Ripping mobility from the clutches of telecom
Archive for February, 2009
Debian and X11 on the G1
Feb 24th
There’s a package now for installing X11 on the G1, which builds on the Debian for G1 package. I haven’t fooled around with the stuff yet, but what am I interested in running with access to the full set of Debian software? Well that should be obvious. Metaspoit of course. Cellular interface + Wifi interface + handheld device + automated security scanning = fun!
Symbian Malware – Signed
Feb 20th
I saw some random references to something called Sexy View, malware aimed at Nokia devices. I was just going to ignore it, but then I realized it appears to be a signed application. Delicious. If nothing else that should allow the response folks to track down where it came from I would assume. The reports out there are vague so far at best, but I’m hoping at some point something will shed some light on how this came about. I’m assuming something happened like some company got careless (or went out of business and just ignored) their signing key for applications, and some malicious party got hold of it. Very curious about this I am.
Google Apps for Domains with G1
Feb 18th
After poking around for a while trying to add a second Google Apps for domains account to my G1, I finally just reset it and registered with my mike@theotherdomain.com address to activate the phone. Very cool that works directly, I have my email and calendar directly integrated into the phone. However, I would really like to have both my personal @gmail.com account and my @theotherdomain.com account both fully supported on the phone.
I can technically add my personal email as an external email account, and share my calendar so that I can add the ical feed to the Calendar app. Too hackish though, with lots of rough edges. Especially around calendaring. Is there an option floating around somewhere that I just haven’t found yet to add a second Google account to the phone setup?
Installing RC33 on a Dev G1
Feb 16th
A friend over at Google provided me with an unlocked Android phone, which I’ve been poking around with here and there doing some development. I hadn’t really poked around with the phone itself all that much, meaning looking at hacks and usage tricks and whatnot. Yesterday I decided I wanted to update to the latest firmware (RC33) however, so the journey began. I have my G1 running on the AT&T network, which is where some of the complexity comes from.
I started out with the normal instructions for manually installing the RC33 update, which are pretty actually slick and simple. However, I was getting a failed check when trying to install the firmware. I assume there’s some internal ID that identifies the phone as a TMobile phone or not, and my dev phone doesn’t have that, so the installer was throwing some assertion failure check. So I figured I would try out one of the jailbroken images if I’m going to have to muck around for a while anyway.
There is an alternative version of the RC33 update available, called the JF33 sometimes, and other times the JF RC33. The JF stands for Jesusfreak, the forum user who repacks the roms and has apparently provided test keys that can be used to downgrade a unit. Once you know what you’re looking for, there are tons of posts in forums and blogs all over the place. The problem is just figuring out what you need to search for.
The process goes something like this:
- downgrade to RC29 so you can get root access
- hack the activation so that you can activate your RC29 phone on ATT
- now you can install the recovery keys and load the JF33 rom
It was a bit of an involved process to get through. And at first when I installed the RC29 firmware and had to re-activate, I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to do so without a TMobile SIM. Just a bit of APN hackery took care of that however. Phew! Now I have Latitude working in maps, and root access in the terminal. W00t! Back to developing now.
