I have an iPhone 3g 16gb, an ibook g4 with osx 10.5.6, itunes 8.1, and iphone firmware 2.2.1. My iphones home button is dead, apple told me to get lost (water damage), and the hardware guys cannot fix it (likely the mainboard). Phone works fine besides the home button.

I am desperate for a process for jailbreaking my home-button-less phone so I can install a software based home button, like iHome. The problem is that I cannot get into DFU mode without a working home button, and I need to enter DFU mode to push the prepared jailbroken ipsw to the phone (using itunes).

Does anyone know of such a process? Have you come across some snippets that might help me piece together a process?

I did have the phone jailbroken in the past, although it was restored to factory setting via itunes before my hardware problems.

I have tried ziphone (it has a software based DFU mode) without any luck. I have also tried force-feeding a prepared ipsw to the phone using option-restore in itunes, resulting in an "unknown error 21" each time (I presume because it needs a proper dfu-based pwn first?).

My current thoughts are to revert to an older firmware (1.1.?) that I can get on there using an older program (ziphone?) that supports software-based dfu mode and then attempt to push subsequent upgraded jailbroken ipsw's to the phone.

Any thoughts? my google searching has been incredibly fruitless, please help

i dont know how much a possibility it is but i would highly suggest paying the $ for the replacement iphone, i went crazy trying to live with a broken lock button so i really really recommend just going that way.