I am sorry for this, but even if it might surprise some people, sometimes there are more important things in life than keeping your blog updated.

Anyways here a quick overview of things that changed or matter before I get bugged at writing again:

• GNOME3 has been released. Congratulations!

• Removed my evolution-status-icon work, there is now evolution-tray which does the job (authors didn’t knew I had this done, too).
• openSUSE 11.4 is released and along with compiz 0.9.4, GNOME 2.32, NVIDIA drivers and subpixel hinting enabled it is just awesomely freaking nice.
• Bought a Vertex-2 64GB SSD to use as a system drive. Superb to speedup a system dramatically.
• Loads of changes on the libimobiledevice front:
  • Released 1.0.6 stable for iOS 4.3+ compatibility. iOS 4.3 has a bug we needed to add a workaround for…
  • libplist fixes a few serious bugs, so be sure to grab the latest 1.4.
  • New idevicedate tool now allows to sync the iDevice time with your computer. Simply run “idevicedate -c” and that’s it.
  • Christoph Fergeau (libgpod maintainer) created the first non-iTunes tool to push contacts on an iDevice using native protocols!
  • “iTunes File Sharing” is now supported. It means that you can add port 3 to the URI (e.g.: afc://<uuid>:3/) in nautilus and with the latest GVFS you get a list of apps supporting file sharing and you can access the documents folders directly. Of course this works with ifuse using the new “–appid” command line argument aswell.
• libimobiledevice 1.2.0 is in the works:
  • New Cython Python bindings are being merged now.
  • idevicebackup4, the backup and restore tool for iOS 4+ is working. Needs some polish though before being merged.
• Wrote a Python plugin for Totem to act as an AirPlay receiver. Just pushed changes to make it work for iOS 4.3+ devices, too.
• Want to view thumbnails of Photoshop PSD files in nautilus and previews in eog, gthumb or whatever else uses “GDK Pixbufs“? I updated the loader written by Jan Dudek as he basically stopped maintaining it and added a proper build system and tagged a 0.1.0 release to get this into distros. I’ll try to package it soon.
• Also changes in my openSUSE repositories:
  • Removed a lot of old cruft and obsolete packages.
  • Added an ideviceinstaller package to my iPhone support repositories.
  • Added openSUSE 11.4 build targets which you should update to as those fix a serious bug connecting to iDevices.
• Successfully compiled and tested the Cherokee Webserver on an Apple TV 2 running PHP. Heck, it’s fast. Plenty of ideas spawn in my head how to make use of this tiny $99 low-energy gem now. I’ll try to write up some howto on this once I got WordPress and other Web 2.0 animals running.

• mod_macro for Apache is very helpful if you are used to a load of copy/paste <VirtualHost/> entries.
• Was mentioned in the German c’t Magazin Issue 2/2011 in an article about libimobiledevice, nice!
• Turned 30. No comment on that.
• Loads of work and business projects right now.

More happened but I simply forgot to mention it now.

As a lot of people started to ask if one is still able to synchronize music using libgpod on Linux and if libimobiledevice and related works, I’d like to explain the current state of art here.

First of all, libimobiledevice is working fine, all known devices running a firmware up to iOS 4.0 are supported and can be accessed as usual.

One exception is the backup functionality. As git master of the library also recently gained support of restoring backups using the idevicebackup tool, I should note that this functionality needs an update as the mobilebackup protocol version was bumped and changed.

Now looking at music synchronization for media players which use libgpod (like Amarok, Rhythmbox, GTKPod, gpodder and so on) I can say that it is currently half broken.

However, the positive message I can spread here is that the iTunes music database is still signed using the same hash we already support. This means that we’ll be able to fix this issue in libgpod soon and make it work with less trouble.

On the other hand it is now also clear that the iPad uses a new hash and music synchronization is not working. iOS 4 is not available for that device anyways until later this year.

So to sum it up: Music sync with an iPhone/iPod Touch running iOS 4.0 with Linux is going to work fine soon, while music sync with the iPad is fully unsupported. So you might want to wait with your update until a newer libgpod is released.

An extra goodie for users of the Banshee media player. Alan was so nice to hack libgpod support into Banshee during the Novell Hackweek, thus support for iDevices is coming soon.

Since those reports appear to point out that  Ubuntu/Linux is “teh evil”, I’ll try to explain why this is totally false information and FUD.

The basic workflow he pointed out was:

• Set a passcode on a device
• Switch off the device
• Attach it to an Ubuntu system it was never attached before
• The device starts booting
• Ubuntu automounts the device media partition and allows access

The expected behavior is that the device would refuse to pair with the unknown system due to having a passcode set.

Now the problem here is that you can replicate this flaw with any operating system.

Both Windows and Mac OS X are affected by the same issue and repeating this process under those systems replicates the exact same issue and once attached, allows device access with tools like iPhone Explorer just fine even with a passcode set.

It has nothing to do with Linux except that it became evident here first since Ubuntu auto-mounts any device as soon as it is ready. The guys at libimobiledevice could not replicate it initially as it only affects devices with a long boot cycle.

To sum it up: Ubuntu Linux as well as other Linux distributions, using libimobildevice, do work correctly. The real bug is hidden within the iPhone OS and is thus unrelated to the used operating system as iTunes is evidently affected by this, too. This is something Apple is most likely going to fix in the next OS release, hopefully correcting only this misbehavior which, on Linux, should give you the dialog seen on the picture for this post in the future.

So please stop spreading FUD that Ubuntu/Linux is “hacking your phone”. Thanks.

Oh, and I’d like to dedicate the dialog you see above to Bernd which we are about to introduce to GNOME’s GVFS now just to show that indeed even Linux detects and shows information about a passcode refusal similar to what iTunes shows just fine. ;)

UPDATE 02/06/10: It appears the issue only applies if you switch the device off during an “unlocked” state (thus you entered the passcode already and see the icons) but not if you power it down while it requests you to enter a passcode making this whole mess less dramatic…

Now Apple had a keynote event yesterday and among other stuff presented the features of the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0.

This new OS version will provided for the iPad this fall alongside iPhone 3G/3GS and iPod Touches 2G/3G this summer. Developer builds are already available and some videos of the new features like multitasking (technically it’s just an illusion though) already fill up the internet tubes.

With the recent news about libimobiledevice and native Linux support for these devices some important questions rise that i’ll try to answer:

• First of all: Will the iPad blend? Yes it will.
• Will the iPad (using OS 3.2) work with libimobiledevice? Yes it will. We tested access and all tools work as expected. Changes are in GIT and support arrives in the next releases.
• So everything works? Not everything. The iPad uses a “DBVersion 5″ for it’s music database and apparently a new hash algorithm. However, we’re already looking into it and hope to have everything working before iPhone OS 4.0 arrives to keep people syncing fine.
• Will iPhone OS 4.0 be supported by libimobiledevice? Access and tools should work fine. However, the music database hashing has changed with OS 3.2 again. As the OS will also be used on current iPhone and iPod Touch models, libgpod will have to gain support to support the new hashing aswell.
• Is this cat and mouse game never going to stop? In the context of the music database iTunes is managing: It won’t. New features, like those found in iPhone OS 4.0 (mainly for books), require changes to the music database format and new iTunes versions. So whenever something new will be added, things will have to be altered to work. However the basic underlying protocols used by libimobiledevice should remain stable.

If you have more questions just add a comment and i’ll try to add them to the list.

The libimobiledevice preliminary website has also gained a FAQ, especially for those who seem to hit a bug which boils down to ”I can’t sync music to the device but I see it was copied!”. If you don’t have an “iTunes_Control/Device/SysInfoExtended” file on your device’s filesystem you are hitting this bug.

It was just fixed in libgpod 0.7.93 which is released now. For a manual fix just create the “iTunes_Control/Device” directory and run “ipod-read-sysinfo-extended <UUID> <MOUNTPOINT>” which should create a SysInfoExtended file.

Expect a mini-series soon explaining the tools one can use on Linux to access the devices. Although you can already check out a very nice video created by an early tester “masterofabortions” which already shows some of the tools in action. Great work! Mind though, that this is not just Ubuntu specific.

Icon copyright by Hylke Bons, available in the gnome-icon-theme-extras package.

libimobiledevice is a free open source software library that talks the protocols to support iPhone ® and iPod Touch ® devices natively on Linux.

Unlike other projects, it does not depend on using any existing proprietary libraries and does not require jailbreaking.

It was successfully tested with the iPhone and iPod Touch 1G, 2G, 3G and 3GS models running up to firmware 3.1.3.

So what does it mean for me as a desktop user?

It means you can sync your music/video, access the filesystem from your Linux Desktop, manage your SpringBoard, managed installed apps, create backups and a lot more; all without violating your warranty. Finally more freedom to use the bling bling device on Linux after one was forced to use iTunes on Windows or Mac OS X.

What does this mean for developers?

Developers are able to write applications for Linux which use the native capabilities provides by those devices. As we have successfully tested the library on Mac OS X and Windows aswell during development, other projects might take advantage of this in the future, aswell.

Wow, whom to thank for this?

Big thanks to Matt Colyer who started all this back in August 2007 and provided the first code to “talk” to the devices.

Further credits to all the nice developers of libimobiledevice who continuously worked hard to push code into various libraries (GVFS, libgpod/gtkpod, libusb 1.0) and are mostly responsible that plugging in an iPhone or iPod Touch and syncing your music is fun now. Thanks to the packagers of the various distributions who helped to upstream patches and helped to find bugs.

Contrary to a range of blog posts around the net, Ubuntu and Canonical Ltd. have nothing to do with the work. They just happen to have included the library in the recent Ubuntu Lucid release causing “OMG, suddenly my iPhone works!” reactions. Also this work has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc.

So what happens now?

With this release I will be taking over maintainership for the library from Matt Colyer. We are going to continue to implement more of the left spots, especially the contacts/calendars/notes/bookmarks synchronization capabilities in order to be able to use the device as a fully fledged smartphone and media player with Linux. We won’t touch any DRM infested areas (thus don’t expect to sync any content bought from the iTunes Store) but continue to apply legal methods when implementing the remaining functionality.

Most distributions will feature the library in their next release: Ubuntu Lucid, Fedora 13, openSUSE 11.3 and Mandriva 2010.1 are among those who are more or less confirmed. There are also some backports available from the official site mentioned above for older distributions.

I will be doing a mini-feature here to present each of the various features the library offers in detail soon, so stay subscribed!

Where do I get more information and the library/tools?

Get the full information overload from the official website: http://www.libimobiledevice.org/

The icon is courtesy of Jonathan Zuniga under CC2.5.

For a hint click to read more of the post…

http://www.libimobiledevice.org/

Nautilus/GVFS:

…

Conduit:

Hey, it’s not even jailbroken! Plug in and use any iPhone/iPod Touch (1G, 2G, 3G, 3GS) up to and including firmware 3.0. Go figure!

Packages for openSUSE will be ready once a proper release is out.

Source Git repositories are available here:

• libplist: http://github.com/JonathanBeck/l…
• usbmuxd: http://pims.selfip.net/git/usbmuxd
• libiphone: http://github.com/MattColyer/lib…
• iFuse: http://github.com/MattColyer/ifu…
• python-iphonesync: http://cgit.sukimashita.com/pyth…
• gvfs-backend-afc: http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gvfs (Update 4/11/09: Now upstream in GVFS)

Credits to a couple of very intelligent people for starting all this. Icon from Jonathan Zuniga under CC2.5.

Some kind of “movement” formed out of this and other sites attempt to do the same or even block IE6 (for reference; Facebook did show a warning about IE6 since quite a while already).

On top of this it looks like finally not only web developers rant about Internet Explorer.

After Apple released a new beta of Safari 4 few days ago with loads of new bling bling, the usual “my Javascript Engine > *” arguments and exclusively stating the browser is “up to 30 times faster than IE7” things have started to get worse for Microsoft and web developer’s “favorite” browser.

Google is joining the EU antitrust case alongside Opera and Mozilla which appears to give Microsoft a major headache and should change what we’ll see coming bundled along the Windows 7 operating system.

In a some kind of of “last minute emergency” in the web development world, Microsoft really targets their new Internet Explorer 8 to comply to web standards (and thus effectively breaking site rendering for users in favor of a better web).

They have even created a blog which covers the development of it’s next generation browser however the comments are heavily moderated and many are removed.

Despite that, one can see a lot of rant in the remaining comments indicating that people are still not happy, even with the new standards compliant IE8…

Hopefully this will turn Microsoft to even try harder. We’ll see how far it goes but the web business would definitely benefit.
Hard times for IE, but hope for web developers…

Current releases of libgpod which is able to handle managing of the iTunes database (this is where your Music/Photo data is stored) on an iPhone or iPod Touch are only able work with the database for firmwares 1.1.4 and below.

This involved recreating a specific hashing algorithm used by iTunes which had been widely in the news.

With iTunes 8 and Apple’s 2.0 firmware, a new hashing algorithm was introduced which made music/photo synchronization with 2.0+ devices not working at all.

The folks have now uncovered that Apple has apparently started to use their FairPlay-DRM to encrypt the iTunes database.

Recently, there has been progress in understanding how the hashing process for 2.0+ firmware looks like and while there is some more work to do the peak research seems to have been passed quoting someone from the private list:

ok it workes with the later address.
and guess what, it worked !!

tmpkey : *****

itunes :      1BEB2BE8EA1D08D1CAFBD89C5CBE50E0
itdb_hash : 1beb2be8ea1d08d1cafbd89c5cbe50e0

good work !

What you see is a prototype implementation (itdb_hash) having generated the same hash iTunes generated for a specific iTunes database.

The day to plug in the iPhone, let HAL recognize it and use Conduit to synchronize Music/Photos, Calendar, Notes, Addressbook or to use GtkPod or other managers for your Music is constantly rising upon us.

Note that you should understand that all this work will make up for software being iTunes independant without the need to jailbreak at all (on all platforms libiphone compiles).

What kept your (not jailbroken) bling bling from being accessed on Linux and limited to synchronization with one Mac or Windows computer could soon be history as a new interesting project has been started.

iFuse (along with it’s backend library libiphone) is a project to allow mounting any iPhone or iPod Touch on Linux over the standard USB cable (so far you could only mount jailbroken ones over the network using ssh) using the fuse filesystem abstraction.

For this to work the project is based on a lot of USB traffic reverse engineering of the iTunes protocol stack to talk with the device.

The current state is pretty astounding as they have a working (not 100% stable though) read/write capable implementation and a backend library which can be used in applications to take further use of the device.

More services can be explored and sms/addressbook/calendar access is already in reach (although needs to be implemented).

A testrun with the library showed how young the library actually is and I had to adjust some autofoo to make it compile correctly.

Another issue had been that on openSUSE the iPhone/iPod Touch gets automounted as camera devices and libiphone has reported cryptic errors on attempts to access the device.

The project requires that you generate encryption keys prior to communicating with any device due to the SSL driven protocol layer once for a computer. This corelates to the iTunes limitation that you can only synchronize your bling bling with one library and takes up to a two or three minutes to do.

Upon the first “contact” of your computer and the device, both devices enter a pairing process which is fast and trivial enabling generic communication from that point on.

Using iFuse one can mount the device to some location and it can be used with Linux tools like gtkpod or other media players/managing tools like any other iPods.

The cool thing is now that this will enable you to plug in an out of the box iPhone or iPod Touch to your (or that of your friends) Linux desktop and modify contents on it.

The library is nearing a first release milestone, it is still pretty unstable and needs some more polish but heading a very good way.

Please mind that no Linux media player manager application is able to deal with the iTunes library on your device if you have a 2.0+ version firmware. It might even potentially destroy your iTunes library (not your whole bling, just the music/playlist and so on) if you use it.

I’ll try to package this as soon as we see the first release of this great piece of work.

UPDATE 12/09:

Zach C. on the libiphone mailinglist writes:

Just upgraded, ran iphoneclient on the phone. iPhone firmware 2.1 appears to work out of the box, no code change needed. Business as usual. :)

The library has been tested with the new 2.1 firmware realeased by Apple. It appears to work without problems! Any protocol changes would most likely make devices with older firmwares not work anyway, so Apple has to keep it compatible.