I fixed the broken master.passwd using the “openssl passwd” command.
It worked but I had to change the 501 in the line fpr the mobile user to 0.
Afterwards a reboot stopped iPhone from constantly rebooting Springboard. I have all my SMS but I lost ALL MY CONTACTS and MUSIC!!! Argh!
Help! Plz!

I was able to login via ssh with the new password and i could see a lot of Files in the music folder inside iTunes.
I assume that my music and contacts are still there.
Does anyone know a way to get access to it again?

Anyway, in case I have to resync my phone with iTunes: Are there conflict resolutions that I can set in iTunes to prevent the phone from overwriting my contacts in iTunes?

Thanks and regards,
Mathias

Let me ask this, have you installed Cydia (from installer.app) .. which is the ported version of Debian’s APT system for iphone? The Cydia package manager fixes most problems relating to the BSD subsystem running on the iphone (except passwd). Since I wrote that post, the problems with su/sudo have been fixed, so in theory, if you have installed Cydia and kept it up to date, you most likely have already patched su/sudo to work. That said, you should be able to ssh to the iphone using a command like ssh mobile@iphoneip and login using the password of alpine (only really old iphones use dottie).

However if you have not installed Cydia, and are still using installer.app’s broken BSD subsystem … you would need to ssh to the iphone the same way (ssh mobile@iphoneip), and then instead of using su or sudo to run apps as root, you would then need to ssh root@localhost and login using the alpine password.

This really isn’t the best way to do it, but back at the time I wrote those posts, it was an easy way around one of the problems installer.app’s broken BSD subsystem caused.

Maybe this is a little more clear then my earlier post .. I hadn’t had my coffee yet.

Let me know if you need any more help.

alpha Says:
June 2nd, 2008 3:12 am

“To get around this, I found that ssh root@localhost works until su is fixed.”

can u specify clearly please…on how to go about it. I still can’t login as root….both passwords ( alpine or dottie) shows incorrect when i try to log in as root.

Could you be more clear as well? in regards to what I was saying about using “ssh root@localhost” – this is done once you are logged into the iphone shell, either from a local terminal or via ssh … you have to login as the mobile user first, which is done automatically if you are using this terminal on the iphone.

If you can’t login at all .. did you use passwd to change the root/mobile user passwords (exactly what the instructions say NOT to do)?

Other then that, I do not think I can be any more clear.

can u specify clearly please…on how to go about it. I still can’t login as root….both passwords ( alpine or dottie) shows incorrect when i try to log in as root.

Thanks for commenting!