If you have recently Jailbroken the iPhone 3GS with the new OS 3.1, you may have noticed that if you take a picture the camera now tries to save the picture but eventually gives up and in your camera roll you see a black thumbnail instead of the nice picture you just took :). You say why, wth is goin on?

Well, its because the picture folder’s owner is now set to “root” for some reason and the camera app can’t access the picture folder. The easy solution is to change the folders permission to 777 so that the camera can write to it.

1. Log in using SSH
2. change permission of the following folders to 777
/private/var/mobile/Media/DCIM
/private/var/mobile/Media/DCIM/100APPLE
/private/var/mobile/Media/DCIM/100APPLE/.MISC

Voila! Camera is working again :)…

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iTunes although does a great job backing up all the data which you can restore at any time if you have issues but if you are upgrading hardware, i.e. 3G to 3GS or a major OS update like version 2.x to 3.x, restoring from old stuff may often create unnecessary legacy files left on the system, slowing up the OS or in some cases may also contribute to battery depletion issues (This has not been confirmed yet but there might be some conflicts in the system that might cause faster depletion of battery).

So the best way to get started with your brand new system would be to connect to iTunes and select “Setup as new”  instead of “Restore from backup”. This will ensure that you have a fresh and clean system running without any kind of conflicts going on in the background.

Before you do “Setup as new” phone you will need to backup your important files/data. The process of backing up your data described below is a manual backing up procedure and would require you to have SSH access to your iPhone. If you know what I am talking about go ahead and proceed at your own risk. Backup these following folders so that later you can restore them manually after you have your new System up and running. In most cases it will be a very easy Copy/Paste operation of the following folders after you SSH to your iPhone.

The important folders that you may want to backup first:

• Notes Database:
  • /private/var/mobile/Library/Notes
• SMS Database:
  • /private/var/Mobile/Library/SMS
• Pictures and Video Recordings
  • /private/var/mobile/Media/DCIM/100APPLE
• Call History Database:
  • /private/var/mobile/Library/CallHistory
• Voicemail Database:
  • /private/var/mobile/Library/Voicemail
• YourTube Downloaded Video Folder:
  • /private/var/mobile/Media/Downloads/YourTube
• MxTube Downloaded Video folder:
  • /var/mobile/Media/MxTube

The following databases may not work directly by Copy/Paste method as they may require iTunes Syncing:

• AddressBook DB
  • /private/var/mobile/Library/AddressBook/AddressBook.sqlitedb
• AddressBook Images DB
  • /private/var/mobile/Library/AddressBook/AddressBookImages.sqlitedb
• Maptiles DB
  • /private/var/mobile/Library/Caches/MapTiles/MapTiles.sqlitedb
• Calendar DB
  • /private/var/mobile/Library/Calendar/Calendar.sqlitedb

My address book and calender is always synced with Google, so I don’t have to worry backing them up but if you backed them manually, feel free to share. I have tried this on 3G, 3GS using OS 3.x and worked without any problem. Please feel free to post your experience doing this below.

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