So our choir’s leaving for Pangasinan tomorrow, and my GF’s retreat started this afternoon. That means I’m stuck doing nothing on a Friday night - which is usually spent with her for some quality time.

So I decided to finally update my iPhone and Touch to the newly released firmware. And here’s a quick summary of what to do and some problems/solutions encountered:

• Upgrade iPhone to 1.1.4
• Close iTunes
• Download, install, and run Independence 1.4 beta 5
• Activate and SIM unlock your iPhone (it’s pretty straightforward once you launch the app)
• Install SSH via Independence and follow the steps until SSH is installed.
• Download the latest Installer.app and install it via customize tab in Independence

Now in my case, there were problems with the permissions of Installer.app which gave that dreaded “Main Execution Script Failed!” error; a maddening error that prevented installation of a lot of apps via Installer.app. I personally couldn’t install the BSD subsystem because of that fucking error.

So here’s what to do in case the situation applies to you:

• Access your iPhone via SSH (which you’ve enabled in step 5). Here’s how to do it:
  Fire up a Terminal window on OS X and type these:

  ssh root@YOUR_IPHONES_IP_ADDRESS
enter your password

• Download the chown archive (.gz) from this site, extract it put it into /bin of your phone. Set it’s permissions to 755¹
  Go back to the Terminal window, and resume typing:

  cd /
  cd Applications
  chmod +s Installer.app/Installer
  chown -R root:wheel Installer.app

Now you can use Installer.app without incident. While we’re at it, while trying to figure this stuff out, I came across this new package manager, called Cydia, which holds a lot of promise.

It has yet to to gain momentum in the community, but I installed it nonetheless for its alternate UNIX-based subsystem called Telesphoreo which is claimed to be better than the BSD subsystem iPhone users are used to using (how’s that for an alliteration?).

It’ll take too long to explain here, so I suggest you just read the page about it and see for yourself, suffice to say I’m not installing the BSD subsystem anymore - as I prefer Telesphoreo over it.

• Assuming that you agree with me, then let’s add apptapp.saurik.com to Installer.app’s list of sources.
• Install Cydia, and the Fake BSD subsystem

Lastly, before I leave you to whatever else apps you want to install, I suggest you add installer.iClarified.com to the list of sources as well. Then install the AppSupport patch (1.1.4) and Region Patch (1.1.4) from there to lessen problems when using your phone on an unofficial SIM/country.

post updated on March 3, 2008 @ 11:41AM