OpenStick
Performance
Optimization

We use abootimg to modify the boot partition directly. This fix expands CMA memory available to the modem and strips dead parameters that cause kernel confusion at boot time.

sudo abootimg -i /dev/mmcblk0p12

We remove no_framebuffer=true (an unrecognized parameter) and add hugepages=0 to prevent the kernel from wasting resources on 1 GB memory pages that don't exist on this hardware.

sudo abootimg -u /dev/mmcblk0p12 \
  -c "cmdline=earlycon root=PARTUUID=a7ab80e8-e9d1-e8cd-f157-93f69b1d141e \
  console=ttyMSM0,115200 rw cma=64M androidboot.emmc=true hugepages=0"

Headless ARM devices frequently suffer from Entropy Starvation, causing SSH sessions to hang for 30+ seconds on connect. Installing haveged ensures the Cryptographic Random Number Generator (CRNG) initializes instantly at boot.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install haveged -y
sudo systemctl enable --now haveged

With only 512 MB of physical RAM, every byte counts. Switching zRAM to zstd (Zstandard) compression delivers a significantly better ratio than the default lz4, effectively expanding usable memory headroom under load.

# Switch to Zstandard for better compression density
ALGO=zstd

# Aggressively use zRAM — correct on memory-constrained devices
vm.swappiness=100

sudo sysctl -p && sudo service zramswap restart

USB form-factor servers run hot. We implement a lightweight thermal monitor and suppress noisy deprecation warnings from leftover Android binaries to keep logs meaningful.

The adbd binary emits oom_adj is deprecated spam on every boot. Lower kernel log verbosity to suppress it:

sudo sysctl -w kernel.printk="3 4 1 3"

Create /root/heat_check.sh to monitor thermal_zone0 and broadcast an alert if the device exceeds 75 °C:

#!/bin/bash
TEMP=$(cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp)
if [ "$TEMP" -gt 75000 ]; then
    echo "CRITICAL HEAT: $((TEMP/1000))°C" | wall
fi