iPhone / iTunes / Windows XP / VirtualBox / Ubuntu 9.10
2012-02-20Finally got this to work properly. The biggest trap is that when it restores / upgrades / whatever, it changes its USB ID, so don’t filter just on what it is when its working, or it will get stuck in recovery mode. DAMHIK.:
- Install VirtualBox from the deb package at http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
-
Tell hal to keep away from monoliths:
/etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-noiphone.fdi
:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <deviceinfo version="0.2"> <device> <match key="info.vendor" string="Apple, Inc."> <merge key="info.ignore" type="bool">true</merge> </match> </device> </deviceinfo>
-
Tell usbhid to keep away too:
/etc/modprobe.d/usbhid.conf
:# iPhone options usbhid quirks=0x05ac:0x1294:0x04 options usbhid quirks=0x05ac:0x1281:0x04
Then run
module-assistant update
and reboot or otherwise reload the usbhid module -
- Configure VirtualBox to allow a filter for all Apple products (0x05AC) and
-
leave the other fields blank
- Start the virtual machine, select the iPhone device, run iTunes, etc.
- If restoring / updating / whatever, note that every time the iPhone disconnects and reconnects or changes its ID, you’ll need to reselect the device … so watch it while it is working and check the Devices >> USB Devices menu any time it seems to get stuck.
Refs / Thanks To
- http://teknofire.net/articles/2009/07/06/ubuntu-vmware-and-accessing-the-iphone/
- http://swiss.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1285097
- http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1318160
- http://blahonga.yanson.org/2009/07/pain-upgrading-iphone-to-30-under.html
- http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18852
Update
Backing up the iPhone using iTunes on VirtualBox is godawful slow. CPU load is pegged at 80-90% of one CPU, and it takes hours. This page: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&p=107254 helpfully mentions that it works okay if run from a smaller window, and despite the ludicrousness of this idea I gave it a go … CPU load is much lower and … well, its still slow, but it is at least moving.
Yep, took about an hour to back up ~15GB of stuff on the iPhone, as opposed to the several hours it used to take to get nowhere. Weird.
Update 2
I think that slowness problem is fixed in more recent versions … I’m now using VirtualBox 4.
Update 3
I use iTunes on Snow Leopard these days, and yes, you can make Snow Leopard run under VirtualBox if you try hard enough :-). It doesn’t seem to have the same slowdown problems.