Hack the iPhone

Installing Cydia (an alternative to Installer)

Mac & Windows XP / Vista





What is Cydia? It's just like Installer, but it is open source and has more features. And more importantly, fewer problems to fix. Let's face it Installer and BSD Subsystem and the Term-vt100 have many issues that no one seems to want to fix. If you'd like to learn more about Cydia, then check out the author's site here. Let me put out some critical information up front, before I get into the installation of this program.

• You can have Cydia and Installer both on the iPhone. This is not necessarily a replacement for Installer, but it could be.
• If you have already installed BSD Subsystem via the Installer, then it will be overwritten and a better version will be installed in its place via the Cydia program. You must never update BSD Subsystem via the Installer ever again as you could damage the installation files that Cydia will create.
• If you should use any programs from the Installer that require BSD Subsystem to run, then you should use the program called Fake BSD Subsystem which I'll cover later.
• If you should use Cydia on an iPhone with applications and personal data already installed, and haven't used a program like BossTool to move them to the larger disk partition (where the bulk of your storage space is), then it will automatically move them for your freeing up space on the smaller partition.
• Once installed, you should occassionally refresh Cydia's repository to make sure you have current version of programs that you install.
• You can install Mobile Terminal and not have to install fix files for it or for BSD SubSystem like you do with Installer. Most importantly, you can change your master password to the iPhone! The Mobile Terminal will also not end your session until you logout of it, nice.

Step 1.

If you followed my Step 1 guide (sorry Windows users, don't have one for you yet) for activating, jailbreaking, and unlocking the iPhone, then you should already have the Installer installed. Make sure your Auto-Lock is set to Never. Launch the Installer. It will open on the Featured page.




Press the Sources icon at the bottom. You can see I haven't even installed Community Sources yet. Press the Edit button at the top right. Now press the Add button at the top left.









Enter apptapp.saurik.com, then press OK. It will refresh the sources and you will be back at this screen. Press the Done button.




Now press the Refresh button in the top left corner. You should now see these sources.




Press the Install icon at the bottom. Scroll down to the System folder and press it. Select the Cydia Packager.




Install this program. It will take a while to download.




Make sure to read this and press OK. Installation will begin.









Status messages will appear. Read this message then press OK.




Go back to the System folder. Now install Fake BSD Subsystem.




Read this message, then press OK. Here's the program on the SpringBoard.




Like Installer, it starts out on the Featured page. Much of this program should look familiar to you if you've used the Installer. Press the Install icon at the bottom and you'll come to an empty page. Press the reload arrow in the top right corner.




You'll now have a list of folders. Select what you'd like to install at this point. I always install the Terminal.




Press the Install button in the top right corner. Now press the Confirm button in the top right corner.




You'll get status information while it downloads and installs. And here it is on the SpringBoard.




Now let's change the password from alpine to whatever we want...

On your Mac, go to your Appliations folder, then into the Utilities folder. There is a program called Terminal. Launch it. I hope I am painfully clear here. As seen below you will enter two things into the Terminal. Note: after ssh - the character that follows is a lower case l (el), it is not an I (eye). The IP address is YOUR address. In my example it is 10.0.1.11 for MY iPhone. The next line is alpine, which is the default password, unless you changed it.

ssh -l root 10.0.1.11
alpine

Then enter this command:
passwd

You will then be prompted to enter your new password, and then confirm it. You'll then be returned to the system prompt when it has been changed. That's it.




On a side note, you could uninstall the version of OpenSSH that iNdependence installed and then install the version of OpenSSH that Cydia distributes. I've done this, it works just fine when you do, but that is your call and I'm not going to document that process here, it's pretty straight forward. I will say this, when you go to iNdependence to uninstall OpenSSH and you see the screen below, don't check any of the boxes, it's your safest bet.

I'll add any more information to this tutorial as I discover it.