Spirit (iOS jailbreak)

Spirit is an untethered jailbreak for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad running iOS 3.1.2 through 3.2. It was developed by Wii homebrew developer comex. Spirit allows users to install software not approved by Apple on their iDevices. It is available for the Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms. It continues the extremely straightforward tradition of the jailbreaking program blackra1n's user interface, which offers only a single function to jailbreak the iDevice. For Linux, the user executes a simple command after compiling, such as /home/user/spirit.

History

Spirit is a userland jailbreak, originally available immediately after the first generation iPad 3G launch on May 1, 2010. Because userland jailbreaks exploit holes (vulnerabilities) in iOS (not the Bootrom, iBoot, iBSS etc.) they affect users who are both jailbroken and not jailbroken (potentially compromising the security of users who have not jailbroken), Apple patched the exploit on versions 4.0 and 3.2.1.

On May 21, 2010, Chronic Dev Team member p0sixninja announced via Twitter that he had ported the Spirit jailbreak to Linux Operating Systems. This version requires some assembly. This version contains all of the files uploaded to the device in a non-compiled way.

Compatibility

Spirit works on all Apple devices running iOS 3.1.2 to 3.2, iOS 4 patched the exploit required for it to run. It is untethered (you do not have to run the jailbreaking program when you reboot) and installs Cydia by hi.

For users running an official version of iOS, the hack does not delete any data on the device being jailbroken. The first version of Spirit did however delete photos on the device, but has since been updated to prevent the deletion of photos.

iPad 3G, iPod touch 3G and iPhone 3GS users have been recommended to back up their SHSH blobs in case something goes wrong during the jailbreak.

Issues

Because most Cydia applications are designed to be used only on an iPhone or iPod touch, some users have reported crashing or bricking of their iPads after installing incompatible software or code. This has, in most cases, been fixed by restoring the iPad in iTunes and re-jailbreaking. So far, no iPhone or iPod touch users have reported problems.

Some Windows 7 users have reported getting error 'c0000005' while attempting to run spirit.exe. This has apparently been fixed in the May 3rd, 2010 update. Users still experiencing this problem can get around this by running spirit.exe in Windows 95 or 98 compatibility mode.

Users with a tethered jailbreak have to restore with iTunes before they can jailbreak using Spirit. Users who have previously jailbroken their devices using Spirit also have to restore with iTunes before upgrading to most new tethered jailbreaks.^[1]

Some people have also had issues with Windows Vista and Windows XP. On the commenting section of http://www.spiritjb.com/ people have said to move "libeay.dll" to system32 (On 64-bit operating systems, SYSWOW64), upgrading to at least iTunes 9.0 (Some people said that even after upgrading, Spirit said to upgrade to 9.), and the trick that solves most issues (on Windows) is to right click on Spirit, choose "Properties," and go to the "Compatibility" Tab and run it in compatibility mode for Windows 95, for others, its Windows 98/ME.

Updating to iTunes 9.2 will stop Spirit from being able to jailbreak your device, instead sending it into a boot loop if you have never run Spirit before on the device;^[2] however on iTunes version 10 it works normally.^[3]

See also

• Hardware restrictions#Apple devices
• Cydia
• Icy
• blackra1n
• Rooting (Android OS)

References

External links

• Official Website
• Touch Reviews' information on the jailbreak
• Redmond Pie on the jailbreak
• iPhone dev team's website