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No iTunes Required :)
by TheOuterLinux (https://theouterlinux.gitlab.io)
Last updated: 2024/10/29
Let us say that, after charging your battery from death, Apple was "kind" enough to remind you that your older iPad is in desperate need for Activation. You have been using this 32-bit device for a very long time with only ever seeing this issue once before, to which was easily remedied via either an Internet connection on the tablet or iTunes using a Mac or Windows desktop computer. However, now that you are a reasonably intelligent creature that only uses GNU/Linux, you have probably known for a while now not to update because of planned obsolescence. You also probably know better than to update because of whatever creepy, new, 70+ paged (as a PDF), Terms and Conditions they come up with, to which is not even safe from "Acts of God," though I would think an omnipotent being would win most court cases.
So, you are now left with a rely expensive paper-weight, or perhaps a temporary, rectangular flash-light/clock. The the only method of Activation you have does not work, i.e. the Internet, because your device is running an older, no-longer-signed, version of iOS. Hopefully, if you are in this "sinking ship" of ours, the following will help you keep that older iOS device afloat. You may even be able to use this tutorial on devices that you forgot the password to.
If you do not have the issue of "Activation Required" or something similar, you can skip this step. Matter of fact, you probably should as the following assumes that you want to wipe everything and it may be very hard or impossible to reinstall older versions of software. Anyway...
To start from a clean-slate with the latest signed version of iOS, you need to grab a copy of the correct IPSW file for your device.
Run the following in a GNU/Linux (Debian-based in this case) terminal to install required software:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install idevicerestore libirecovery-1.0-3
Next, to COMPLETELY WIPE your iOS devices and have the latest signed firmware, connect the iOS device to the GNU/Linux computer and run the following in a terminal:
idevicerestore -e "/path/to/your/correct/IPSWFile.ipsw"
Now, an important thing to consider when the iDevice goes through its initial setup process is whether or not to create an iCloud/iTunes/whatever account. Personally, I would tell it that you will do this later. This is because honestly, you will not find many 32-bit apps anymore on the App Store. The ONLY reason to do this is if you need to use the Mail app, though you probably could find an alternative IPA somewhere, or if you want to use the iCloud to store things, assuming that it will let you on such an old device. I just do not see the point and by setting up these accounts, you are just giving Apple (and perhaps any partners) more creepy permissions to do things under the guise of "collecting telemetric data to improve blah blah blah...," or some other similar excuse.
To get this jailbreaking party started, you will need to visit https://jailbreaks.app/legacy.html using your iOS device and then select an install option related to your iOS version. After tapping on the link, select "Install" when asked. HOWEVER, sometimes this installation fails and this is no big deal; worse case, you just try again in a day or two; apparently, this is a common issue. After the jailbreaking app is installed, you will then need to go to "Settings --< General --< Profiles & Device Management" and trust the corresponding certificate, to which may not be labeled the same if doing this on multiple devices; this is normal. After trusting the certificate, you can then open the jailbreaking app and select the option to install the jailbreak; the Phoenix version's label for this is "Kickstart Jailbreak." The app will then say something to the effect of "Preparing Jailbreak," followed by a dialog popup asking about "offsets." Choose the "Use Provided Offsets" option. It will then continue on installing. If the installation fails for some reason, just run the jailbreaking app again as before. If this still fails after the second time, turn off the WiFi on the device and put it into Airport mode and then try again. You will know when the jailbreak is completed when you see the Cydia app.
However, there are a few things that need to be mentioned before continuing. This is currently a semi-tethered jailbreak; what this means is that if the device reboots, the battery dies, etc., not to be confused with restarting the Springboard, you will need to open the jailbreaking app again and rerun the jailbreak option related to "Kickstart Jailbreak" like before. Do not worry, this does not erase any of your previously installed, jailbreak-related apps. This is simply why it is called a "semi-tethered" jailbreak. If you do not rerun the jailbreak app but then try to open a program that was installed using Cydia or an IPA installer of some sort, it will not run; the Cydia program itself will also not run.
There is also another thing you may encounter, especially if you are the type that likes to take care of their battery by letting it run all the way to zero every now and then. If you do this, you may find that re-initiating the jailbreak will not work because you cannot run the jailbreaking app due to an "Untrusted Developer" sort of situation; this is because of how the jailbreak-related app's certificate has a short life-span. If this happens, you will have to redownload your jailbreaking app again from https://jailbreaks.app/legacy.html; DO NOT try to go to the certificate in the Settings to "Verify App"; I could be wrong, but it just seems like a potential trap to me and because these certificates are rarely or never the same between iDevices, I doubt it would work anyway. If the installation fails, just try again a few hours later or wait another day or two.
Which brings me to another weird "hiccup" that may happen. If you try to download and install the jailbreaker app and it fails during the installation and trying again when prompted does not work, you may have to wait up to a week plus a day or two for the installation to succeed. When you download and try to install the jailbreaker app, doing so only within a few hours, and sometimes even a few days, may result in the installation of the exact same jailbreaker app build, which means it will probably fail anyway because it did so many times before. In other words, in these instances, you will see a progress wheel animation on the same "failed-to-install" app from before rather than have a completely new one. Expect this to happen a few times. Place these "failed-to-install" apps within their own app section/folder and make peace with the fact that they cannot be removed, or as far as I know.
After doing the semi-tethered jailbreak, you may want to install a few things using Cydia. For example, historically, most jailbreaking methods of the 32-bit and early 64-bit iOS eras also included software that would allow a computer to view the contents of the iOS device as if a USB hard drive. However, the semi-tethered method used in the previous step does not appear to have this feature, beyond seeing the folder related to the app that did the jailbreak, perhaps for security reasons, but I am not sure. To somewhat fix this, or at least for when you decide to install IPA's (iPhone/iPad Apps), and assuming this package is still around, use Cydia to install 'Apple File Conduit "2",' taking care to pay attention to any notes related to supported iOS versions before-hand.
The following is a list of repositories one may want to add to Cydia. However, the more repositories you add, the longer it takes to load when either starting Cydia or after installing software. Add repositories at your own risk.
If you notice that a repository or two are missing in compared to the defaults that you may have, I recommend that you remove them as they are very old and they at least no longer worked for me. Keeping them around just adds extra time to Cydia's loading with no benefit. You can try visiting https://www.ios-repo-updates.com for more; make sure to do son on the iDevice so as to be easier to add when tapping "Add [Repository]" buttons, followed by "Cydia."
The following is a list of software that I recommend that you install using Cydia. The descriptions are more or less word-for-word from Cydia until you see a semi-colon.
Note that there are SEVERAL other programs, themes, libraries, etc. that can be installed using Cydia but the items in the list above are the ones that I HIGHLY recommend that you install for extending the functionality of your device and for privacy/security reasons.
I would also like to quickly note that after installing MTerminal, you can open the program and then use the command-line like so to search for packages (and may look very familiar):
apt-get update
apt-cache search 'something'
To install a package using the command-line:
apt-get install [com.username.packagename]
To upgrade packages:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
So yes, if you have noticed, Cydia uses a Debian-like (*.deb) package-management system with binaries inside those packages that are compiled for iOS. And not to kill your "hopes and dreams," but please do not try to install *.deb packages made for GNU/Linux; it does not work that way. If only...
One of the things that you can do to speed-up Cydia is to install the 'FastLoading' package. This package disables UI cache refresh in Cydia. The next thing you should do is toggle off any package categories that you could care less about. You do this by going to Cydia's "Sources" tab, select "All Sources" at the top and then tap the "Edit" in the top-right corner.
Before you "go nuts" with the various IPA files crawling around the Internet, and yes, there are legal IPA files, such as those from free and open- source project like 'VLC' or 'RetroArch', you need to be warned that the 'IPA Installer' mentioned in the recommended list appears to, or at least for me, have issues with uninstalling. The FAQ says that in order to remove apps to tap the "Applications" option on the list, but doing so has IPA Installer look like it is taking forever to load.
HOWEVER, you can uninstall applications installed via IPA Installer using it's command-line version like so in a terminal app on the device itself...
ipainstaller -l
ipainstaller -u com.company.program
The "-l" option is to list applications installed using IPA Installer and the "-u" option is to uninstall one of the listed apps that was listed with the "-l" option.
But anyway, now that you have been warned, to install an IPA file, you need to install 'IPA Installer' and 'AppSync Unified' using Cydia. Afterwards, I would also install 'Safari Plus' because of its download management capabilities. When you find an IPA file that you want to install, Safari will download this file to the "/var/mobile/Downloads" directory. Open the 'IPA Installer' app and tap "Downloads" and then the IPA file to install. If an installation fails, the 'IPA Installer' app will tell you and make suggestions. As far as any questionable IPAs and/or "cracked this and that" goes, you are on your own; I will not cover anything about that.
By the way, if you decide to download an IPA using a desktop web browser, you may have to use a system with 'systemd' enabled in order for options like grabbing photos or "Documents on" to show up in your file manager. Also, you may have to hunt-down an older file browser in order to show-up in the "Documents on." See this file for a list of known "Documents on" friendly apps.
If you are having a hard time remembering the name of a particular app that you once had for a particular version of iOS, try searching for it at http://ios-compatible.com/.
If at some point your jailbroken iDevices freezes, like the "Good Book" says: DON'T PANIC. The first thing you should try to do is wait a few hours, if that is even necessary or perhaps until it runs out of battery, which ever happens first. If that still does not work, plug the iDevice into your GNU/Linux system and try to use the 'idevicediagnostics' tool, which is part of the suite of tools from https://libimobiledevice.org, or just try to see if your package-manager has it available.
Get your iDevice UUID by running:
idevice_id
Next, run the following to restart the iDevice:
idevicediagnostics -u [UUID] restart
...which if course also means having to reinitialize the jailbreak since you rebooted. You can also replace 'restart' with 'shutdown' to turn the iDevice off. Avoid putting it in recovery mode using the 'ideviceenterrecovery' tool as it may never get out of it and you will then have to redo everything from Step 01 all over again. Always back-up your working IPAs and keep a list of what you installed using Cydia.
If your iDevice is stuck in Recovery Mode, meaning that you cannot simply hold the Power+Home buttons to restart, you can use a tool from https://github.com/libimobiledevice/libirecovery. Just plug in the iDevice that is stuck in Recovery Mode to your GNU/Linux system and after compiling and installing 'libirecovery' (you may need to grab an older release), run the following in a terminal:
irecovery -n
The device should then reboot. However, you may need to reinstall your jailbreaker app that you downloaded from Step 02 as the iDevice may no longer trust the one that you have. Do not forget to get rid of the old one so as to not confuse the two; you do this by going to "Settings --> General --> Device Management" and then tap the item related to the old jailbreaker app and use "Delete App."