Using (the first generation) iPhone as modem

2008/07/19 15:00

One of the most important things missing from iPhone is possibility to use it as modem for laptop. Fortunately this feature can be added with a software hack. As there are quite many things to remember, I wrote down the instructions as a short shell script.

Before running this script on your Mac, you must install slirp to your jailbroken iPhone. Tested with iPhone firmware 1.1.4 (and confirmed that the above linked slirp does not work with iPhone 2.0)

#!/bin/sh

echo PREPARATIONS BEFORE RUNNING THIS SCRIPT
echo =======================================
echo
echo 1 - Install slirp to iPhone, see http://www.nsgn.net/better_iphone_tethering/setup_slirp.htm
echo 2 - In order to avoid connection interrupts, set iPhone to never autolock
echo 3 - Create ssh-keys and ensure that you can ssh to your iPhone as root without password $ using public key auth $
echo
echo
echo STEPS TO ESTABLISH CONNECTION
echo =============================
echo
echo 1 - Create private network from Mac
echo 2 - Join to the created network from iPhone
echo 3 - Open a web-page in iPhone to ensure that EDGE connection is active 
echo 4 - Check IP of iPhone from wlan settings and enter it below:
read IP
echo Ensuring that SSH connection to iPhone can be opened $ See below that this is confirmed $. This probably most probably asks for your password.
sudo sh -c "ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking\\ no -t root@$IP echo SSH connection ok"
echo Establishing ppp connection through iPhone
sudo sh -c "pppd 10.0.2.15:10.0.2.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 115200 local noauth defaultroute silent debug logfile /tmp/ppp.log usepeerdns pty \"ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking\\ no -t root@$IP /usr/bin/slirp -P -b 115200\""
echo 5 - To end the connection, run sudo killall pppd
echo

Comments:

gavin.brock wrote on 2008/08/19 14:53:
There is now a slirp binary available through Cydia. Although it executes, it does not appear to work configured as above.

voidtarget808 wrote on 2008/07/28 21:25:
I've been trying to run this with my iphone 3g.. but with no success. And yes I've recompiled slirp for 2.0.. but still nope :/ ( I could upload it somewhere actually, not sure if many are interested tho )

lehtinen wrote on 2008/07/30 21:47:
Please, could you send the compiled slirp binary for 2.0 to me by email so that I could take a look?

william.bloom wrote on 2008/08/22 00:29:
Just two weeks or so before Cydia announced slirp, I managed to get it compiled and codesigned for my 2.0 iPhone. I was able to establish a PPP session to it from my mbpro over an adhoc WiFi. That is, a valid IP address was assigned for both ends and ppp0 looked valid on the mbpro. And I could ping/ssh to the iPhone's PPP address. Oddly, though, I had no traffic flow to/from the Internet over the 3G or Edge. I saw no clues in the ppp log. Recently, when the new skirp from Cydia appeared, I replaced my binary with that from Cydia and tried again. I got exactly the same behavior - a seemingly successful PPP link but no traffic to/from the Internet Anyone else had this experience? My slirp build was 1.0.17 (from sourceforge w/ patch).

bikenomad wrote on 2008/08/25 23:46:
I have gotten this working except for DNS . More soon.

william.bloom wrote on 2008/11/09 22:28:
I haven't seen any further comments on slirp for quite a while. Interest has declined? Has everyone moved on to PDANet??

None wrote on 2008/11/11 23:46:
I haven't seen any further comments on slirp for quite a while. Interest has declined? Has everyone moved on to PDANet??

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