Hi, I have an iPhone 3GS (OS 3.1.2) that was jailbroken about 6months ago using BlackRa1n.

I have been using it ever since without any problems, until yesterday. Just after the recent Rock update (and also some other contents included) I did a soft-reboot through Rock (the one that automatically starts after major updates) and everything worked fine. I then wanted to do a manual reboot a couple of minutes later (after updating appulous and noticing it did not work, which I later found out to be because of the service being shutdown). The iPhone turned off normally without any problems but when I tried to start it, it just turns itself off after about 8-10seconds of start-up.

I have no real clue what might have caused this problem, and I would like to ask for different ways of managing this problem. I would obviously prefer to fix it without losing applications, contacts and all the other data (my backup is about 4months old and I currently do not have access to it). I have also tried charging it during startup, but the start still aborts.

How do I fix the phone?
Best regards, Faithless

Originally Posted by faithless-1

after updating appulous and noticing it did not work

You know, you just killed any chance of getting useful support on this forum. We don't welcome pirates here - "warez is stealing".

Plus you use Rock which is probably the cause of at least half your problems the current irc #iPhone topic says: "DONT USE ROCK, FOR GODS SAKE!". Rock is a developer's nightmare and the source of many screwed up iPhones for end-users.

I wish we could help, but the rules are very clear about warez.
Thread closed.

After some honest criticism - I have re-opened this thread.

The site in question has now ceased to offer warez.

I assume you mean installulous as (with my limited understanding of the warez scene) that was the iphone app which allowed you to install from appulous.

installulous installs so many dependencies that it is very hard to know if it was a dependency or the main installulous which caused your crash. I can't help you there sorry.

You don't have a recent backup. It is a 3GS (which means that you don't have so many restore options)

My two questions for you are: do you rely on blacksn0w for unlock? If so try http://www.hackint0sh.org/f220/124913.htm and do you have old or new bootrom 3GS?

I did not unlock the iPhone, I only needed the jailbreak. I am almost certain that my iPhone is using "5.11.07" if this is what you are referring to.

I have done some reading over the last two days and have read that many other people have encountered the same problem, and most of them fix it through simply restoring. Restoring is an option that I would deeply prefer to avoid due to the fact that I would lose all my most recent messages (sms) and there are some that are very important.

I also encountered someone mentioning that iRecovery could be used for this purpose due to it being a bug in the nvram (or something similar). The commands used (I am using Windows XP 32-bit and Windows 7 64-bit on my other comp so I had to install libusb) are: setenv auto-boot true
saveenv
fsboot (which did not work so I then tried with reboot, but the phone did not boot correctly)

My iPhone is only able to enter Recovery mode and I suspect that I managed to also enter DFU-mode.
According to the staff on rock from the rock issue report:
"Unfortunately the install of "firmware (/sbin)" failed to install properly via Rock, and it resulted in the diskdev-cmds package to be removed (instead of replaced). These were critical system files which were replaced by diskdev-cmds and upon uninstall, removed these files (which were needed for the phone to boot)."

Does anyone have any clues how to insert this package back, or perhaps just temporarly start the iPhone so that I can backup then restore or maybe how I could extract all the information needed (maybe clone the iPhone) such as messages, contacts and apps and insert to my phone after I do a restore.

Originally Posted by faithless-1

According to the staff on rock from the rock issue report:
"Unfortunately the install of "firmware (/sbin)" failed to install properly via Rock, and it resulted in the diskdev-cmds package to be removed (instead of replaced). These were critical system files which were replaced by diskdev-cmds and upon uninstall, removed these files (which were needed for the phone to boot)."

If it's any consolation (I doubt it), I've got the exact same issue -- I accidentally opened Rock last week (yeah, I know, I shouldn't even have it installed any more) and let it do an upgrade, it totally cocked up my dpkg and nuked the diskdev commands, etc., and I have had it booted in this state for about a week, I am praying that I make it to 4.0 Gold before I have to cold-boot the device. While I've got all the pertinent SHSH's and such on file, this is a perfect example of why people are clear that you should not use two package managers. In most cases, I would just steer clear of Rock in general. Its inability to manage dependencies properly is the root if this issue (and many, many other issues talked about on these threads) and almost all of them end in unusable devices that require an erase and a restore to get back to 100% functionality.

So, even moderators make stupid choices from time to time, I'm a sparkling example. Believe me when I tell you after I wipe and restore I will never let Rock touch my phone ever again.

Someone has posted a "fix", available here: http://www.spacesparkstudios.com/

I've not used this and I'm not necessarily keen on people re-packaging redsn0w (even for a good purpose), but for the purposes of the conversation, I've read through his steps and what he's saying should be a legitimate fix for this issue. No one here can support you if you give it a shot and it doesn't work, but based on the responses and the pages linking to that site, it's a promising attempt.

I like the idea but I would prefer it if they had used redsn0w 0.9.2

I was able to fix my issue, though I didn't use the method above. I downloaded his version of redsn0w and pulled the Cydia.tar.gz out of it, then extracted the \sbin folder in the archive to my iPhone using SSH. Once that was done, I SSH'd to the phone AS ROOT and did the following:

Code:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

It complained that I didn't have two required packages for one of the installed apps (Cydia), the two packages that Rock destroyed, and recommended I run an apt-get command to fix that (I hate to say I don't remember the precise command, but it told me what to do, so it'll tell you what to do as well if needed). I ran that command and then re-ran the commands above, and that resolved all of my issues.

To tempt fate, after all was done and I uninstalled Rock, I did a hard power cycle on the phone -- and it booted right up normally. So the poster at SpaceSpark is correct, that is the reason this is broken, and his solution will work to fix it.

Originally Posted by n1ckn4m3

I was able to fix my issue, though I didn't use the method above. I downloaded his version of redsn0w and pulled the Cydia.tar.gz out of it, then extracted the \sbin folder in the archive to my iPhone using SSH. Once that was done, I SSH'd to the phone AS ROOT and did the following:

Code:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

It complained that I didn't have two required packages for one of the installed apps (Cydia), the two packages that Rock destroyed, and recommended I run an apt-get command to fix that (I hate to say I don't remember the precise command, but it told me what to do, so it'll tell you what to do as well if needed). I ran that command and then re-ran the commands above, and that resolved all of my issues.

To tempt fate, after all was done and I uninstalled Rock, I did a hard power cycle on the phone -- and it booted right up normally. So the poster at SpaceSpark is correct, that is the reason this is broken, and his solution will work to fix it.

Maybe his solution should be extended to run one time only script that runs the apt-get commands you mention the first time the iPhone boots.

This would ensure Cydia/APT is in the right state again.

Originally Posted by Olethros

Maybe his solution should be extended to run one time only script that runs the apt-get commands you mention the first time the iPhone boots.

This would ensure Cydia/APT is in the right state again.

That was the key for me, and why I didn't ultimately use his solution. Since my phone was currently booted and not in a boot-loop, I had the SSH access. I knew that doing his solution would get the phone booting again, but it would leave apt/dpkg in a poor state and any future installs would likely again attempt to remove the package queued for removal -- thus killing the diskdev-cmds and such.

Glad it worked, that's for sure. I wasn't looking forward to restoring and re-jailbreaking. Not until 4.0 anyways.

So if I understand the situation correctly there is still a possibility that I can save all the data I have, but that would require some orientation in using terminal or something similar. Which I must say that I do not have. If anyone here is more deeply oriented in that area (since I am not even certain if I do understand the situation correctly) I would like to beg for your help, since I would not like to risk losing any data (reffering to the iTunes restore then data recovery-technique).