Read more about SwirlyMessage at SwirlySpace.com …

Just a warning about blackra1n. Geohot released blackra1n a couple weeks ago, and it was pretty good. Unfortunately, Geohot has included a very buggy version of Icy which, when installed, will pretty much screw up your whole jailbreak causing you to have to restore.

Shame on Geohot for not fixing this. We have told him numerous times there are issues. Users have messaged him, he has been notified, he just doesnt care. Anyways:

–> Do NOT install Icy in Blackra1n <–

The icy bundle is broken and does not have permissions to install software, but that’s not the worst part. Blackra1n install of Icy breaks cydia and rock your phone since it has a very old version of dpkg. This is the core to all these installers.  Since icy is usually installed last, it overwrites dpkg with its own. This causes things like winterboard not working, sbsettings not working. What is really happening is mobile substrate cannot be installed (among other things).
I get about 20 emails a day on various issues that all stem from this one issue. So please spread the word. Do not install Icy in blackra1n.

Note: Icy is not to blame here, but the installation of Icy on blackra1n. Icy bundle in pwnagetool is fine. The problem is Geohot found a very old Icy and did not get it from rip-dev guys.

Edit: I think I may have found a cause for the insane battery drainage: bluetooth A2DP. Right before I noticed the battery drainage, I tested out A2DP on my car stereo system with streaming music. I believe that before I noticed drainage the first time (2 days ago), I also tested the A2DP streaming. Another user commented that he also noticed high drainage after using A2DP.
——–
Update 3 (6/24/09 6PM EST): I was still having a plethora of problems with my jailbroken 3.0 phone on T-mobile. The battery drainage was above the roof, it would lose a percentage every minute or so – basically draining the battery within two hours. I did everything to try to diagnose the problem, and it seemed that a full restore did the trick. So many problems seem to originate from restoring your old phone backup, ESPECIALLY if it was jailbroken before. If you are having any troubles, whether poor battery life, unstable connection, etc; I suggest doing a full restore and setting it up as a new phone.

Another problem some users faced is the unstable T-mobile signal with ultrasn0w, which seemed to originate from MMS settings in conjunction with a backup restore.

So here is what I’ve learned over the past few days about 3.0, jailbreaking, and unlocking:

• Push is broken if you hacktivated your phone (2G or 3G)
• To get push working on your iPhone 3G, you must activate with any AT&T Sim
• No known push fix for the iPhone 2G
• Some users are reporting that you cannot have Push and MMS setup at the same time using ultrasn0w. Either Push stops working or your signal becomes unstable once you enter the MMS settings in.
• In many cases, restoring your old iTunes iPhone backup will cause problems – especially if the backup was made from jailbroken phones
• Old 2.x backups seem to cause some or all of the following: Poor battery life, unstable ultrasn0w connection, and unable to launch apps
• If you have ANY problems after upgrading: restore and setup as a new phone, this will fix 90% of the problems
• Apple is a bitch

——–
Update 2 (6/24/09): If you have an AT&T sim lying around (activated or not), you can try this method to get push working on iPhone 3G’s (from user “l1ceo1l” on macrumor’s forums):

Tip: if you SSH to /var/root/Library/Lockdown/activation_records and delete wildcard_record.plist, the next time you reboot your phone, it will ask for activation again, thus allowing you to easily put in an AT&T sim and activate with iTunes open – this should allow you to skip the restore and re-jailbreaking steps if you already are in that state.

• You need a Unactivated or Activated ATT Sim
• Take out your T-Mobile SIM and Pop in your Unactivated ATT Sim card (Just found out any ATT Sim is ok).
• Restore and Jailbreak with redsn0w

(If you deleted wildcard_record.plist, you can skip this step)

• Go to settings and turn off your 3G!
• Let iTunes activate the phone – you should get a “Waiting for activation.” message, dismiss it and Open cydia.
• Add the Ultrasn0w source repo666.ultrasn0w.com
• Install Ultrasn0w and turn off your phone
• Remove the unactivated ATT sim and insert your T-Mobile sim
• Turn on the phone, once you receive service you should get the message. “iPhone has been activated”

———
Update 1 (6/23/09): It seems that I did something else on top of replacing my lockdownd. Users on howardforums found out that to get push working with jailbroken phones, you MUST activate it with an active AT&T sim (sim that currently has service). I asked my friend with a legit AT&T service to send over his lockdownd and replaced mine – and it worked.

A few results have come back from both 2G and 3G users and apparently the lockdownd method does not work – after rebooting it has them activate again. Currently, the only sure way to enable push and stable ultrasn0w is to activate your phone (before redsn0w or after pwnage) with a legit, working AT&T sim.

It might have been a fluke on my part, but I apologize for suggesting a method that does not work. I will keep looking into this. The Dev Team does recognize this problem and are currently working on the push problem.

I will keep the original post intact, as it has good information to those who don’t know whats going on.

——————–
ORIGINAL POST

This is a notice to everyone that hacktivated your phone (either had pwnage tool activate for you or did NOT activate the phone with an active Sim before running redsn0w), your push notifications will not work – This is a known bug. You can easily test push by downloading the Free AIM app from the appstore and messaging yourself from a computer – it should work on wifi and edge\3g.

Also, if you used an inactive ATT sim (no current service) to activate your iPhone and attempted to use ultrasn0w afterwards, you might have had signal dropping problems (have full bars + data, then randomly drop signal + data every 20 seconds).

The only current solution is to activate your phone with a legit, ACTIVE AT&T sim (or whatever carrier your iphone is originally locked to). Push (and youtube) will work and you will not drop signal.

Activation remained the same since 1.x to 2.x, and you can just replace the lockdownd file located in /usr/libexec/ and chmod it 755

lockdownd is the main (and only) activation file:
http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Lockdownd

Here is a working, 3.0 active-ATT lockdownd (3G iPhones ONLY):
REMOVED

SSH into your phone (doesn’t matter if it was hacktivated or activated with a deactivated sim) and browse to /usr/libexec/.

Rename your current lockdownd file to lockdownd.old

Upload the new lockdownd and chmod it to 755

Reboot your phone

This *should* fix all your push or signal problems. This lockdownd is from ATT US, so it may not work with other carrier locked phones. The current lockdownd is from an iPhone 3G, so it will not work on 2G iPhones until someone sends me a lockdownd from an active-ATT activated iphone 2G. Install SBSettings so if it does not work or your phone has an endless reboot, you can SSH back in and restore your lockdownd. (sbsettings turns on openSSH after a reboot).

I have only tested this myself on an iPhone 3G and T-Mobile Sim, so please let me know if this works for you. Please note that this should only be a temporary solution until the Dev Team fixes their activation methods with jailbreaks. If push already works for your jailbroken phone and having no problems with ultrasn0w, do not bother replacing lockdownd.

Update (April 2, 2009 by BigBoss) I just pushed an update to Crash-X’s VoIPover3G v1.0.2 that will enable skype in the plist for you. No need for editing plist files just update the VoIPover3G app.

-
Update (April 1, 2009 by BigBoss and ranova): Saurik just released mobilesubstrate 0.9.2805-1. This version fixes the problem entirely allowing for mobilesubstrate addons to work with Skype app. You can now use Skype app with VoIPover3G! -
Quick Tip: The voipover3g string for Skype is: com.skype.skype -All lowercase. You must add it in the VoIPover3G.plist located in /Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries/
Full Guide to add Skype to voipover3g

Latest clippy and keyboard custom sounds now also seem to work with Skype using the latest Mobile Substrate update. If you are still experiencing crashes when you open up the keyboard, disable these two components.

If you are still experiencing crashes with the new Mobile Substrate and have disabled clippy and\or custom keyboard sounds, make sure to check other mobile substrate extensions or apps that run in the background and disable them. They may be still conflicting with how Skype runs. This is not a Mobile Substrate problem, but a problem with the extension or app itself and the author of it will have to update it. I had no problems using Clippy, Cydelete, Cyntact, Five Icon Dock, QuickGold, SBSettings, VoIPover3G, and Winterboard as mobile substrate extensions.

Known extensions or apps that cause skype to crash: mcoolphone, mobilelog, AdvLock, Hood, and Intelliscreen (it may work if you mess around with the performance settings in Intelliscreen).
You can check what mobileSubstrates extensions you have running and installed by looking in the folder:
/Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries/

If you use Intelliscreen, From User Daron:

Eventually, I discovered that Skype would launch if I *disabled* IntelliScreen. I then tried to disable some of the IntelliScreen Performance extensions (Backgrounder, FileSchemaMobileSafari, MailToAttachmentMessageUI, PrefHooker-iKeyEx, SBHooker-iKeyEx, SBSettings, Veency, VoIPover3G, WinterBoard) and discovered that the culprit was Veency.

Thank you Saurik and everyone else that posted comments that helped us figure out the underlying problems.
-

Update (March 31st, 2009): Saurik has released a new mobile substrate and the issue is fixed. No need for intelliscreen or any other hacks. Just update mobile substrate from cydia. Update to v0.9.2803-1 (or newer) of mobile substrate.

To fix the Skype crash, all mobilesubstrate based hacks are disabled on the Skype app. This means you cannot use voipover3g or backgrounder with Skype app. Do not ask how to do it or point out that it doesnt work. The developer of mobile substrate has already stated that it will not work.

-

The highly anticipated app for the iPhone has just been released in the US:
Skype in the AppStore.

Now the bad news. It seems that all jailbroken phones do not play well with the Skype app. I had problems getting it to work at all, the app would crash when you try to use the keyboard to login to the app. I later found out, through trial and error, the culprit for keyboard crashing is Custom Winterboard Keyboard Click Sounds and Clippy. Getting rid of the keyboard custom clicks (tock.aiff) seems to work with regular themes. Using SBSettings Clippy toggle to switch it off seemed to do the trick also.

That problem, while small and fixable, is not the biggest problem. Skype seems to freeze within 30-50 seconds while in the app – no matter what you do (calling, idling, chatting, etc). I went into safe mode using SBSettings and tried out Skype – to my surprise, everything worked perfectly – I used it to talk to my friend for about 20-30 minutes. I decided to do a little bit more troubleshooting – deleting mobile substrates one by one to see if it helped or not, and then deleting them all. Nothing seemed to work, the app would still crash within one minute.

I decided to run SysInfoPro and compare running processes (non-mobile substrate) between safe mode and regular mode. They both had the exact processes running at the same time.

Although I didn’t delve much deeper into the problem (could have tried using Top and system logs), I have come to a conclusion that Skype crashes ONLY on jailbroken iPhones. I had a couple friends try it on their newly restored iPhones, and they worked flawlessly. Other people from multiple forums have also said it crashes non-stop for them (their iPhones also jailbroken):

“I managed to download skype and tested myself. It is buggy and all the symptoms the same as described by ranova. I have tried it on a 1G phone newly updated to 2.2.1 jailbroken. The only apps I have installed is sbsettings, ierase, nimbuzz, and skype. It still crashes after 30sec or so. It has got to be the phone that is jailbroken. I have nothing on my phone other than what you get after you jailbreak.” – duceduc

“2.2.1 jailbroken 3g here. It crashes after 30 – 60 seconds.” – jgsx

“Confirmed – Crashes like every minute.” – Zazox

Let’s hope this isn’t an attempt from Apple or Skype to cause apps to crash only on jailbroken phones (to deter the use of voipover3g). [end conspiracy theories]
Update: Saurik has just updated regarding reasons behind the crashes:

“Skype seems to be using some kind of /awesome/ DRM that involves them having an entire replacement binary somehow inside of it: the one on disk doesn’t link against /anything/ ;P. Whatever its doing, though, involves stressing dyld in some weird way.

Interestingly enough, its not anything MobileSubstrate does to the code: its just it existing in the process before it loads its replacement. (Which is extra weird, as the new MobileSubstrate links against almost nothing: just CoreFoundation.)”

So what we know so far:

• If Skype crashes when trying to input text: Disable both clippy (Use SBSettings toggle) and any custom Winterboard sounds relating to the keyboard tick (tock.aiff).
• If Skype crashes within 1 minute of having the app open: Update your Mobile substrate via Cydia. The latest version (April 1st, 2009) allows mobile substrate to play nicely with Skype. Thanks Saurik!

Temporary fix that allows mobile substrates extensions (voipover3g, backgrounder, winterboard) to run, from Autotrade at Engadget:

“For people having crashes (especially the 1 minute thing) use this FIX: I had to enable in Intelliscreen, Performance, App Boost ON and select the apps below (in my case I set Backgrounder and VoipOver3G both to ON). That fixed it, no more crashes at all, tested this on 2 iPhones.”

Well there you have it, Skype on the iPhone is amazing – sound quality sounds better than regular cell calls. I briefly tested it on T-mobile’s EDGE network (using voipover3g) and for the 30 seconds that it lasted, there was no noticable lag and quality was great! I look forward in using Skype as a regular VoIP app. Thanks for all the comments and thank you saurik for looking into this.

EDIT: Note the TV out may be a little buggy but don’t forget to add it to your watchlist in Cydia so you can see when updates come out. In Cydia, select the package, then change package settings, and enable “Show All Changes” for this package.

I released a toggle pack update today for SBSettings. This toggle pack should fix some issues with SSH toggle. It now can run while another app is running, hopefully without freezing up the iPhone. Thank you to developer Joel Nordell who helped me with the vfork / exec routines. On the same note, Joel released a Scrobble toggle for SBSettings today to enable / disable Scrobble app.

Update v1.0.6 (Nov 30, 2008): Made a couple small changes to the “more” app to hopefully address those that find it crashing as soon as it loads. Please try it out and let us know. If it crashes once, run it again. It attempts to do something different if it detects that it crashed the previous run.

Update: v1.0.5 – I gave up trying to fix a problem I cannot reproduce and decided to work to avoid it. I added a “blank fix” button to the dock icons screen and removed the automatic blank fix that caused the problems.

So many of you are still reporting crashing on the “more” app when you try to modify your dock icons. We still cannot reproduce this issue. I have emailed out a few copies of a test version of SBSettings to some users but never heard back. So I decided to release it. The new version made some changes in the dock icons enumeration code, but I cannot be sure that it solved the problem because I cannot see the problem occur in the first place. Please update and let me know. Update: this did not solve the problem. I cannot reproduce this and therefore will never be able to fix it unless someone that is very good in SSH that can reproduce the problem wants to email me and help out. This means you would be available to spend some time running development builds over and over again and giving me back logfiles. If you are interested in this and can reproduce this problem let me know. Otherwise, at least it works for me :)

New Toggle Addon
While messing around, I decided to write a new widget for SBSettings. This is not a toggle but another type of addon which I think shows the flexibility and power of this app. Note that this addition was done without modification to the main app.

The addition is a text widget – a quick notepad. You can type some text in it, and recall it later. But since it runs inside SBSettings, you can recall it from within another app. To see how this may be useful consider this. Suppose you get an SMS that’s a password for a website. You cant remember it very easily so you want to write it down. Ok you pull up SBSettings while the SMS app is open and type the password into the text box. Later you open Safari and go to the web page that requires hte password. Now you can just pull up SBSettings while Safari is open, read the password, and type it in. (Sorry, no copy and paste but I think it’s still pretty neat).

Here are some screenshots:

For 1.1.x users that really don’t want to upgrade, you can fix proxy.pac yourself but editing the file /var/preferences/proxy.pac and changing “10.0.0.0″ to “25.0.0.0″. (The 2.0 version is a bit more flexible allowing addresses from both 10.* and 25.* to both be covered.