Hurrah. My iPhone 3GS is jailbroken again, and running iPhone OS 3.1.2 – thanks to GeoHot’s new blackra1n jailbreak, which he released late last night.
As many of you know, and have teased me about 
, I updated to the 3.1 firmware a few weeks back and have been kicking myself about it ever since and missing the jailbreak.
I had a few glitches this morning – mostly of my own making I think – but still found the whole process smooth and effective. And I’m very happy to be jailbroken again. Read on for just a few quick notes and impressions on my experience with blackra1n …
A Few Things to Note on blackra1n
It’s Windows only for now – I have not seen any word on if / when GeoHot plans to release a Mac version.
It is a ‘tethered’ jailbreak for the iPod Touch 3rd gen (see GeoHot notes below)
If you’re running a 3G or 3GS and have it / need it unlocked, GeoHot warns against updating to 3.1.2
Here is a little more info from GeoHot’s blog post on this:
So, what is blackra1n? blackra1n is a 30 second ALL device 3.1.2 jailbreak. Even the ipt3, but the ipt3 is tethered. In order to boot it, just rerun blackra1n. As far as donations go, they are much appreciated, but not until after blackra1n works for you. I never ask for donations before the tool is released.
Warning 3g and 3gs unlockers, do not upgrade to 3.1.2 using iTunes if you want to keep your unlock. Baseband cannot be downgraded. Check out the dev team’s offerings. Also blackra1n doesn’t hacktivate.
See his full post HERE.
My Initial Attempt
I use a Mac, but run a Windows 7 virtual machine on it via VMWare Fusion, so I updated iTunes on the VM, and downloaded blackra1n to it while I updated my iPhone to firmware 3.1.2 on the Mac.
This time round, I did not do a ‘clean’ restore of my iPhone prior to jailbreaking – just ran the 3.1.2 update on it, then fired away with blackra1n.
Just as with purplera1n (GeoHot’s previous jailbreak for iPhone OS versions prior to 3.0.1), the process is quick and gives you a few quick status updates as it runs through …
At the end of the very quick process, it tells you it succeeded and asks to wait for a reboot. On my virtual machine that reboot never came, and when I forced one the phone came back up with no Cydia or blackra1n app on it – i.e. not jailbroken.
I tried twice, made sure iTunes was inactive on the Mac side, but still no joy. There is probably a solution to that, but I was impatient and decided to knock the virtual machine out of the equation just in case – so I swapped to my daughter’s netbook running Windows Vista and downloaded blackra1n on it.
Third Time Lucky
My first try at running blackra1n on the netbook got the error “Blackra1n.exe is not a valid Win32 application”.
I went with the most likely cause for that error, a corrupt file, and deleted and re-downloaded the blackra1n.exe file.
That worked – and it ran as quickly and smoothly as I remember from the purplera1n experience. Rebooted as it was supposed to – complete with ginormous GeoHot / blackra1n image on the restart screen – and now it was properly jailbroken.
The jailbreak installs the blackra1n app on the iPhone. You use that app to install Cydia (the leading jailbreak App Store equivalent) or two other alternative jailbreak app stores.
I’ve only installed Cydia so far, as I don’t know enough about the other two as yet. Cydia required a few upgrades on first launch – which require a reboot of the phone and a few springboard restarts as well.
It’s fun to see this Spotlight result again …
And even more fun to start re-installing some jailbreak favorites (I know, I should’ve used aptbackup or similar to make this quicker – but I didn’t). Like the Mac Wallpapers collection …
Which provides the lovely background used on my home and lock screens (via Winterboard’s ‘User Wallpaper’ setting) …
The superb Glasklart theme that I’ve been missing was also one of the first things I put back on of course.
As was mQuickDo, the superb app that provides app-switching capability – which is probably the very best thing about being jailbroken for me.
Results So Far – Happy Camper
It’s only been a short while – but so far, so good. In fact, every bit as good as I’d come to expect having used GeoHot’s purplera1n in the past. The iPhone is performing just as well, just as snappily, as ever. WiFi and settings are all good. Phone is good. YouTube as well. Stock apps cool. Jailbreak apps cool. I’m a happy camper.
Oh, and as I mentioned on Twitter, I definitely feel this is worth a donation to GeoHot for his efforts, and I’ve made a donation earlier on. Great work GeoHot!
If you haven’t tried blackra1n yet, or want to donate – go HERE for easy, one-click options for download and donations.
I hope blackra1n is working well for all of you as well. Let us know your thoughts / questions in the comments …
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
With this jailbreak you can't access the full iPhone file system from computer with apps like Diskaid.
Hooray!!! I know that you are as happy as ever. But what am I going to do now that I can't poke fun at you anymore lol
Well I've downloaded blackra1n, and will be commencing with the upgrade and jailbreak later tonight after my bowling league. i have to mentally prepare for this ordeal, because it is goung to take several hours i'm sure. But I've really been looking forward to this, because i think my 3gs needed a cleanup anyway. I have noticed a few quirks over the last month which i believe come from several unclean installations of apps and mobile substrate add ons. So i always take these upgrade/rejailbreak opportunities as a chance to clean house and really evaluate what i have/haven't been using on the phone, and what's gonna make the cut. GeoHot definitely deserves his props, the kid is a prodigy. Well glad to have you back on the dark side Patrick!
I'm sure there'll be plenty of other reasons to poke fun at me – I'm great at providing those
Good thoughts on the opportunity for cleanout with each of these processes. I've often thought that as well, especially when doing a restore and putting apps back on – great time to be brutal and think on how often you really use each one.
Thanks for the welcome back to whichever side this is
What is that on your lock screen? Is it true about access to the file system. If you have Cydia, I'm sure you can install openssh and use winscp or cyberduck.
On the Lock screen = mQuickDo, mentioned in the post, superb for app switching. True about file system = not sure. SSH works fine for me but on first use it doesn't seem to show as much of file system as expected – but I didn't have a need to nose around when I gave it a quick go earlier.
Can't seem to get winterboard to work once jailbroken any ideas why?
Ton install or to work once installed?
this jailbreak didn't work for me at all using windows 7 and a fresh clean install of 3.1.2 … I've spent the last 4 hours googling and trying oodles of different solutions that worked for other people but I've got nothing. I'm officially disappointed =/
Not Windows 7 in a virtual machine by any chance?
nope, running on my dell mini 10 … I tried running XP in a virtual machine on my iMac and blackra1n wouldn't even run at all. At this point I'm considering putting XP back on my netbook and trying that. Perhaps I should be more patient though.
Damn – what is the error / issue you're getting? I ran it on a little Gateway netbook running Vista, and apart from the first download of the .exe for blackra1n being corrupt, did not run into any problems.
It would start the application but I just got one of those fancy windows error report windows as soon as I clicked on the make it rain button. Nothing terribly useful in there, at least not anything a mere mortal like myself can understand.
The only information I can get other than it "performed an illegal operation" is a hex dump, doubt that would be much help =/
I cannot run the exe it keeps saying blackra1n.exe is not a valid win32 application, I have tried downloading it about 5 or more times. I am standard running windows xp professional. Please help me?
Maybe try downloading it via a different browser or, if that also fails, a different machine.
Thanks for sharing. My Italian is non-existent, but I think the gist of that is that you need to suspend the iTuneHelper.exe process prior to running blackra1n?
on the iphone 3gs running 3.1.2 how can I change the color of the keyboard? there are many choices they just dont work.
arrrrgghhh!! ok so every time i try and run blackra1n now, the window pops up with "make it ra1n" and so i click it, then the "send error report" window comes up and i click "don't send" and blackra1n closes.. i've clicked "send error report" as well but it doesn't make any difference.. someone please help!!!
Long shot, but want to post a screencap of your error (link) in here, or send it to us via our Contacts page and maybe one of us will have an idea for you?
after another fresh install of 3.1.2 it worked, not sure why I was having all the problems, didn't do anything differently this time, just glad it's finally working and cydia is installed once again =]
Oh, very glad to hear it – hope it all goes smooth for you from there onwards
You must log in to post a comment.