Jailbreakme.com 3.0 – cel mai rapid jailbreak, functioneaza cu iPad 2, aduce multe schimbari

Am asteptat un an de zile pentru o noua solutie de jailbreak de la comex insa veti vedea ca asteptarea a meritat pe deplin deoarece jailbreakme.com 3.0 va schimba in bine extrem de multe lucruri. In primul rand comex va implementa un sistem numit unionfs care va creste dramatic viteza cu care este implementat jailbreak-ul. Pana acum era folosita o metoda numita stashing care muta foarte multe fisiere in timpul jailbreak-ului insa unionfs nu va mai face acest lucru ci va scrie fisierele exact in foldere in care trebuie sa fie iar timpul necesar efectuarii jailbreak-ului va fi redus considerabil. Practic acum operatiunea “reorganizing filesystem” nu va mai exista absolut deloc.

In al doilea rand comex va dezvolta solutia de jailbreak astfel incat aceasta sa ne permite sa facem update(nu restore) la versiuni noi ale iOS fara a pierde fisierele instalate dupa jailbreak. Nu stiu inca metoda prin care va face acest lucru insa teoretic ar fi posibil ca dupa update la o noua versiune a iOS sa avem disponibile in continuare vechile fisiere instalate din Cydia. Nu se stie daca jailbreak-ul va fi pastrat in timpul unui update la o versiune noua a iOS insa e greu de crezut ca acest lucru se va intampla.

In al treilea rand, noua solutie de jailbreak va functiona si cu tableta iPad 2 si va fi compatibila cu iOS 4.2.1 – 4.3.3, deci oricine va putea face jailbreak fara probleme. comex nu spune daca noua solutie de jailbreak va fi userland sau nu insa conform teaser-ului de pe jailbreakme.com, vom avea parte de o solutie asemanatoare celei numite Spirit.

In al patrulea si ultim rand, comex a anuntat ca noua sa solutie de jailbreak nu va bloca posibilitatea de a pirata aplicatii. i0n1c a spus duminica trecuta ca ar putea sa faca o solutie de jailbreak ce ar bloca posibilitatea de a pirata aplicatii insa comex a spus ca o asemenea solutie ar putea fi foarte usor depasita si dezvoltarea ei nu ar avea sens. Comex nu sustine piratarea aplicatiilor insa nu va lucra in zadar la ceva ce va fi spart foarte usor.

O data pentru lansarea acesti solutii de jailbreak nu avem insa stiu sigur ca multi dintre voi o doresc disponibila cat se poate de repede. Aceasta ar putea fi una dintre cele mai importante solutii de jailbreak de pana acum si ar putea schimba foarte multe pentru noi dar si pentru cei care dezvolta solutiile de jailbreak.

If you don’t know, the stashing approach jailbreaks have been using for years– Cydia’s “Reorganizing Filesystem”– involves moving some large directories from the small / partition into the large /var partition, then creating symlinks from the original to the new location. This both ensures that any additional stuff put in those directories by packages will end up in the /var partition, and frees up space on the / partition for files created outside of those directories. However, the process has some issues, like taking forever to do when you jailbreak (I am a bit fanatical about speed), pretty much requiring the jailbreak to reboot the system to ensure there aren’t any running applications pointing to the old files (ditto about speed, I want a jailbreak to not even require a respring, as in star, but since star used stashing, some obscure things could cause issues before a reboot), and seriously confusing the sandbox code in the kernel (because each application has a sandbox with a list of allowed filenames, but after the symlink has moved files, the filenames no longer match), requiring that code to be patched (it needs to be patched anyway these days because tweaks have to run under the sandboxes of the applications they’re hooking, but depend on accessing various directories; but it still feels good to get rid of a kludge).

With unionfs (which was saurik’s idea originally), new files are created in the /var partition, and merged with files in the corresponding directories in the / partition, so no files need to be moved, no descriptors are invalidated, and I think the sandbox code won’t notice what happened. It also opens the door for upgrading the base operating system without destroying the jailbreak files (although maybe iOS 5 delta updates will already allow this? I haven’t looked at them yet).

I’ve wanted to do this since literally a year ago (that’s the date of the nullfs checkin, since I was dumb and thought I wanted that instead of unionfs), but I never got around to making it work properly.

So, I just hope that I can get rid of the crashes my meddling with unionfs’s code have introduced, and fix it for the iPad 2 (my dumped copies of iPad 2 kernels do not include symbols; I wrote a small BinDiff-like tool to copy over symbols from a kernel for another device, but it’s not perfect) and that there aren’t any performance issues.