Time to jailbreak iOS 6.1

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Earlier this week the new evasi0n Jailbreak was released for Apple devices running iOS 6.0 to 6.1 and it is very simple to use. It’s an untethered jailbreak which is the sort you want, as you won’t lose it whenever you reboot your device. The evasi0n tool works on iPods, iPads and iPhones and I have successfully tested it on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 and iPad2.

Firstly, update your iPod, iPad or iPhone to iOS 6.1

Ensure you have a backup of your iOS 6.1 device in iTunes.  If you backup to your local computer, instead of to iCloud you will need to ensure it is an unencrypted backup (i.e. turn off Password Protection for the backup). I am using iTunes 11.0.1

iTunesBackup

Turn off your  iOS device lockscreen passcode in Settings> General> Passcode Lock> Turn Passcode Off> You can go and set it back on afterwards.

With this done, shut down iTunes and unplug your iOS device and close any other applications you have running on your laptop, and go and get the actual evasi0n jailbreak download. Install it and run it before plugging in your iOS device, then simply follow the on screen instructions.

evasi0nComplete

Once completed, click on Exit and unplug your iOS device from your laptop – you need to now complete the process on the device. Find the Cydia app and open it to complete it’s installation on the handset. (See step four of this guide)

CydiaInstalled

CydiajailbrokenLockscreenIf it shows any available updates under the ‘Changes’ tab at the bottom then ensure you click through and apply them. The installation will reboot your device several times. (Note: most new Cydia App installations will need the device rebooted or ‘re-sprung’ to take effect).

Once completed you will find you still have full access to all your Apple apps, your iTunes and iCloud accounts still work fine (Apple hasn’t banished you), but now the wonderful world of juicy jailbroken Apps are also available through Cydia too!

It’s not 100% perfect – for example, Skype flashed up a warning that it was ‘unsupported’ on unlocked devices, but continued working as before, and one or two Cydia App downloads needed my phone to be rebooted after crashing, but this is a minor price to pay for the increased functionality. (If you want to remove downloads any you don’t like, you can unload them from the Manage tab at the bottom, and then choosing Packages).

If you do not like being jailbroken, simply restore your device back to it’s locked down Apple state from within iTunes (remember that backup we made first?).

iTunes 11

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iTunes 11 is looking a lot sexier. The UI seems smooth and is much faster now too, but it still needed a while for the initially full track indexing. Really enjoying the new layout, plus they grab the colour themes from the album covers for the track listings making it feel much immersive /friendlier. Overall it’s good skin job.

iTunes screen-shot

iTunes11

I’ve really had it with GoDaddy

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I turned a blind eye to Bob’s SOPA stance, and his lack of moral ethics got my back up, but the straw that broke the camels back for me yesterday, was their appalling Support. My domain latenitefood.com went down over the last couple of days. Email replies from GoDaddy’s finest advised it was because my website A record (50.62.235.9) was pointed to an external host, which they had no control over, and it had been that way for many years. A quick Whois lookup showed the iP address defined in my domain settings to be none other than GoDaddy themselves, but they didn’t appear to realise this. My website was down because their own server was down, or had been shut down (I had never changed my A records since I first put the domain with them). The way to rectify this was to simply reset the A Record to their (recently updated) default from within the Domain Manager menu (it updated to a new GoDaddy owned iP) – but I had to do this myself. So not only did they not know what they had changed to make my site go down, but they didn’t have any recommendations to quickly bring it back up – as far as they were concerned, this was my problem. Grrr…

off you go-daddy

Today I transferred all my live websites to domain.com after seeing a recommendation from Hak5 and it was easy to quickly install WordPress and convert my blog.

I had all the transfers complete within 36hrs, (including unlocking, updating any private admin contact details, getting my transfer authorisation codes, ordering a new hosting service and adding my domains to it). There are plenty of how-to guides available out there but I found it all relatively painless, and ended up wondering why I hadn’t gotten around to it sooner. I’d been with GoDaddy ages – since Digg first made them cool, but those days are long gone now. My point is, if your host is under-performing, don’t put it off any longer – give them the elbow today.

Jailbreaking the AppleTV2

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Note this is about the Apple TV version 2, not the third and latest variety, because at the time of writing, there was no jailbreak out yet for the ATV3. It is because of this that the ATV2 is so desirable (and holds it’s price well on Ebay etc.) – maybe you can convince a friend to give you their ATV2 if you buy them a nice and shiny ATV3 ?

Why jailbreak the Apple TV2? So you can then install XBMC Media Centre on it. This open source media player is great for streaming your shows & films from your network attached storage. It sits in the spare memory space on the ATV2 and doesn’t affect the runnings of the Apple side of things, meaning you can still use your ATV2 as normal to stream iTunes, download iTunes Store films, display your Photo Stream etc.

So we have two main steps to turning your ATV2 into a NAS streaming media player: 1st – the jailbreak, 2nd – the installation of XBMC. You will need a laptop with the latest version of Apple iTunes installed, a micro-USB cable (like the lead that comes with a BlackBerry phone) to connect your ATV2 to your laptop, and the aluminium 2 button remote that came with the ATV2.

To jailbreak ATV2 download Seas0nPass jailbreak and install it onto your laptop. (Like the iPhone and iPod, the Apple TV also runs a version of iOS, so the jailbreak for the ATV is very similar to an un-tethered iPhone jailbreak – my ATV2 was on iOS 6.1 or Apple TV software version 5.2 ).  create IPSW

 When you run Seas0nPass choose the option on the left to ‘Create IPSW‘ then simply follow the on screen commands (iClarified have a great guide available here) until you are told to connect your ATV2 to the laptop using the micro-USB cable.

hold Menu & PlayATV2 is jailbroken

 

 

 

 

 

Then point the Apple remote at the front of the ATV2 whilst holding both the MENU & PLAY buttons simultaneously for 7 seconds. Once completed, reconnect your ATV2 to your television and you should now see that the Apple TV Settings icon has been replaced with the red FireCore logo.

FC logo

 If this has not changed, then the jailbreak did not work, so go back and repeat the process. If you do now see the FC logo instead of the grey gears, then you are all set and ready to install XBMC. Before that however, go through the Apple TV Settings and configure your iTunes and Home Sharing etc. as you would with a new Apple TV, so you can still use the Apple side of things as you normally would. Obviously, ensure the ATV2 is connected to your home network (wifi or LAN cable).

To install XBMC on the ATV2 you will need to do a little bit of terminal SSH work. On a Macbook that simply means opening the Terminal App, then typing some command lines into the laptop in order to  remotely load the new software onto the ATV2. On the ATV2 menu go to Settings, General, About and note it’s IP address on your network (e.g. 192.168.1.36). SSH into the ATV2 from the Terminal window on your laptop.

In Terminal type the following, substituting your ATV2 IP address:

ssh root@192.168.1.36

You will then be asked for the ATV2 password. By default, iOS uses ‘alpine’.

root@192.168.1.36's password: alpine

Apple-TV:~ root#

You are in the ATV2. I now recommend you change the passwords for the root and mobile users from alpine to something only you know. (Type the following bold)

Apple-TV:~ root# passwd  
Changing password for root.
New password: password
Retype new password: password
Apple-TV:~ root# passwd mobile
Changing password for mobile.
New password: password
Retype new password: password
Apple-TV:~ root# 

 

So passwords are changed, now lets type the script into Terminal to bring in XBMC:

apt-get install wget
wget -O- http://apt.awkwardtv.org/awkwardtv.pub | apt-key add -
echo "deb http://apt.awkwardtv.org/ stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/awkwardtv.list
echo "deb http://mirrors.xbmc.org/apt/atv2 ./" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xbmc.list
apt-get update apt-get install org.xbmc.xbmc-atv2
reboot

The ATV2 should now reboot itself. You are finished with Terminal and when your Apple TV comes back up, there should be an App on the front menu for XBMC.

XBMC app

Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of your own hackintosh media centre…

 

Mounting the Drobo FS for a Time Machine Restore

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Mountain Lion is out today, and so it’s time to migrate my Mac from my Lion Time Machine backup. I keep my backups on a Drobo share, and past experience of system restores have always given me problems with getting the Drobo to mount. Once the Mac has the OSX reinstalled you get the option restore your previous files and settings into the new build. Every time I have tried this I have always had to manually mount the Drobo as the share just won’t show up automatically.

drobo-fs

drobo-fs

I recommend having the Drobo-FS plugged directly into the Mac (instead of your router).

Firstly on the newly installed Mac, go into Disk Utility – File – Open disk image and try connect as a registered user.

Quit out back to the OSX Utilities menu and follow the menus to Restore from Time Machine backup – Restore your system – Select a source. Give it a few minutes, but if your share doesn’t show up as a restore source then quit back to Utilities (on the menu bar) and open Terminal.

You will need to know your Drobo name, and have your admin user & password to hand and substitue them for the red text below. Then execute the following in Terminal. (Note the space after TimeMachine  )

mount -t afp {or maybe just mount afp will work}
afp://adminusername:adminpassword@droboname.local/TimeMachine /Volumes

Quit Terminal and go back through the Restore menu. Hey presto – the restore to a 250GB SSD takes about a half hour for me.