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26Feb

Only idiots change their iPhone root password!

8

If you are a happy iPhone owner and you are an ssh geek, then the first thing you will install on your iPhone is OpenSSH.

You will be happy with the installation, but you will find no GUI on your device, so it is supposedly accepting your ssh connections. Great! Now find your iPhone IP and go ssh it with root login. Of course it is not passwordless; after googling this, you will find it is 'dottie' prior to firmware 1.1.1 and 'alpine' later on. In the same site (OpenSSH), you are advised to change your root password -so intuitive-: "You should change your password, after you install OpenSSH. Everyone knows the default password".

Now login, fire passwd command and change it. Congratulations, you have put your iPhone in a wreck!

 After restarting it you will get a notice "Edit home screen" and the springboard crashes and restarts infinitely! If you try to connect it to your Mac or PC to reset it, or even jailbreak it, you will find your Mac/PC clueless and can't even discover the device.

Being trapped in such frustration for more than an hour, I finally found someone talking about this problem and saying that changing the root password causes this and one should restore the old password files. The hard part is that I changed the password and did a lot of things then restarted the device so I never related the problem to its real cause.

So, the passwd binary does not work for the iPhone; either don't change your password or hash it manually using the guide above.

Phew! Restarting your iPhone now solves the problem. Play wisely, even conservatively, with your little cute iPhone.

Comments

1 THAMER wrote: on Monday, March 02, 2009:

This is realy great phone. but some tims playing with new tech teach alto of things.

2 ZEGARD wrote: on Monday, August 17, 2009:

My best guess is that you were smart enough to know how to change passwords in *NIX, but not enough to actually change the password of root instead of the user mobile.

It actually is EXTREMELY recommended to change the root password after you install OpenSSH, specially if you like to go to public wifi places.

3 tutter wrote: on Sunday, September 13, 2009:

I dunno which iphone you talking about, but I changed both root and mobile passwords of my 3gs, and have no problems, even after rebooting many, many times.

4 Jack Elliot wrote: on Thursday, October 15, 2009:

I think the smarter thing to do is install Toggle SSH, and turn the daemon off when you're not logging into the phone, and leaving the default passwords in place. After changing mine, the phone's battery life was significantly decreased.

5 nudel wrote: on Wednesday, November 11, 2009:

ha! who's laughing now?...
http://news.google.com.au/news?q=iphone+rick+roll

btw @ Jack Elliot: no, the smarter thing is to change the friggin default password!...

oh, and battery life?... wtf?!!!

6 smile wrote: on Wednesday, November 11, 2009:

thanks. It really helped :-)

7 Mike wrote: on Wednesday, November 11, 2009:

Yes, please do not change your root password. That way when these virii/worms go live, we'll hear about them.

Or change your root password and let them be someone elses problem.

8 Different Mike wrote: on Thursday, November 12, 2009:

I never had a problem changing the root or mobile password on my iPhone 3G. Consider finding the real cause of the issue before posting your experience as if it's all-encompassing.

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