virtualbox.org

I wanted to report that I just successfully installed the iPhone 3.0 upgrade from inside my VirtualBox VM. It's wasn't a smooth transition, but it did eventually work.

I had originally set a USB filter for the iPhone based on the VendorID and the ProductID. This worked fine for (rather slowly) syncing the iPhone. During the firmware update however it appears the iPhone changes it's ID information a couple of times and that confused the update process (I saw both 1602 and 1604 errors).

My solution was to shutdown the VM (while my iphone was essentially bricked from being interrupted mid-update), change the USB filter to only match the Apple Vendor ID (thus not caring what specific Apple device it saw), and start the VM up again. It then detected the phone and did a full recovery, restore, and sync to bring the iPhone back to working condition again (it took a hour or so to do this).

I'm not sure how many people try to use their iTunes/iPhone from inside a VM, but I thought I'd let everyone know it worked for me.

Indeed, it eventually works, but it took me more than an hour and a half.

During the upgrade it looses connection to the iPhone, which prevents the update to succeed. Shutdown the guest OS and activate a second USB filter (Apple Iphone Recovery Mode), mine was already available in the USB filter screen.
It then detects an iPhone which need to be restored, click restore in iTunes.
During the iTunes restore (window "setting up the iPhone for restore") it gave errors, because it couldn't find the iPhone. On the bottom of the virtualbox screen (guest OS is running) there are status icons for disk activity, usb activity etc..
There I had to specifically select the iPhone Recovery USB filter (right mouse click). It looks like a reset of the USB port is happening, which prevent iTunes from detecting the iPhone. Then WinXP/ iTunes detected the iPhone again and the restore continued and succeeded. It restores first and then updates your iPhone to Version 3.0. (you may need to reboot your guest os several times). Finally perform a full sync to update your apps, music etc.

Hope this helps!

host: Ubutnu 8.10 64-bit
guest: Windows XP 32-bit
VirtualBox 2.2.2
iphone 3.0 3G
redsnow 0.7.2

I was able to jailbreak my iphone to the current 3.0 version using VirtualBox. I created a USB filter, cleared all of the fields except for the "Vendor ID" field. Then proceeded as normal for updating the phone, using the restore process after I backed everything up.

Jailbroke it using redsnow 0.7.2. The only thing special that happens, is that redsnow gets hung up saying "Waiting for reboot". Using your mouse and the connected usb devices, icon in the bottom right corner or using the menu, disconnect the phone from the usb devices and then reconnect it. Redsnow should then proceed as normal and you should see the hard drive icon on your phone.

No need for rsgui or anything else. It seemed to take the same amount of time that it would have if it were done on a host machine.

How do I safeguard my iphone contacts and applications if I reformated my computer? Here is my problem. The computer I synced my iphone with has been reformated, therefore my computer now no longer recognizes my iphone and wishes to erase and sync. My contacts were saved on my computer before it was reformated. I fear that if I let my computer sync, then it will erase all my contacts since my reformated computer no longer carries the past data. How do I save and restore my contacts and applications without having to do it manually?

Just in case people uncover this page like I did, a good tutorial found here for upgrading to iOS4 with Ubuntu 10.10: http://www.flyingpenguin.com/?p=5878
Remember to add your user to the "audio" group as mentioned in the comments on the tutorial page!