Two things:
(1) The MobileTerminal revision 426/472 that you can get from several 3rd-party Cydia repositories and directly from its Google Code site (
http://code.google.com/p/mobileterminal) is definitely nice and shows promise, but people should realize that this is a
complete from-scratch rewrite of the MobileTerminal that we all know and love, and is NOT feature-complete yet. The copy-and-paste is certainly overdue, definitely nice, and a keeper, but is not enough to make up for the two HUGE oversights (so far):
a) No scrolling!
b) No way of generating Escape-codes.
The first is a major annoyance when a console app outputs more text than can fit on the screen. All terminal emulators have scrollback buffers, so I can't imagine why this feature was not addressed at the get-go.
The second makes it nearly impossible to use 'vi' in the new MobileTerminal.
There IS, however, a patched-up version of the ORIGINAL MobileTerminal r364 that now runs under iOS 4.x. Saurik has a DEB file up for download on his repository, but hasn't updated the repository packages in order to make Cydia aware of the new MobileTerminal version, so people trying to install MobileTerminal through Cydia using the default set of repositories are still getting the older r364 release. Not sure why he has waited this long (probably because it has a couple minor display bugs/quirks), but if you want to download it yourself and install it manually, you can read Saurik's own post about it on the MobileTerminal Google Code site here:
http://code.google.com/p/mobileterminal/issues/detail?id=172#c61
I personally have BOTH MobileTerminals installed on my iPhone 4 (the old r364 version patched by Saurik to run on iOS 4, as well as MobileTerminal build r472).
(2) For those who elect to install the new MobileTerminal r472 directly from the Google Code download and are having trouble getting the icon to show up on your SpringBoard (or who finally got it to show up but can't get it to run), there are two things you should do:
a) Make sure that the binary file in the application bundle has its execute permission bit set (as root: "chmod a+x /Applications/Terminal.app/Terminal"). If you unzipped the zip file on your PC instead of directly on your iPhone and then transferred the Terminal.app folder to your iPhone over SSH or FTP, it is likely that the execute permission bit is off.
b) Sure, you can continually reboot and/or respring the phone until you are blue in the face, and EVENTUALLY the icon may show up, but if you'd rather not waste time, then here is the simplest way to make the icon appear: First, go into Cydia and install UIKitTools. Second, SSH to your phone, log in as 'mobile' (not root!), and run the command 'uicache'. Wait a few seconds...SpringBoard will be non-responsive for a bit as the icon cache is rebuilt. Once it is responsive again, you will find the Terminal icon at the end of your last SpringBoard icon page. No reboot or respring necessary.
-- Nathan
