Looking for a beginner's tutorial on jailbreaking ipad2 iOS 5

February 29, 2012 8:53 AM

I see there's a jailbreak for iOS 5 that will work on my iPad2. However, I'm having no luck finding a good tutorial on how this process works. I have a lot of questions, and so far all the tutorials I have found are either "click the button and you are done" (I don't trust that!) or are geared for people who have jailbroken 100s of devices and assume a lot of prior knowledge that I don't have.

This is my first iDevice, I've done a jailbreak on an Android phone, once. If I understand correctly, this is an A5 device.

I need to know what happens in a jailbreak with existing Apps that I have loaded on my device. Do they just reload automatically from the App store?

I need to know how to make sure my data is backed up (and can then be restored to the iPad under the new iOS) before I jailbreak.

I need to know how I can revert to stock iOS if needed.

Etc.

I searched before posting, but all the answers I found were for older OSs and I don't know if the older answers apply to the new jailbreak process for iOS 5 on iPad2.

I need to jailbreak to run Apps that are not offered thru the App store, because I need to use one of these unauthorized Apps to connect to my work computer. (Apple disabled features on Safari on the iPad that work FINE on a Mac, so I need to use an unauthorized browser.)

posted by jcdill to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I know nothing about Jailbreaking. But, have you tried other browsers for the iPad? I have 4 of them I got through the app store for free. They all provide different access or emulations as far as I can tell. I rarely use safari.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:29 AM on February 29, 2012

Best answer: This is ridiculously easy. I had my ipad2 jailbroken in all of 5 minutes using the free and enormously reliable GreenPosion Abysnthe method.

Before we start - the GreenP0sion development team has been leaders in jailbreaking since the beginning. So dont worry about reliability.

Go to their website - http://greenpois0n.com/?p=173

You need to download the jailbreak kit (Win, Mac, Linux) - right side menu.

Instructions (including backup - you can always restore the system, no problem). Read the post in the link above, however this is how it works:

* Absinthe is only for iPhone4S and iPad2.

* Make sure iTunes is installed on the computer you are using to jailbreak.

* Make sure you have administrator rights on the computer you are using.

* Make sure you extract the .zip correctly, especially on windows use an archiver like winrar or something similar.

* If you have a large device or the jailbreak keeps stalling these steps will help you:

1. Sync the device (make sure all your pics, apps, vids, etc.. are on your pc/mac.
2. Make a backup.
3. Restore and setup as a new device.
4. Jailbreak.
5. Restore the backup you took earlier ( right click the device in iTunes and select ‘Restore from backup…’

Thats it. Beautiful work and fast. I can't recommend jailbreaking enough to any iPad owner, the possibilities are endless.
posted by Funmonkey1 at 9:38 AM on February 29, 2012

Forgot to add, nothing happens to your apps, you can restore the backup and remove the jailbreak, etc. This is safe.
posted by Funmonkey1 at 9:41 AM on February 29, 2012

Response by poster: "But, have you tried other browsers for the iPad? "

Yes, I have tried several. I need to upload photos using a webpage. In Safari, the upload button is grayed out. In the other browsers I have tried (I've tried 4 so far) the button is grayed out OR it appears and I can select the photo file, but then the upload does not work (times out). Also, I need to use several other Apps which are not in the App store, not approved by Apple. So I have 2 reasons I need to jailbreak.
posted by jcdill at 10:16 AM on February 29, 2012

Funmonkey1's got it. Jaibreaking, once a jailbreak is found, is pretty straightforward. Here is a decent description of how to do it. You should back up you device before you do it, but that is only for the remote possibility things go wrong. Jailbreaking, if it works right, just patches your firmware and installs Cydia, the program that allows you to install non-Apple software. it should have no other effect and your iPad will operate exactly like it did before. Even iTunes will recognize the firmware as up to date.

When, and if, you want to get rid of the jailbreak, you just restore the device in iTunes and hte original, unjailbroken firmware is reinstalled.
posted by rtimmel at 2:04 PM on February 29, 2012