Trying To Be A Responsible New Owner.

[Fabienne]

In anticipation of getting my jailbroken 3GS (with 3.1.2), I was reading a lot of posts and threads on this forum, spoken to quite a few people and looked at iClarified. I will be using a PC, Windows XP, and Blackra1n. Even though the phone will come JB's and unlocked, I figure that sooner or later I will have to use Blackra1n to reboot my iPhone and I wanted to study how to do it. There were a few points I would like to ask about in advance of trying the method in the tutorial on iClarified. The tutorial for my phone and OS was done on November 3, 2009. One of my questions comes from the following statement:

If your baseband is lower than 05.11.07 then you must restore to the 3.1.2 firmware for the iPhone 3G or 3GS. You can do this by opening iTunes, selecting your iPhone from the list of devices on the left, then hold down the Shift key and click Restore.

Question #1: restoring the firmware from iTunes, wouldn't it restore to 3.1.3, the current firmware? If I were Apple, I would do that to screw up all of the rascals who were jailbreaking and unlocking their phones. I suspect that I would be better off downloading a copy of 3.1.2 from the guides here (by iav6454 I think) and installing them (the exact mechanism for doing that I am not sure of). Should I have iTunes restore it (they will ask me if I want to restore to 3.2.1 and give me that choice?), or should I restore from the files I find here? If restore from the files I get here, how would I go about doing that? I think the answer is to go ahead and let iTunes restore because they will allow me to choose 3.1.2 but I want to be sure I am correct.

Question #2: Generally I have heard it's perfectly OK to use iTunes when your phone is JB's and unlocked, just don't let iTunes upgrade your phone. Please tell me if I am right here.

Basically, what I am planning on doing :
1) Backing up my SHSH (and any other thing like ECID) as soon as I get the phone (using the method latinist suggested in his April 1,2010 post).
2) Making sure I know and write down which versions of what I have (firmware, baseband, etc.).
3) Download a version of 3.1.2 firmware from the guides here.
4) Download Blackra1n.

Question #3: Is there anything I have missed? I have been through quite a few threads and tutorials in advance of my getting the phone. I don't want to be blindsided by something which I could find out about just by asking, and there are a couple of points which could be open to misinterpretation and I wanted to ask. Thanks for your help on this. It seems that you can indeed get tripped up easily if you don't do your homework.

 

[Penguissimo]

Looks like you've got a pretty good handle on things! As far as question 2, you'll be fine. iTunes doesn't care if your phone is jailbroken.

The only snag you will run into with a 3GS is that, since Apple is no longer signing 3.1.2, you will NEVER be able to restore 3.1.2 on your phone, unless someone stored that phone's SHSH with Saurik back when 3.1.2 was active. Backing up your SHSH now, while a good idea, won't do you any real good in terms of the ability to jailbreak in the immediate future; it's too late to store your SHSH for 3.1.2.

However, since your post implies you'll be buying it from someone who already jailbroke it, I'd imagine there's a good chance the previous owner already took care of the SHSH issue. It might be worth double-checking before you make the final transaction. If he DID, you're golden, and can restore to 3.1.2 at will using the guide on Saurik's site (after you download the firmware file from somewhere, as you pointed out).

If your phone comes with 3.1.2, but the previous owner DIDN'T back up his SHSH with Saurik, then you'll be in a fairly precarious situation—if you run into any problems that require a restore, your only choice is to restore to 3.1.3 and hope that the new jailbreak demonstrated by geohot's video will work on your phone (whenever he releases it).

 

[Fabienne]

Is saving the SHSH part of the jailbreak? Or does that have to be done as a separate operation? That is one point I think I am a bit fuzzy on. Thank you for your answer.

 

[Applejuiced]

Is saving the SHSH part of the jailbreak? Or does that have to be done as a separate operation? That is one point I think I am a bit fuzzy on. Thank you for your answer.

Its done after you JB.
As soon as you open up Cydia for the first time a page like the one bellow will appear.
Make sure you click make my life easier and not the "I hate jailbreaking" button
You seem like you researched plenty and you're ready for it.
Good luck. Glad to see people actually do their homework before getting into this JB thing.

 

[Applejuiced]

Actually I just read it thru and you are gettting it JB already.
So hopefully the previous owner clicked the "make my life easier" button.
And no you cannot restore to anything but the latest 3.1.3 unless you have your SHSH's saved.
So when you first turn on cydia look at the top of the page. It will list what firmware cydia has your files saved for.
Then by following this you change your hosts files for itunes to redirect to cydias server.
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=7557
But if you dont need to restore to 3.1.2 firmware you dont have to.
Just leave it the way it is.

 

[Penguissimo]

And just to clarify: if the previous owner didn't save the SHSH for the device back when Apple was still signing 3.1.2, there's unfortunately nothing you can do about that now; 3.1.3 is the only firmware Apple will sign anymore, which means it's the only version Saurik can store your SHSH for. Hopefully the previous owner selected "make my life easier", or else you'll have to hope nothing goes wrong with your current 3.1.2 installation before the new jailbreaking tools are released...

Also, seconding what Applejuiced said re: it being nice that someone did research

 

[Fabienne]

Hmmm, so it looks like I really need to turn on Cydia and see what version it has my firmware saved to. If it is 3.1.2 I am in good shape, anything else is not so good. We shall see. Thank you for your guidance on this. There are some rather subtle points and you are helping to clarify them.