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Randal Spencer
almost fourteen years ago

I tried to downgrade my 4.0.2 iPhone 3GS so that I could jailbreak. I didn't find any site that supported me, they all said a prerequisite was having saved your SHSH to a server during a previous jailbreak. I downloaded TinyUmbrella and it said I didn't have anyway to go back. I don't know what SHSH's are, so I plowed ahead anyway. I tried to install 4.0.1 by putting my phone in DFU mode (blank screen, iTunes says it's in recovery) and option clicking the restore button. I found 4.0.1 was in my trash, moved it to downloads and chose it from the option restore dialog box.

All the websites spoke of needing to run a program to get past an error when iTunes finished the install, but my install wouldn't even start, said Apple wouldn't authorize it. Turned off internet and then it said it couldn't do it now as it can't reach Apple for authorization.

I did a google search for downgrade 4.0.2 -SHSH and found a site that suggested editing the /etc/hosts file. Fortunately I knew how to do it as the directions were not formatted correctly for terminal to recognize, but it allowed me to do the install by faking iTunes into thinking it was OK to option restore 4.0.1. It finished and I checked and it had put 4.0.2 on the phone again. So I found the install for 4.0.2 in ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone updates and moved it to trash and tried again.

To my shock I found that 4.0.1 had been re-installed on my iPhone. But would it jailbreak? I went to JailBreakMe.com and I got an error that nothing had been posted to that site. Nothing on the DevGroup blog to indicate a problem, but some support site mentioned that if it didn't work try on the iPhone's Safari JailBreakMe.com/index.html

This worked and it started the jailbreak. When finished I restored all my data from the last backup. I just finished doing all the Cydia updates and it seems to be working just perfect.

The only clue as to why it worked when I thought I was boned, is Cydia at the top of the display says that it has SHSHs on file for 3.1.3, 4.0, and 4.0.1. Perhaps my SHSHs were saved automatically when I had previously jailbroken, but it wasn't anything I remember doing, and TinyUmbrella claimed that there were none saved for my device... Maybe they are different ways of going backwards. I certainly am not going to try to figure it out, just too happy with getting JailBreak working again.

-Randy