iPhone World

After watching the stats for the site for a while now I’ve seen people show up here by searching for all kinds of things, sometimes they land on a page that answers their question, sometimes they do not. I’ve decided that I will have regular Q&A posts to answer those that are not covered. Ideally this will be weekly, but we’ll see how it goes. Anyhow, on with the show…

Q: Should I trust Saurik/Cydia with my ECID/SHSH?
A: Absolutely! I can think of no better hands to put that information into than Saurik. Though this is a bit of a moot point at this time since Apple is no longer signing for 3.0. I don’t believe it it available yet, but I’m sure something similar will appear for 3.1 as well. When it does, I would urge everyone to have their SHSH on file with Cydia. I still want to dedicate a proper post to this topic, but for the information hungry, check out this VERY well written post by Saurik.

Q: Does AppSync work with iTunes 9?
A: Yep! Though usb ssh doesn’t appear to work yet.

Q: Will iTunes 9 remove Cydia?
A: No.

Q: If I reset my phone will it remove Cydia?
A: If by reset, you meant restore, yes it will remove everything.

Q: Will Winterboard make my [device] run slower?
A: Unfortunately, yes. Overall there isn’t much of a difference, the biggest slow down will be noticed when respringing, or when returning to the springboard after closing an app.

Q: How can I change the UDID?
A: There was an app called UDID Changer, but all traces of it seem to have vanished. I’m not even sure if it would work in a 3.x world. Currently there is no way I am aware of. But I assure you there is a way.

Q: Can someone steal my ECID and hack my phone?
A: No

Q: Can I install Cydia on 3.1?
A: As of September 15, 2009, No. 3.1 has not yet been jailbroken. The DevTeam has confirmed a well known exploit still exists and it shouldn’t be long before PwnageTool works with 3.1, and of course Redsn0w will follow shortly after. YES! As of 2hrs ago it is now possible. Note that as always, the initial release is just for PwnageTool, and just for Mac. Note that the 3GS, and iTouch 2G/3G are not yet supported. See the Dev-Team’s post for details and expect a guide here once everything is completed.

Q: How to set permission 755?
A: First I will clarify. This is what needs to be done after transferring an app via SSH (WinSCP or FileZilla). It sets the permissions to executable, readable, and writable. If it is not, when you attempt to launch the app, it will crash immediately. To do this with WinSCP or FileZilla, right click on the app folder and choose set permissions (actual wording may vary). You will see a number in the window that opens along with a bunch of check boxes. Change the number to 755, and select the option to recurse into subdirectories. To do it from the command line, you would either launch Terminal on the device, or connect via SSH. After changing to the correct folder (most likely /Applications), you would type chmod –R 755 Yourapp.app where Yourapp.app is the name of the folder containing the application. To change the permission of a single file just omit the –R.

Q: How do I set up uGrowl?
A: Can you be more specific? Post your questions in the forums please!

Q: “uGrowl bug torrent add”
A: I’m not sure what the problem is that you found, but kindly post more details in the forums!

Q: Why does my phone drop calls when plugging in headphones?
A: See this post

Q: Why doesn’t my iPhone split music into each headphone?
A: I’m taking that to mean stereo audio is not working. I had an Apple audio cable that ended up to be quite cheap and one of the wires must have severed because I only get stereo if I pull it to one side coming out of the plug. Point is, for any problems like this, always rule out any cables, connectors, adapters, headphones, etc first as that’s where the problem usually lies.

Q: How can I downgrade from 3.1?
A: I’ve been meaning to post on this, but see this article for an excellent guide.

Q: What is the difference between 3.0 and 3.0.1?
A: Basically, the only difference is there is a nasty SMS bug that could allow someone to gain complete control of your phone. You would know as you would receive a text message containing only a square. Developers would know this as an unprintable character. Should you receive one of these, they say you should turn your phone off immediately, but I say it would be just as effective and slightly faster to enable airport mode. Give it a few minutes and you should be good to go.

Q: I’m in a respring loop, help!
A: If you are fortunate enough to have installed SSH and syslog, I highly recommend connecting via SSH and issuing the command tail –f /var/log/syslog. This will list logged entries as soon as they are added. Often you can get a clue as to what is going on from this. It has saved me multiple times from having to restore. If you are not one of the lucky ones, I’d suggest rebooting it and if all else fails be prepared to do a restore. Next time install syslog!

Q: Is it safe to generate a provisioning profile using a hackintosh?
A: Absolutely!

Q: Does jailbreaking remove some functionality?
A: Absolutely not! Quite the opposite in fact.

Q: dpkg-i command not found
A: You need to put a space before the –i there sparky

Q: Will my unlocked iPhone 2G/3G[S] stay unlocked if I update to 3.1?
A: NO NO NO NO NO! While unlikely, if you update now, you could potentially lose the ability to unlock for good! You MUST wait until PwnageTool is updated for 3.1 so you can restore with a custom firmware containing the 3.0 baseband. While you may be able to downgrade back to 3.0, the baseband is not able to be downgraded and you will be up a creek until a new exploit is found.

Q: Can I install Cydia/SSH/FTP to/etc without jailbreaking?
A: No. Installing Cydia should be synonymous with jailbreaking.

Q: Restore from backup removes Cydia?
A: Sortof. It seems after restoring a backup, the Cydia app and anything installed via Cydia remain on the device, they just do not appear on the springboard. I honestly couldn’t tell you if there is a way to make them appear again or what exactly causes them not to appear. I always advise against restoring a backup unless absolutely necessary. Many random problems tend to creep up as a result of this whether the device is jailbroken or not. Restoring a backup is especially not recommended if it was made while running a previous major version of the OS (ie 2.x to 3.x).

And that wraps it up for the first installment of Q&A here.