Insanely awesome iPhone hacker and developer "Core" just finished implementing AFP for the iPhone and iPod touch. This software connects your iPhone (or touch) to your computer using AFP, the AppleTalk Filing Protocol. Your iPhone shows up on your desktop as a disk with full read/write access.
The AFP server is brand new, so it is not yet available in Installer.app. To install by hand, use sftp to copy the tar file into /opt/iphone. Extract the archive on your iPhone or touch--the tar archive program is part of the BSD program; use tar xvf name-of-archive.tar--and run /opt/iphone/afp/startserver.sh &. The ampersand lets the program run in the background. (You will need to restart it after reboots.)
Once installed and running, go to Finder. Choose Go > Connect To Server, and enter the afp address for your iPhone, in my case afp://192.168.0.111. Just use the afp:// prefix with the local IP address of your iPhone. Enter your user id (root) and password (alpine) and your iPhone or iPod appears in the sources list for your Finder windows.
Once your iPhone learns how to add itself as a disk, you'll start wondering how you ever lived without this. To add new applications, just drop them into the Applications folder. To back-up your personal data, just copy /var/root/Library. This is just an awesome accomplishment. Thank you Core!
Hopefully soon, we'll see not only an Installer.app version but one with a controllable launch daemon that will let you enable and disable the service as desired.
Update: If you're installing by hand, make sure you use the version for Registered Users. It's the one from November 10th. Don't use the earlier one that only allows guest mode.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
11-11-2007 @ 10:19AM
ES Odin said...
This should also work with any Linux based client that has access to apple protocol packages. In Ubuntu the package is "netatalk". It makes it real simple to manage the music library on the iPhone with Amarok or any other music manager that hadles the previous iPods.
Reply
12-11-2007 @ 12:53PM
Martin Aumueller said...
Did you manage to mount the AFP exports from you iPhone in Linux? If so, could you please post how or add that to http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Media_Device:IPod
11-11-2007 @ 10:51AM
Brian said...
Wow, fantastic. I wonder how anybody could call the iPhone expensive when it has so much functionality. I can now ditch my thumb drive and back up to the iPhone.
Reply
11-11-2007 @ 10:51AM
vatvat said...
WOW, what about auto syncing with iTunes using AFP?
Reply
11-11-2007 @ 11:03AM
ill-tempered said...
Thank you.. have been waiting for this for a long time.. will wait until it is on installer and services is updated!
Reply
11-11-2007 @ 11:05AM
Seraphim said...
Wait, doesn't WinSCP already do this? or is this different than what I think it is?
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11-11-2007 @ 11:08AM
Rich said...
Is there a program that allows for enabling/disabling of wifi from the main menu screen? If not, I hope someone will write one as it is a pain (a small pain I grant) to have to delve into settings each time to turn wifi on and off.
Reply
11-11-2007 @ 11:11AM
Seraphim said...
Rich, there is an app on installer.app called services. It can turn on/off Edge, Wifi and SSH.
Reply
11-11-2007 @ 11:16AM
tristan Dunn said...
How do i run the .sh file from within an sftp app. Every time I try to, it just downloads the file and i have been trying to do the tar thing but am a little confused. Can anyone help
Reply
11-11-2007 @ 11:32AM
A2 said...
@6: the answer is the app named Services. New question: does anyone know how to reach Chris Hoffman, the author of Services? I desperately want to ask that he add toggles for this, AFP, and Firefly music server to his Services app, along with a phone toggle!!!
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11-11-2007 @ 11:43AM
spliffalicious said...
maybe I'm too literal.
haven't had much success.
any sueggestions?
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11-11-2007 @ 11:44AM
starkruzr said...
"To add new applications, just drop them into the Applications folder."
Don't you have to do some plist hackery for this to work?
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11-11-2007 @ 11:47AM
spliffalicious said...
wait, wait...
"alpine"...
thats not "dottie"
-this a firmware specific thing?
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11-11-2007 @ 11:49AM
spliffalicious said...
not sure how I failed at this...
its in my iphone... don't seem to know how to launch it...
just sits there, taunting me-
Reply
11-11-2007 @ 11:54AM
vsc said...
Use this to start afpd as a service,
Disabled
Label
com.core.afp
OnDemand
ProgramArguments
/opt/iphone/afp/afpd
-d
-D
-Uuams_dhx.so
StandardErrorPath
/dev/null
Reply
11-11-2007 @ 11:55AM
macFabri said...
Great ! Works nice and im seeing here WiFi Sync near around ?
** You guys should run terminal commands inside iPhone/iTouch.. Make sure you have BSD System installed and install Term-vt100 ( Terminal ) all from Installer.app
Reply
11-11-2007 @ 11:56AM
Oscar Eg Gensmann said...
Works like a charm on my iTouch. Props'n'Street creds to the dev.
Reply
11-11-2007 @ 11:57AM
vsc said...
Ok that didn't work....
Use this,
http://pastebin.com/m17896445
Reply
11-11-2007 @ 12:08PM
SireB said...
@tristan Dunn
Read: http://www.computerhope.com/unix/utar.htm#03
Reply
11-11-2007 @ 12:30PM
drh said...
Couldn't get it to work either.
I wish people would do more testing of this stuff before they start trying to promote it.
I have the service running on the iphone abd I can connect to it using the instructions afp://{ip address} but it just offers a 'test volume' as a folder to mount. When you do this you end up with this volume mounted with no contents!!!!!!!!!!!
I appreciate the efforts gone into this but WTF.
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