Restoring an iPhone inside VirtualBox

It was a little nerve racking for a minute, but I can confirm that it is possible to upgrade and restore iPhone firmware in a virtualbox environment. It is actually simple, the only thing I had to do was re-connect the iPhone to the VM twice during the Restore.

The screenshot shows Ubuntu 8.10 Interpid Ibex as a host, with Windows XP running in a Virtual Machine (VirtualBox) in the foreground. You can see iTunes 8 running, having just completed the firmware upgrade.

I used a custom ipsw that I got from the internet so I didn’t upgrade my baseband. I suggest you do this or something similar to maintain the OPTION to unlock your phone in the future. (I don’t expect to unlock my phone, but I want to keep the option!)

I got the modified 2.2 firmware image from tpb, you can search for it as “iPhone1,2_2.2_5G77_Custom_Restore.ipsw” – it is listed under mac applications (!?)

So, when you’re ready to try to upgrade your firmware, hover your mouse over the usb icon in the VirtualBox tray and make sure it stays connected. Check the connection by right clicking on the USB icon. When the Restore/Upgrade goes through stages it will disconnect the phone and you will need to re-connect it by re-activating the checkbox.

For the Record: I tested VirtualBox 2.0.6 myself and iPhone sync DOES work when you enter a correct /etc/fstab entry.

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iTunes 8 running in wine recognizing an iPod

UPDATE: 6/18/2009: I am not actively working on this project but you are welcome to check out the resources.

UPDATE: 12/7/2008: I have documented the method and am actively soliciting help to get this working at http://www.huanix.com/sync-in-linux/index.php/ITunes_8_through_modified_Wine

I am not sure if anyone else has accomplished this yet – i know some people have run iTunes 8 in wine, but tonight I was able to get iTunes 8 running in Wine to recognize an iPod. I saw that this was kind of possible with iTunes 7.6, but it was infeasible because of incredibly slow and erroneous transfer speeds.

Anyway, I have been hammering away at this constantly for more 40 hours now and I believe I am getting closer. To tell the truth, since this screenshot I have not been able to replicate the connection (okay, i just figured out how to replicate it). And there happens to be this tiny little secret… I’ve never really used Wine before last week and I really don’t know what I’m doing.

My ultimate goal, however unlikely it may seem, is to sync my iPhone in iTunes through wine without complication. This will allow many of us to finally get rid of the windows install that has been slowing us down!

Update 11/13/2008: I was asked how I would distribute this if it works; It will be distributed as a free shell script under GPL to give complete transparency to the process. The fix will likely require kernel driver modifications as well as Wine source modifications. Any potential fix will free; but let’s be realistic about the chances (slim).

Update 11/14/2008: If you were reading the comments you’ll note that I was stuck on the iPhone hash algorithm, and I referred to http://bluwiki.com/go/Ipodhash. Unfortunately, that site has received a takedown notice from Apple while attempting to decrypt the algorithm. While I don’t agree with laws that reduce the flow of information, I do honor them.  I think I’m moving on, but i’m also realizing that the search was probably a red herring. I’m not trying to decrypt the iTunes algorithm, I need to get the usb interface to communicate properly…

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Updated to virtualbox-iphone-r7.sh on 11/11/2008, 3:25 CST.

• Removed check for ubuntu, since this will work on far more systems.
• Improved the check for /etc/fstab with a grep instead of a question.
• Started package cleanup; it’s not the best yet.
  
• Still no exit points
• Still only accepts simple responses (y).
• Planning to add support for Suse & Fedora soon.

This is a script that will modify the Ubuntu (or other Debian) environment to allow you to sync your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPod in a Windows XP Virtual machine. This fix solves two problems:

1. USB doesn’t work at all because there’s no mount point; edit /etc/fstab to fix it.
2. For the iPhone to sync, MAX_USBFS_BUFFER_SIZE needs to be modified in drivers/usb/core/devio.c

If the script works for you, please comment with your OS and details. If the script fails for you, PLEASE be very specific about what OS you are running and what did or didn’t happen. Comments without details don’t help anyone.

UPDATE: I’m not sure if i pointed out that you will need to re-run this script each time the Kernel is updated. The script now knows what to update and what to leave alone.

These instructions are based on my test environment. You do not have to follow them to the letter! Go ahead and try the script if you know what you’re doing!!!

This fix works on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex running VirtualBox-2.0 installed through apt-get. It also works on older versions of Ubuntu, and possibly many other distros. Be creative, but be careful.

Install virtualbox-2.0 through through apt-get:

1. edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file and add the following source:
deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian intrepid non-free
(intrepid is not listed on the wiki, but the source is working!)

2. Run “wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -”

3. Run “sudo apt-get update”

4. Run “sudo apt-get install virtualbox-2.0″

Restart your computer to make sure the vboxusers group initializes properly.

Run the script:
(be sure to chmod +x and run as root!)

Change the permissions to allow execution (chmod +x virtualbox-iphone.sh) and run it as root.
The script downloads the kernel source, and will take approximately 400 mb and several minutes of processing to run properly.

Restart again to initialize the modified kernel. (not sure if these restarts are necessary, but i’m trying to be safe!)

In the settings tab for the virtual machine, check to be sure that USB is enabled.

When you run windows as a virtual machine, you will have to connect the device, then go to the “Devices” tab in VirtualBox and enable the device in “USB Devices>”

These steps should set the stage for everything to work correctly on Ubuntu 8.10. If you have difficulties, please be VERY specific!

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Some people are having trouble with the USB settings.. make yours look like this. Your iphone may already be here, and it may not – i deleted mine to keep people from panicking if they didn’t see theirs.

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11/16/2008: I am aware of an issue where version 2.6.27-7 of the kernel goes through “make” while version 2.6.27-8 goes through update-initramfs. I am working on the script to address this. The result is that running the script works fine, but USB doesn’t connect. I think this only happens to people that have updated to 2.6.27-8, which appears to have been pulled back. A possible solution is to run “sudo grub-update” and boot into the 2.6.27-8 kernel, OR (i would do try this) “sudo apt-get remove linux-image-2.6.27-8-generic && sudo apt-get remove linux-headers-2.6.27-8-generic “. I have only confirmed this once (thanks Brandon) and cannot reproduce it because 2.6.27-8 is not available. Please confirm a solution if you have one. This is the relevant output from the virtuabox script…

(i need a good code highligher!)
Building modules, stage 2.
MODPOST 1 modules
CC /home/user/linux-source-2.6.27/drivers/usb/core/usbcore.mod.o
LD [M] /home/user/linux-source-2.6.27/drivers/usb/core/usbcore.ko
make: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.27-7-generic'
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-8-generic
Do you want to get rid of the source and installed files?
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I’m working on virtualbox-iphone-v8.sh ; this release is intended to run on both Ubuntu and Fedora 10. I’d like to release it on November 25, 2008 – the same day Fedora 10 (Final) is released.

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