Peter’s blog

Seems like the iPod can now work on Linux again.

We’ve won!:
Thanks to some inspired work by a few heroes, we’ve managed to work out how to get everything working again.

This is what we’ve found out: the hash at 0×58 is the one that matters. And we know how to generate it.

It’s a cryptographic signature combining data from the iTunesDB and a device specific identifier (called the firewireid) and some (formerly) secret numbers.

Instructions for linux users on how to fix their iTunesDB files are here. Windows users are going to have to wait a little while. (For interested programmers, the code to generate the hash is here.)

The heroes in question include wtbw, nopcode, teuf, simon and many others from #gtkpod.

Let’s all hope that (if they haven’t already from the iPhone unlocking) Apple learn that fighting against us is pointless. It’s a waste of their time if the open source crowd is going to get past it in just a weekend.

Technorati Tags: itunes, linux, iPod