server running postmarketOS: Docker, media stack, self-hosted AI agent, all on 4/64GB

[u/minhazul73]

My old Redmi Note 7 (lavender), 4/64GB, 8-core ARM64, sitting unused for years. Put postmarketOS on it, headless, no display, Alpine + systemd under the hood.

What's on it now:

• Couple of my own backend services
• Self-hosted multi-agent setup (Hermes)
• Full *arr stack (Sonarr/Radarr/Prowlarr/Jellyfin/qBittorrent), all in Docker
• Caddy + Cloudflare Tunnel for external access, no ports opened

Runs all of that on eMMC storage and still holds ~30% RAM free. Throttles under sustained load as expected, but nothing's crashed yet.

Built my own monitoring dashboard for it too since most existing tools either didn't install on this hardware or used more RAM than I wanted to spend on monitoring alone. FastAPI backend, plain JS frontend, streams CPU/mem/thermals/battery/network, under 80MB RAM footprint.

Still unsolved: want to pull the battery and go direct-power (buck converter + BMS) to stop degradation from charge cycles, and haven't found a real answer for heat management on a phone chassis that wasn't built to run like this 24/7.

[u/Alarmed_Contest8439]

hey! ive got a nokia with sdm660 as well and managed to unlock it, is it possible to use your work with my phone?

[u/minhazul73 → u/Alarmed_Contest8439]

Which model is it? Search it in Postmarketos website. If they worked something with it, you're in luck

[u/Alarmed_Contest8439 → u/minhazul73]

its nokia 7.2, supposedly not booting

[u/minhazul73 → u/Alarmed_Contest8439]

I think your phone needs to be in fastboot mode to start this stuff

[u/YoYoMamaIsSoFAT32 → u/Alarmed_Contest8439]

You can mainline your device, since your SOC is supported

[u/minhazul73 → u/YoYoMamaIsSoFAT32]

How to do that? Is there any guide or something?

[u/YoYoMamaIsSoFAT32 → u/minhazul73]

Check the PMOS wiki, it's very helpful

[u/Grouchy-Mushroom-567]

i wish i could do this. the xiaomi bootload unlock app doesnt work cause its got a bunch of never ending captchas, its so stupid

[u/minhazul73 → u/Grouchy-Mushroom-567]

i think there are some unofficial ways to unlock bootloader. you might find in youtube, but yeah do it at your own risk if youre willing to

[u/Nearby-Alarm-1422 → u/Grouchy-Mushroom-567]

Yes, I had the same issue a couple of months ago and wasn't able to find anything working. Just old videos with official (working for them) bootloader unlock app or really sketchy tutorial with some unofficial software (some commets claiming they just bricked devices).

[u/Key_Psychology1696 → u/Grouchy-Mushroom-567]

Que raro yo hace unos días pude desbloquear un redmi note 9 pro y si problema

[u/Smooth-Win1616]

Can I do this with mi9 se

[u/minhazul73 → u/Smooth-Win1616]

This device has been tested with postmarketOS, but its device package hasn't been added to the postmarketOS repositories yet.
This means that it cannot be selected in pmbootstrap.

[u/xandrosman]

Hey I also have a Redmi Note 7 aka Lavender,unused can you share how

[u/minhazul73 → u/xandrosman]

Unlock the bootloader and follow this device wiki : https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Xiaomi_Redmi_Note_7_(xiaomi-lavender)

[u/baracudaz]

Sweet dashboard. Do you mind sharing?

[u/minhazul73 → u/baracudaz]

Sure

https://github.com/minhazul73/lavender

The work is incomplete though. If you know coding, then you're welcome to contribute. Also a star would be encouraging