Edit: Redsn0w 0.96b4 is out and jailbreaks correctly 4.2.1. However, it is tethered on most new devices (read below). And refer to the jailbreak chart to see how your device fits in.

So 4.2.1 is out and you have all heard Geohot state that his limera1n exploit means you can jailbreak all devices forever. So why shouldn’t you update today?  This post will try to answer some common questions around this subject and try to explain why you should hold off.

First, jailbreaking is much more than finding an exploit and using it to get a Cydia icon. A proper jailbreak does a lot more. There are a series of kernel patches done to the device that make most jailbreak software work correctly. (Note that updated pwnage bundles by msftguy or such do not have these patches and key apps may not work).

Second, while limera1n and greenpois0n exploits may work, those tools will not. You will need them to be updated before they can be used to jailbreak your 4.2 device.

Third, the spirit portion of the 4.1 jailbreak used in limera1n and greenpois0n allowed the device to boot jailbroken untethered. That has been patched by Apple and no fix to that problem is known yet. Therefore, even if you do manage to get an updated limera1n or greenpois0n, your iphone 4, iphone 3gs on newer bootrom, ipod touch 3 or 4, or iPad will all be tethered. This means after you run the tool it will boot one time and work jailbroken until you reboot. At that time you will get a “connect to itunes” logo and will have to rerun the jailbreak tool in order to get the device to boot again.

Now, tethered jailbreak isnt the end of the world. On an ipod and ipad, it’s probably not too bad. But on an iPhone, a device you may need to make emergency calls on the road, it really sucks. I strongly suggest all iPhone users that have tether jailbreak devices only to hold off on updating until this is solved. Me, I’m staying on 4.1 probably until iOS 5.

Which devices are not tethered? iPhone 3g, iPhone 3gs (old bootrom), ipod touch 2 (non mc). On these devices, you will find a pwnage tool bundle or updated redsn0w released soon. Unfortunately, these updates will not have updated kernel patches and, on 4.2, this will be more problematic that in the past.

Finally, let’s say you get past all these issues somehow. You jailbreak to install software. Most of you want either themes or some cool tweaks like sbsettings, folder enhancer, or bitesms. All these rely on mobile substrate. As of this posting, mobile substrate does not work on 4.2. That means that almost all jailbroken software will not run on 4.2 as of today. This is being worked on and will certainly be fixed shortly. But that is the state as of today.

As a side note, there’s just nothing provided by Apple’s 4.2 update that you got to have today. Seriously. What is so great that it’s worth removing all the great things you get by jailbreaking? If you have some problem on your device, do not expect it to be solved in 4.2.1. Apple always lists “bug fixes” but really, we never see anything useful from this. Waiting a week, two, or three to let these issues all get sorted out is your best bet.

Yes, Apple is releasing it today. No you should not update to it.

For those that did not read that, DO NOT UPDATE TO 4.2.  Ok now that you’ve read it, wait for the jailbreak to be officially tested and released. Further, remember that jailbreak on 4.2 is likely tethered on newer devices, which means you have to rerun it every time you reboot your device.  This was covered here already. Dev team also covered this in more detail here.

4.2 is out. Most of you should hold off on the update for now. If you have some bug you are hoping is fixed by 4.2, it’s not.

Worse yet, while limera1n and greenpois0n allow for 4.2 to be jailbroken, in most cases this is a tethered jailbreak. That means if you have to reboot your device, it shows a “connect to itunes” logo until you run the jailbreak software again.  I suggest not updating until something changes and your device is in the untethered jailbreak list (once tools are out):

iphone3g - will run 4.2 untethered. Redsn0w or such will be updated
iphone 3gs – old bootrom will run 4.2 untethered if done via pwnage tool while updating from 4.1. Otherwise it will be tethered.
iPhone 4 – tethered
iPod 2g – 4.2 untethered.
ipod 3g and newer – tethered
iPad – tethered.

Tethered jailbreak isn’t that bad for ipads and ipods. But if something happens and your iphone reboots while you’re away from your computer, you cant use the device until you get home and run something on your computer again.  The community is working on a solution to this to either make the jailbreak untethered or at least semi-tethered. Semi-tethered means the device will at least reboot, but unjailbroken while on the road until you return to your computer.

4.2 is about to be out. It’s nothing great for any of us. But it means iTunes will be prompting for an update, which of course you should decline. But the worst part….

Due to traffic reasons, Cydia didnt present the ‘make my life easier’ dialog. So many of you do not have SHSH stored for 4.1 which means once apple releases 4.2, you will never be able to restore 4.1 again. It’s critical that you download tiny umbrella and request your 4.1 SHSH today, while 4.1 is still being signed. You may have only a few days left of this opportunity.

You can tell if you have an SHSH for 4.1 in cydia’s home screen at the very top (although this may not yet be enabled in Cydia for all devices). You should see something like:
SHSH: iOS 4.0, 4.0.1, 4.0.2, 4.1

If you do not see the above line and / or it does not include 4.1, make sure you get tiny umbrella and get your SHSH now.

Download it here

Consider this urgent!

Greenpois0n, Chronic dev’s jailbreak tool is out. You can download it for both windows and mac (mac download coming soon). This is an alternative to Geohot’s release of Limera1n. If you already used Geohot’s tool you do not need to do anything else. If you are not jailbroken yet, you can choose which to use.

If you are getting host unreachable errors while trying to install pay packages, these are caused by Cydiastore payment check and need to be addressed by Saurik. It is not something I can solve on my end and (most importantly) my repo is not down. You get an error message like “apt.thebigboss.org host unreachable”. But the issue is that the cydiastore check times out.

Currently, Saurik is out of town on a conference so this may not be solved for a couple days.

Geohot just released Limera1n. This is an iphone 4.1 jailbreak for all devices.  From Geohot:

limera1n, 6 months in the making

iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3G, iPad, iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G
4.0-4.1 and beyond+++
limera1n is unpatchable
untethered thanks to jailbreakme star comex
released today to get chronicdev to do the right thing
brought to you by geohot
Mac and Linux coming soon
follow the instructions in the box, sadly limera1n isn’t one click
that’s the price of unpatchability
as usual, donations appreciated but not required
still in beta, pardon my ragged edges
zero pictures of my face

Download here.

I pushed libhide 2.0.8 to the beta repo. For those of you that have the beta repo installed and have experienced a bug where after installing apps from appstore or cydia, all icons that were hidden are unhidden until you respring next, well this *might* fix that. I say might, because I cannot reproduce this issue so cannot be sure it’s fixed.

Also, please do not post the beta repo link here. If someone needs it, please email me for it.

Finally, it has been brought to my attention that libhide no longer works on 2.x firmware. Unfortunately, I have no 2.x device to test on anymore. It’s probably just time for you 2.x users to update at least to 3.x. Anyone that has a valid reason why they cant update to 3.x or 4.x, please email that to me so I can understand.

Apple released 4.1 today. It breaks your jailbreak. Avoid it until a jailbreak is released.  !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?’http’:'https’;if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+’://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js’;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, ‘script’, ‘twitter-wjs’);lang: en_US

I really get a lot of email on sbsettings toggles so I think I will try to clarify a few things:

1) SBSettings does not now nor has it ever had an airplane mode toggle. Instead, it has a phone toggle and a Wi-Fi toggle. To achieve something similar to airplane, simply turn off phone and turn off Wi-Fi. Whether or not you see the plane symbol in status bar is irrelevant. This was a side effect of how this worked in previous firmwares. In iOS4, you no longer see that symbol. Instead you see no service. What more would you expect when turning off phone? Other than the symbol not showing up, it’s the same as it was. The internal function call used is even the same. No, this should not cause additional battery drain.

2) Data toggles. There are 2 of them:

- EDGE toggle – this was the original version in 1.x (BossPrefs) and 2.x. As of 3.x, it worked for some people but not others.  This is now a separate installable package in Cydia for those that liked it for some reason. I removed it from the toggle pack because it was unreliable.

- Data toggle – in 3.x this killed data by setting the data IP to 127.0.0.1. In 4.0, this uses the native iOS method to disable data. This is the preferred way to disable data.

3) 3G toggle. This is like the 3g button in settings app. It switches between 3g on and off. If this is ON, you have 3g, if this is OFF you have EDGE. In order for 3g to work, data toggle must be enabled. If you turn off data toggle, 3g will be on but you will still have no internet.  The devices are smart in that if they can connect via 3g, they will so there’s no need to force 3g over EDGE.

4) Processes – This widget has a free memory button that has generated a lot of confusion. This button has a threshold and only frees memory when you have low enough memory for it to need to do so.  The free memory algorithm is not something you really want to run frequently, which is why there is such a threshold in place.

5) SSH – This toggle only works if open ssh is installed (correctly). It also forces itself to be on for reboot of device so that if you get into trouble you have an opportunity to fix the problem using SSH without a restore.

There are many other 3rd party toggles, most of which I did not write. Even location toggle, which is included in the core toggle pack, was written by someone other than me. If you have problems with a specific toggle, make sure you contact the toggle’s author.

Update #2: Finally got to the bottom of this, thanks to Saurik who clarified it for me. It seems that more shsh are on file and even some of you that havent ever jailbroken and just got a new iphone may actually have an shsh on file. It’s definitely worth a try to set up Saurik’s signature server in your hosts file and try to restore that way. You may get lucky and get a downgrade even on a new device.

————-

Update: It seems this method is very hit-and-miss. So far, only users with 3gs have claimed it works. Personally, I am still a bit skeptical. However, there is some compelling evidence to think that there is some level of success with this. Semaphore, author of Umbrella, has written a good post saying that this method is impossible. I also originally thought that, but there’s a point in Semaphore’s post that he does not address, and this very point is what made me write this blog entry last night.

Semaphore claims that the users must have had an SHSH on file. That when they used Saurik’s server, it responded with the SHSH on file and that’s why the restore works. When CodeBlue presented this method last night, I told him the same thing. But multiple users are presented with the “make my life easier” dialog in Cydia after doing this method. Make my life easier will never appear if you already have an SHSH on file for any firmware. What people don’t realize is that once you make an SHSH request in Cydia, it’s a one-time deal for life. You are requesting SHSH on file for every firmware starting with the current one being signed. It does not matter what firmware you are currently running.  If your restore worked because, as Sempahore’s post indicates, you had an SHSH on file already, then when you loaded Cydia, you would see the SHSH on file for xxxxxxx screen and you would never see the “make my life easier” screen.

All that being said, I have not personally tried this. I cannot confirm personally that it has worked. I have talked with several people that claim it has worked and many that saw “make my life easier”. At this point, either this method does work sometimes, Apple is accidentally signing 4.0.1 for 3gs intermittently, or the people claiming success are lying and did not see make my life easier.

End update.

—————————

A user named CodeBlue has discovered an unconfirmed method that may allow you to downgrade your 4.0.2 iPhone to 4.0.1, jailbreak, patch the safari exploit with Saurik’s patch and be jailbroken safely. This may be your only option if you have an out of the box iPhone with 4.0.2 on it and no other way to jailbreak. Note that I did not try these steps. They sound good to me in theory and others are reporting some success. After all, you have nothing to lose if you are already stuck on 4.0.2 without an SHSH in Cydia.  Here are the steps:

1. Download 4.0.1 ipsw

2. Extract it with winrar or winzip  to a folder on the desktop. You may need to rename the firmware file from .ipsw to .zip to do this.

3. Open the buildmanifest.plist with the notepad. Search and replace all – 8A306 with 8A400.  Save. Repeat the same with the file restore.plist

4. Download 4.0.2 ipsw and open this with winrar or winzip. Note: do not exact it. Just open it and leave it open. You must use this exact file and not create a new one. If you have to create a new one for reasons like you are on OSX, then use zip command line not explorer or finder to make the zip. I will assume you are using the original file opened in winrar for the rest of this guide.

5. Take all the files from the 4.0.1 and drag them over to the 4.0.2 zip archive that you have open.

6. Delete all the dmg files that have 002 at the end, leaving only the 001 files left.

7. Save the archive. And rename it back to .ipsw if you changed the name to get winrar/winzip to open it.

8. Optional: (this helps ensure you get an shsh file request for the future, but should not be necessary to just restore 4.0.1).  Add the 74.208.10.249 gs.apple.com line to the host file. If you need help with this step, read this.

9. Put the device into dfu, open iTunes and restore the firmware you changed.

Check out the original post or give thanks to CodeBlue at his blog.

Note: this only works due to the similarities in 4.0.2 to 4.0.1 and 4.0. This will not be a way to downgrade to 3.1.x and may not work in future firmware updates.

The iPhone Dev Team has released an update to Ultrasn0w that unlocks the iPhone 4. If you decide you need to unlock your baseband for use on an unsupported carrier, make sure you do not take firmware Apple updates (such as 4.1 when its released). You can install Ultrasn0w from Cydia. Ultrasn0w is in the dev team repository, which is a default repository in Cydia.

Edit: essential cydia updates fixed the facetime / MMS issues.

Comex has pulled it off again with a great jailbreak. The jailbreak, “Jailbreakme.com 2″ is now released and all devices can once again be jailbroken. This one is very easy to use. You don’t even need a guide. Here are the steps:

1) Load safari on your iphone
2) Type in http://jailbreakme.com
3) Slide to jailbreak
4) Wait and soon you have Cydia.

Just like spirit 1, this is a user-mode jailbreak which requires you to be able to load safari on the device.

I strongly urge you all to visit comex’s site and donate to him to help motivate him to find further jailbreaks in the future.

Those of you having problems where the device sits at the purple screen forever may benefit from clearing your cookies and restarting safari:

1) Put your device into Airplane mode.
2) Go to -> Setting -> safari -> Cookies -> Accept.
3) Double Tap home button.
4) Press and hold an icon to wiggle the task switcher icons and then quit Safari using the X.
5) Clear all Cache and cookies.
6) Open safari and go to jailbreakme.com and try again.

Since the jailbreak is due very soon, I have created SpringFlash, the first iPhone 4 only Cydia app. SpringFlash is a springboard activator based LED flashlight for your iPhone 4. In short, you can have a touch of a button for a bright LED flashlight without hassling with unlocking your iPhone, closing your app, or even turning on your screen.

To use this, jailbreak, install it, go to settings app, activator pane, pick the activation method of your choice, and select the Flashlight. I am using short hold power, myself. It works very well.

Like all apps I write, this is free to jailbreakers in Cydia.

It looks like an exception has been added to the DMCA for jailbreaking and installing 3rd party “non-vendor approved” applications on a device like the iPhone. While this is something the community has always deemed as legal, it is now officially called out in a law as legal. More at the Washington Post story.

While I’m no lawyer, I would argue that jailbreaking has always been legal. In short, there was no law that said you could not jailbreak. Laws are drafted as such that they call out only what you cannot do or what you must do. Everything in between is considered legal. For example, there’s no law that says you may go to the store on Tuesdays, and no one is questioning whether or not that’s legal.

Still, it’s nice to be called out as legal.

Modmyi has written a great article on this subject and I encourage everyone to read it.