phranker’s Think Tank

So everyone knows that there is limited space for Apps on a jailbroke iPhone, but there are a few solutions. The first, and probably the easiest, is to install BossTools via Installer. That particular app was written to perform this specific task of moving certain directories (Fonts & Ringtones) to the media partition (where your music is stored). However, most don’t even know what it did, except that they know they have more room for apps.

Below is a simple shell script that will perform the same steps as BossTools, but via SSH on the command line so that you have the freedom to organize or structure your filesystem to your own liking.

This script will move the System Fonts and Ringtones to the media partition (/private/var) - thus freeing up more than 100MB for more & bigger apps. You can just cut/paste each line - one by one - to preform the task.

mkdir /private/var/Fonts_PHRANKER
mkdir /private/var/Ringtones_PHRANKER
cp -Rp /Library/Ringtones/* /private/var/Ringtones_PHRANKER
cp -Rp /System/Library/Fonts/* /private/var/Fonts_PHRANKER
rm -r /Library/Ringtones
ln -s /private/var/Ringtones_PHRANKER /Library/Ringtones
rm -r /System/Library/Fonts
ln -s /private/var/Fonts_PHRANKER /System/Library/Fonts

Just like always, I hope this helps some of ya. At least it should help some of you understand what is going on behind the scenes, such as in BossTools. Of course, you could do the same with the Applications directory, but, moving your Apps to the media partition is not a good idea, since an update will erase the media partition, erasing all your apps as well.

It’s finally here. The Apple iPhone SDK is now available as a free download from Apple Development Center. It was a real pain in the ass to get through since everyone and their brother was trying to download it at the same time. Summed up as short as possible; $99 gets you access to Apple support, and allows your app to be available via iTunes or AppStore directly from the iPhone. They also setup a program where developers get 70%, Apple 30% of what ever the developer wants to charge.

You do need to be a registered ADC member to download the SDK. Click here, developer.apple.com/iphone/to login to the iPhone Development area.

Here is a link to the full video of the SDK / iPhone Roadmap Conference from Cupertino earlier today. Full demos of everything to come. A great video!

With the release of 1.1.4 and the news that both the Dev Team’s Independence & Zibri’s Ziphone both work with the new firmware, I thought it was about time to upgrade my 1.1.2 OOTB 1.1.2 JB iPhone. However, I wanted to make sure I had a full backup of everything just in case

Here is a small, sweet little command you can run in Terminal from the directory in which you want the backup placed into.

ssh -C -l root [ip of iphone] "cd /; tar zcpf - ." | tar xf -

ssh -C -l root [ip of iphone] "cd /private/var; tar zcpf - ." | cat > PrivateVar.tar.gz

This should just be a starting point, read the commands and make sure you understand what is being done and you should be able to tweak them to fit your specific needs. Also, the ‘User Space’ backup may just be enough, especially if you used BossTools to move your Apps into the media partition (or did it yourself with a syslink like I did).

Hope this helps some of ya… at least give ya some sense of security before jumping into a 1.1.4 upgrade.