[WinPwn 2.5][Cydia] Keep Applications on root partition?

Jim Danner · #1 (**permalink**) 09-04-2008, 03:52 PM

WinPwn has this great new feature where you can choose the size of the system (root) partition. Presumably this is useful because it allows you to put many more applications on the phone than with the standard partition size. Great!

Then Cydia comes along and... moves the Applications folder to the media partition. There goes the whole purpose of enlarging the root partition. I don't even know why they included the option in WinPwn, because this way it has no conceivable use.

Is there a way to install Cydia but still keep everything where Apple put it? In the Cydia payload that comes with WinPwn 2.5 (\Program Files\winpwn-2.5\bundles\Cydia.tar.gz) there are some scripts in /usr/libexec/cydia/, like free.sh with a list of directories that are to be moved. But I'm afraid if I just edit or remove such a file with WinRar I'll corrupt the archive and make it unusable on an Apple device...

Jim Danner · #2 (**permalink**) 09-08-2008, 10:49 AM

126 views and no replies... Maybe someone can answer this:
Should it be OK to edit the payload Cydia.tar.gz on the iPhone and then use it in WinPwn, or would problems be likely to arise from this?

Here's what I did: put the file on the iPhone, extracted the usr/libexec/cydia/free.sh script, edited that to leave it basically empty (it goes straight to "done"), then executed these commands:

Code:

# gzip -d Cydia.tar.gz
# tar -rvvf Cydia.tar usr/libexec/cydia/free.sh
# gzip Cydia.tar

It looks like things are still OK, though the archive now contains two copies of free.sh (when viewed in WinRar). Could anyone more knowledgable express an opinion?

navco786 · #3 (**permalink**) 10-12-2008, 11:29 PM

Hi. I think the reason you have two copies is because the original file is still in there. The file you added didn't overwrite the original because the paths are different. Have a look at the paths of the two files.

Jim Danner · #4 (**permalink**) 10-13-2008, 12:27 AM

Actually, the paths are the same. The issue is that in a .tar file, edited files are appended at the end of the .tar (after all, tar literally means "tape archive"). The original one stays in the archive as well. But when you unpack it, only the most recent one remains.

Anyway, Cydia checks and sets up the moved folders every time it runs, so this won't work. I emailed Saurik, the author of Cydia, about this, and he convinced me that the whole idea of resizing the system partition is nonsense and that symlinks work exactly as well and fast as the original folders. If that's true, you can only lose space by resizing: either you make it too big and have empty space left, or you make it too small and have to move /Applications after all, leaving even more empty space.

Next time I pwn, it's 500 MB for me.

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