For this to work you need a jailbroken iphone with netatalk, openssh, and Bossprefs installed, all avaialable through Cydia. I would also suggest grabbing insomnia to stop your iphone going to sleep (or change the settings in system preferences).

With you iphone and computer on the same Wifi network ssh to you iphone as root, or as mobile and su to root. Go to the Bossprefs directory scripts:

# cd /var/stash/Applications/Bossprefs/scripts 
On the 2.1 firmware there may be a bunch of random characters in the name of the Applications folder, eg. ‘Applications.IYKeBo’.

We need to create 2 scripts to start and stop the netatalk server in this directory.

afp_start.sh:

#!/bin/sh
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/net.sourceforge.netatalk.afpd.plist
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.saurik.afpd.dns-sd.plist

afp_stop.sh:

#!/bin/sh
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/net.sourceforge.netatalk.afpd.plist
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.saurik.afpd.dns-sd.plist

Now make them executable:

# chmod +x afp_start.sh afp_stop.sh
These scripts will start and stop the daemons for netatalk which normally happen at startup and shutdown.

The ‘-w’ flag in load removes the ‘Disabled’ tag if there, in unload it adds it if not there. What this effectively does is keeps the state of afp the same after a restart. If you have unloaded the daemon it will not start in restart, if it was running it will start on restart.

Now we need to create a service for Bossprefs. Move to the ‘service’ directory.

# cd ../services
Create a file called ‘AFP’:

/var/stash/Applications/BossPrefs.app/scripts/afp_start.sh
/var/stash/Applications/BossPrefs.app/scripts/afp_stop.sh
afpd
/var/stash/Applications/BossPrefs.app/afp.png

For a bit of explanation.

• The first line in the line used to turn on the service.
• The second line turns off the service.
• The third line is the daemon which Bossprefs will look for to determine whether the service is running.
• The fourth line is of course the icon.

Fire up Bossprefs and now you can control your netatalk daemon.

AFPD_GUEST=nobody

Turn on guest authentication in /etc/netatalk/afpd.conf by including uams_guest.so in the uams list. My line reads:

 - -transall -uamlist uams_guest.so,uams_clrtxt.so,uams_dhx.so -nosavepassword

Warning: Guest can access all your shares unless you deny the user in you AppVolumes file. Though you will only have the access you guest user (nobody) has.

Setup the Public share in AppVolumes.default

I currently have 2 share in my file:

~ deny:nobody
/var/mobile/Public

I don’t want to see nobody’s home directory, so I deny the guest user from my homes (~) share. The next share is my public share. As my iPhone has only one user I use the user’s home\ directory/Public, but it could be anywhere.

Now we have to make sure the Public share is actually there and it’s permissions are set right. Every directory above must at least be executable by all as well. This should do it:

# chmod a+x /var/mobile
# mkdir /var/mobile/Public
# mkdir /var/mobile/Public/Drop\ Box
# chmod a+rx /var/mobile/Public
We want Public to be readable by everyone

# chmod a+wx,go-r,+t /var/mobile/Public/Drop\ Box/
Everyone can write to the directory, no one but the user can read from the directory, and the sticky bit makes sets permissions of uploads to match the user’s.

Restart netatalk and a new Public share should appear with a Drop Box anyone can write to.

The simulator is exactly that, a simulator, not an emulator. You really have no idea of the performance of your code until you throw a real iphone in the mix. But with a jailbroken iphone and a bit of pokery you can get the sdk to play nice with your hardware. See this page: http://www.246tnt.com/iPhone/.

Well worth the effort. Now I know my app which runs fast and smooth on the simulator, waits 30 seconds and then crashes my iphone. I used to be able to do that on my Windows Mobile without coding anything.