Jailbreaking my iPod Touch, part two
So as predicted, I tried again. In fact, I tried again almost as soon as I’d posted last night. As ever, when you try such complicated technical tomfoolery just before you want to go to bed, it fucked up. I was left with a half hacked half normal iPod. It neither synced nor installed stuff. It was just knackered basically.
Luckily the Gizmodo iJailbreak article tells you exactly how to sort a knackered Touch out:
To do this, connect your iPod and hold down the SLEEP/WAKE and HOME buttons simultaneously until the Apple logo appears. Once it does, release the SLEEP/WAKE button but continue to hold the HOME button in. After a short while, iTunes will notify you that the iPod has entered recovery mode and can now be restored. Accept it, and click Restore.
I restored it first thing this morning, so I was ready to try again. Going through the procedure as stated, and I was once again jailbroken. Cushdy lah.
SSH-ing in
This time I decided that I’d try and SSH into my Touch to install all the apps I needed to do manually. Last time I had just used iPhone Drive, and copied the files around the Touch with MobileFinder. As I wrote yesterday, this didn’t work at all, and just mucked things up, forcing my first factory restore.
Having vowed to do it properly this time, I installed OpenSSH, and the BSD Subsystem., as well as MobileFinder. I also installed Squid as it seemed to show me a better view of the file system from the off, but the icon sucks so I uninstalled it (it’s smaller than the others for some reason.
Now I was set. All I needed where the password and user name (which, by default, are root and alpine – though obviously you should change the password as soon as), and then I could get in, via either Terminal or Transmit.
Firing up Terminal, I typed in the neccessary details and was confrunted with an error message:
WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!
This ‘SSH Problems’ forum thread on Mac Forums solved that problem, and then I was in. Having got in in Terminal, I knew I could now get in with Transmit to actually copy the files across, which I did. Summerboard and the iPhone 1.1.1 apps were now on my iPod Touch. But would they work?
Hod your horses
Well no, not yet. Two important things need to happen first:
- You need to change the permissions of the Applications via Terminal on the Touch: chmod -R a+x /Applications/* (where * is the name of the app – I just typed that in and it seems to have worked as I didn’t know that the * was supposed to be replaced).
- After doing that, you need to make sure that the permissions on the Summerboard plist file are set to 704 – I used Transmit to do this.
Once you’ve done the above all should work. Add your email accounts via settings and you’re done.
I say it should work, what I mean is it worked for me. If it doesn’t for you, there are is a wealth of advice on both the iPod Touch Mac Forums and the iPod Touch Applications compatability list. Failing that, there’s always a recovery mode restore.
Now the scary part’s out the way, what else did I put on?
I’ve now got two screens worth of apps on my Touch. The following are things I added:
- “Apollo IM”:http://www.apolloapp.com/. An IM Chat client for the Touch/iPhone, which only just beats MobileChat onto mine.
- “Terminal”:http://code.google.com/p/mobileterminal/. Installed via “Installer.app”, though only really useful when you actually install stuff manually, and MobileFinder can do most of the stuff you’d need to do graphically.
- Notes. From the iPhone’s official suite of apps.
- “VNsea”:http://code.google.com/p/vnsea/. A VNC client based on Chicken of the VNC. I finally figured out that a finger on and a finger wiggling will allow you to scroll around the remote screen.
- “TapTapRevolution”:http://cre.ations.net/creation/tap-tap-revolution. Sadly I couldn’t do any of the tracks on my iPod Touch – what no Journey? Come on. It’s showing promise though, even if the available downloads are gash.
- “Preview”:http://www.modmyiphone.com/nativeapps/mobilepreview/. Previews images in MobileFinder. Not sure why this is still there, but I’m leaving it on for now.
- “iSplit”:http://code.google.com/p/isplit/. Splits bills between different parties. Yes, I am that popular that I always eat out with mates. Dunno why I’ve got it as I’m always bloody paying anyway. It’s being uninstalled as we speak.
- “SwapTunes”:http://www.iphoneology.com/2007/08/28/swaptunes-syncs-your-iphone-with-more-than-one-computer/. Allows you to sync to two iTunes libraries, which is brilliant. Our set up sees our music centrally stored on Mac Mini set up as a server, but contacts, calendars and bookmarks live on my laptop, so this is a godsend.
- “Sketches”:http://latenitesoft.blogspot.com/2007/09/sketches-iphone-drawing-fun.html. Like etch-a-sketch, even with the shake to delete. Come on, everyone needs to satisfy the urge to draw a cock sometimes, without the need to resort to mindless graffiti.
- “MobileTextEdit”:http://code.google.com/p/mobiletextedit/. Like its big brother on the Mac, it lets me create text docs if I so desired.
- MobileToDoList. Does what it says – dunno if I’ll keep it as I have Notes now.
- Weather widget. As with Notes, this is straight from the iPhone.
- iCal fix. Lets my iPod Touch calendar behave like iCal does on the iPhone. I’ll rarely use it as my calendar is synced to my K750i, but it stops the jibes.
- myfiRst tHeem. A Summerboard theme file, which amuses me because of it’s utter (deliberate) crapness – it’s basically line drawings of all the application icons. I love it.
And the obligatory photos…
Over on Flickr I’ve posted a few photos of what my iPod Touch now looks like. There’s not many, but it shows Maps, Mail and a few other things working.