Official iPad2 Jailbreak Thread

[DaftPunk]

Read the first post. It contains details and links to the jailbreak AND tutorials. What more do you need?

Well going to do it then I'll come back

[Ads]

[SethtimusPrime]

Dear Gurus,
When I expand the Absinthe mac 0.3.zip, it explains that it is not supported on this architecture. What now?

Donald McCaig

Are you trying to do this on a mac?

[Jenningsville]

Well, I’m now jailbroken, but it didn’t go quite a smoothly as I was expecting! Eventually, the only way I could complete the JB was to run it on my iPad restored from iTunes back to an empty factory iOS 5.0.1. Prior to this I had tried several unsuccessful attempts at doing the JB on my fully loaded iPad.

I thought it would be useful to share my experience; what I did, what happened, countermeasures I took, etc; for others to see as it might help them diagnose their own problems if they also have difficulty. Apols for the long post.

The main learnings that stood out for me trying to do the JB on a loaded iPad were:

1. It will take a loooong time… for me a single run through of the JB process on a single device took two hours.
2. Turn off your device passcode before your start. The error message telling you the JB will most likely fail if you have a passcode set is displayed right at the end of the JB process.
3. No apparent progress, change in an Absinthe window or change on the iPad screen can occur for half an hour or more and could mean (a) it’s stuck and you might as well give up… OR (b) hang on in there, it’s just taking a long time don’t stop yet… unfortunately there were no indications I could see on iPad or Absinthe screens to help me work out which one it was.
4. Don’t give up… you will get there.

Some background…
The iPad in question is an iPad 2 64gb, wifi, 3G.
The iPad is on iOS 5.0.1, restored from iOS 4.3.3 JB to factory settings and upgraded to iOS 5.0.1 two weeks ago.
I had then reloaded all my other data manually as unfortunately my backup had become corrupted :-(
I had loads of stuff on this iPad, 250+ apps, loads of music, loads of movies, loads of books. Only 10gb free space.
Used the Windows GUI Absinthe utility and followed f4780y’s excellent tutorial (refer back to the first posting in this thread for details).

Here’s how my experience went. All the steps below are in chronological sequence (I may have included a few redundant steps, but it made me feel better by doing them). I’ve included some “ATTEMPT #” labels simply to make it easier to see individual goes at running the full JB sequence, there was no pause at these points the steps just continue straight after the last step before the label.

ATTEMPT #1

Late evening, I started the Jailbreak process…
Rebooted PC (Windows 7)
Rebooted iPad
Connected iPad to PC
Started iTunes
Ran iTunes sync to back up iPad
Left iTunes running (not sure if I should have closed iTunes or left it running)
Downloaded, unzipped (into a folder on the desktop) and started Windows GUI version of Absinthe (Absinthe-win-0.2.zip).
Got the Absinthe “iPad 2 (GSM) with iOS 5.0.1 (9A405) detected” screen straight away
Clicked the Jailbreak button
Got the “Beginning jailbreak” screen with progress bar as per f4780y’s tutorial screen pic. Home screen displaying on iPad
Waited an hour, then left it running and went to bed...

Next morning…
Same Absinthe “Beginning jailbreak” screen displayed when I woke up next morning (progress bar hadn’t moved).
No change on iPad.
Clicked the X in the top left of Absinthe screen… Absinthe screen disappeared.
Rebooted my iPad (iPad still worked fine as it had before I started the JB process previous evening, and of course not jailbroken)
Rebooted my PC
Reconnected iPad to PC
Didn’t start iTunes (not sure if I should have started iTunes or not)
Started Absinthe
Got the Absinthe “iPad 2 (GSM) with iOS 5.0.1 (9A405) detected” screen straight away, with a message about having tried jailbreak already and it needed to tidy up, which it did (only took a few seconds, less than 10) and then displayed “Recovery complete” message.

ATTEMPT #2

Just to be safe, I decided to reboot everything before continuing (not sure if I needed to do this tho’)…

Clicked the X in the top left of Absinthe screen… Absinthe screen disappeared.
Rebooted my iPad (iPad still worked fine, as it had before I started the JB process the previous evening).
Turned Airplane Mode on the iPad to ON (I’d read somewhere that this would be good to do for this JB).
Rebooted iPad again (not sure if I had to reboot again, but made me feel better).
Rebooted my PC.
Reconnected iPad to PC.
Didn’t start iTunes (not sure if I should have started iTunes or left it not running).
Started Absinthe.
Got the Absinthe “iPad 2 (GSM) with iOS 5.0.1 (9A405) detected” screen straight away.
Clicked the Jailbreak button.
9:35 Got the “Beginning jailbreak” screen. Home screen displaying on iPad.
10:15 Got the “Sending initial data” screen. Lock screen displayed on iPad with the “Restore in Progress” message.
10:58 Got the “Waiting for reboot” screen, iPad screen went blank… rebooting.
10:59 in quick succession, approx 10ish seconds for each screen, the rest of the Absinthe screens as per f4780y’s tutorial were displayed in sequence.
On the “Waiting for reboot screen onwards, the iPad displayed blank black screen with the small whirly-wheel closing down animation, then small Apple starting-up icon. I think it displayed the password switch on screen for a second or so, but I only saw this out of the corner of my eye, then went blank black screen around the time the Absinthe “Almost done” screen was displayed on the PC.
Stayed a while on the “Almost done” screen.
Note that my iPad remained connected throughout all the following steps ‘til the one where I say I unplugged it…
11:05 I woke up (doh!) and properly read the Absinthe screen which was telling me to look for the Absinthe web clip on my iPad.
Clicked the iPad home button and saw my familiar enter password screen.
Entered my password.
Looked for the Jailbreak icon (or “Absinthe webclip”) on the iPad, but couldn’t find it on any of the homescreens.
Interestingly, the iPad had turned off Airplane Mode and it connected itself to 3G and wifi.
On the iPad, tapped Setting -> General -> Network -> VPN (which said “not connected”) -> turned on VPN
iPad asked me to “Add Configuration”, didn’t know what setting to put in, so cancelled the screen.
Note that there were no VPN configurations listed in the VPN screen on my iPad.
Returned to Homescreen, leaving VPN turned on.
Rebooted iPad. Re-entered iPad password.
Couldn’t find Jailbreak or “Absinthe webclip” icons on the iPad.
I noticed that the iPad VPN setting had become off.
Noticed that the Absinthe screen on the PC had reverted to the “iPad 2 (GSM) with iOS 5.0.1 (9A405) detected” screen.
Turned VPN back on again in iPad
Rebooted iPad again, and re-entered password.
On PC, the Absinthe screen changed to one I hadn’t seen before… “ERROR: Device has a passcode set! If a passcode is set, the jailbreak will most likely fail. Unplug device, go to Settings and DISABLE THE PASSCODE, then plug it back in.”
iPad VPN setting had become off.
Went into iPad Settings and deleted Exchange account from my iPad (had to delete it because the security policies on that account force the iPad password security, and security can only be disabled if this particular exchange settings are removed).
Went into iPad Settings -> General, and turned off passcode (which had now become ungreyed).
Unplugged iPad from PC, Absinthe “Plug in your iPhone 4S or iPad 2 to begin” screen displayed
Plugged iPad back into PC again.
Got the initial, start of process, Absinthe “iPad 2 (GSM) with iOS 5.0.1 (9A405) detected” screen again, with “Click button to begin” message.
11:35 Clicked the Jailbreak button
It told me I’d tried jailbreaking before and it needed to tidy up, which it did, then it displayed the Recovery completed message and told me to unplug device and plug it back in again. Which I did at 11:37.
Got the initial, start of process, Absinthe “iPad 2 (GSM) with iOS 5.0.1 (9A405) detected” screen again.

ATTEMPT #3

This time I left Airplane Mode in OFF, i.e. 3G and wifi remaining connected.
Decided not to bother rebooting iPad or PC.
Decided to still stick with leaving iTunes NOT started.
11:38 I clicked the Jailbreak button and the whole process began over again.
11:38 Got the “Beginning jailbreak” screen with progress bar. Home screen displayed on iPad.
12:20 Got the “Sending initial data” screen. Lock screen displayed on iPad with the “Restore in Progress” message.
12:58 Got the “Waiting for reboot” screen, iPad screen went blank… then rebooting.
12:58 in quick succession, approx 10ish seconds for each screen, the rest of the Absinthe screens as per f4780y’s tutorial were displayed in sequence… up to…
On the “Waiting for reboot screen”, the iPad displayed blank black screen with the small whirly-wheel closing down animation, then small Apple starting-up icon.
12:59 Got the “Sending payload data” screen. iPad screen was blank black (and, as per the Absinthe screen instruction, I didn’t touch it I just left it that way).
13:39 Got the “Almost done” screen. This screen remained displayed unchanged during all the following steps. I kept the iPad connected to the PC also all through the next steps.
Pressed the iPad Home button to turn on the screen
Scrolled to last Home screen and found the app icon named Absinthe
13:40 Tapped the Absinthe icon
The iPad screen blinked white, then displayed the GreenPois0n screen (black background with central Apple-skull logo) and displaying a message at top “ABSINTHE is now setting things up, stand-by” (and an advert is displayed in bottom half of screen, a different one each time the app is invoked).
14:03 Got bored waiting so tapped the Home button to get back to my Home page
Tapped Settings -> General -> Network -> VPN. VPN was set off, and a VPN “configuration” called “jailbreak Custom” was set up.
Turned VPN on
It tried to establish the connection, then displayed the message “VPN Connection, A configuration error occurred.” To which I tapped OK.
I rebooted the iPad.
After iPad reboot the Absinthe screen on the PC changed to the “iPad 2 (GSM) with iOS 5.0.1 (9A405) detected” screen, inviting me to click the Jailbreak button again. I ignored it.
The Absinthe icon was still in place in my last Home screen.
Disconnected iPad from PC.
Tapped Settings -> General -> Network -> VPN. VPN was set off (“configuration” called “jailbreak Custom” is still there).
Turned VPN on.
It tried to establish the connection, then again displayed the message “VPN Connection, A configuration error occurred”.
I did some Googling on the “ABSINTHE is now setting things up, stand-by” message… and discovered this advice… “the servers hosting this Userland Jailbreak is being overloaded with traffic. Your best bet is going to be to keep trying to launch the Absinthe app on your springboard, or simply wait an hour or two and try again. Another solution that has been reported to work for this error is to simply go into the Settings.app > General Tab > Network Tab > VPN Tab and then toggle VPN to the ON position. This will cause an error dialog box to appear where once dismissed will reboot your iPad 2, and in most cases will allow you to use the Absinthe app to finish your Jailbreak”
For me, dismissing the error dialog box only cleared the error message popup, it didn’t result in the reboot. VPN remained set to OFF.
Thinking maybe I had a conflict between my wifi and other iPad comms, I set Airplane Mode to ON, and then manually switched ON wifi and connected it to my wifi.
Then tried switching on the VPN again… same error message.
Tried tapping Absinthe icon again… same effect, the Greenpois0n Apple skull screen appears and sits there forever.

Spent the rest of the day googling and fiddling about with various setting to get the VPN to connect… all failed.
Spent a few hours in the evening tapping the VPN connection button and getting the error message. Probably tried it over a 100 times over a four hour period. Most times the error message was “VPN Connection, A configuration error occurred”, but three random times however the message was “VPN connection Negotiation with the VPN server failed”.
Eventually gave up and went to bed.

As mentioned at the start of my post, I then restored my iPad back to virgin 5.0.1 and did the JB. Job done!

Hope others find this helpful.

ATTEMPT #4

By the way… how did the JB go on my virgin restored 5.0.1 iPad... errr, well… easy…

Next day...
10:13 started Absinthe
10:14 clicked Jailbreak button
10:15 whizzed thru the screens as per f4780y’s tutorial, few seconds per screen
10:16 iPad rebooted
10:17 tapped Absinth icon on iPad, Greenpois0n screen displayed for 5 seconds, then iPad rebooted
10:18 Reboot complete, Cydia icon present, all Absinthe intermediates on my device tidied away.

Then restored from backup to get my apps and data back. Phew!

[addiosamigo]

The reason why everybody is having problems is that they don't read instructions properly, it's been noted a lot of times (including myself) that you must do the jailbreak on a fully clean install of ios 5.0.1, i Jailbroke 2 devices an each time it took 2 mins!

[yucatecd]

Are you trying to do this on a mac?

Yes. Ibook G4, 10.5.8

[daffie]

The reason why everybody is having problems is that they don't read instructions properly, it's been noted a lot of times (including myself) that you must do the jailbreak on a fully clean install of ios 5.0.1, i Jailbroke 2 devices an each time it took 2 mins!

Not completely true. I did JB on a non-clean Ios 5.0.1. Didn't do a restore or anything beforehand, and used the CLI version on Win7 machine. Worked fine...and at the 1st attempt as well. Just saying...

[Poser]

Yes. Ibook G4, 10.5.8

that might be too old....from the comments i seen, think you need Snow or Lion....or just run VMware.

Although i have Lion, i had issues(not sure why, must be a conflict somehow), had to use a Windows Machine in the end.

I have an Updated version of Absinthe now, gonna do another iPad soon.

Not sure if the Corona injector CLI tool for Mac needs updated OSX.

Anyone who wants to help finish #Absinthe for osx 10.5 please join #greenpois0n on irc.chronic-dev.org and ping me (nikias)

Edit: they are working on making it available for OSX 10.5.....for those interested.

[DaftPunk]

Read the first post. It contains details and links to the jailbreak AND tutorials. What more do you need?

Hey, congrats me I JB my iPad....
But I really don't know how to download games or programs via cydia, can you tell me a little about how to use it PLZ

[Mickey330]

Go to Cydia and browse.

For a good idea of good stuff to put on the iPad, have a look at this thread: Ultimate List of Jailbreak Tweaks

Be sure to focus only on the items with the blue font as they're the ones that are compatible with iOS 5.0.1.

Happy searching!

Ma

[Wookiee2cu]

Not completely true. I did JB on a non-clean Ios 5.0.1. Didn't do a restore or anything beforehand, and used the CLI version on Win7 machine. Worked fine...and at the 1st attempt as well. Just saying...

When using the Windows GUI it seems to be a lot easier if you do restore your device before you perform the jailbreak. It may vary depending on how much stuff you have on your iPad; I had about 50GB's on my iPad so the backup and restore portion took about 1 hour before it finally gave an error about Absinthe not working. I restored my device and then perfromed the JB with nothing on my iPad and the whole process took about 6 minutes.