Restore Mode

iPhone during iTunes restore.

This is the mode run by an Apple ramdisk during a restore or update.

In this mode the device is controlled by iTunes, which displays 7 steps:

See also: iPhone Restore Procedure

1. "Preparing (iDevice type) for the restore." (Get the device from userland to iBoot or from DFU Mode to iBSS)
2. "Verifying (iDevice type) restore with Apple" (or Cydia or TinyUmbrella).
3. Preparing the firmware for the restore.
4. "Preparing (iDevice type) for the restore."
5. "Restoring (iDevice type) software." (ASR RESTORE)
6. "Checking (iDevice type) software." (ASR VERIFY)
7. "Restoring (iDevice type) firmware." (The rest of the restore process isn't reported to the host computer in real-time. This includes the restore of the NOR/boot partition image, the installation of the baseband firmware, ...)

Files used

See also: IPSW File Format

The software is the biggest DMG file in the IPSW and contains all files for the root partition. The ramdisk is the smaller DMG (update or restore) and on an iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS or iPad WiFi + 3G it'll also include the baseband. The firmware images are stored in the ./firmware/all_flash path (relative to the root of the IPSW) and are eventually sent to the device after device-specific customization, if applicable.

Exploits

The original jailbreaks were done by booting the phone into restore mode and copying an /etc/fstab and afcd plist from the user partition. This was done by using the cp iBoot command, a command which had access to the whole filesystem.

Implementations

• itunesmobiledevice.dll
• gshell