now that your iphone or ipod touch has been jailbroken and freed from the shackles of conformity, it’s time to learn how to navigate the iles and folders of its ile directory. Being able to ind your way around the iphone’s ilesystem is absolutely mandatory for mastering the full customization capability of your iphone or ipod touch.

If you’re familiar with the hierarchical storage system on hard drives, where iles are sorted into nested containers called folders or directories, then you’ll ind that underneath the glossy user interface, the iphone is no different. and if you’re familiar with the directory structure of Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, BsD, and Mac os X, you’ll have an even better sense of where things are stored on the iphone.

There are as many ways to look at iphone iles as there are ways to access any computer. Depending on what server software you install on the iphone, you can use FTp, hTTp, aFp (apple ile sharing), or techniques like the Unix scp (secure copy protocol). But most of these techniques use the wireless network connection on the iphone. But if you want to move iles the quickest, you can use a copy utility that works over the iphone’s UsB connection. The irst step of familiarizing yourself with the ile directory is to get good browsing software for your computer. Diskaid is an excellent choice. The user-friendly interface of this program makes it perfect for beginners. Yet the ability to modify iles and folders in the iphone’s ile directory makes this same program highly useful for even the most advanced hackers as well.

Access iphone Files from Your computer

As mentioned earlier, the ideal ile-management software for both Mac and pc is Diskaid, available from www.digidna.net/diskaid. it’s free, and it can be used with or without jailbreaking. once your ile-management software has been installed, start it up while the iphone is connected to your computer. Once the software is loaded, you’ll see the basic, “safe” media directory. The drop-down menu in the lower left will allow you to access the root directory, which has the guts of the device.

Understand the hierarchy

Try opening up each folder and taking a look around. however, be careful not to modify any of the iles until you know what they are, as you could do unnecessary damage to your phone. of the folders, the main ones to spend some time browsing through are Applications, System, and /var/mobile. Remember that your root directory, /, is the origin of the main folders.

An important lesson in iphone ile directory browsing is to understand folder path addresses. When you see the phrase /private/var/tmp, it will help you to know that this phrase actually means to look in your / (root) directory for the private folder. once you ind the private folder, open it to be greeted by another group of folders. Look down this list to ind the var folder, and open it up to see even more folders. Look through this new list to ind the tmp folder, and open it. You’ve now arrived at your destination. All the mysterious phrase /private/var/tmp was trying to say was to just look inside the tmp folder by following the path from /private, through var, and into tmp.

also note that in Unix, there is a feature called “symbolic links,” which is similar to aliases on Mac os X or shortcuts on Windows. on Unix ilesystems you can refer to the folder by any of its symbolic links, so /private/var and /var are effectively synonymous. in Diskaid these are symbolized by the “curved arrow” icon for directories.

Here are some brief explanations for each of the main folders in the Home or (root) directory.

/

This “slash” symbolizes the top of your ilesystem, the root directory, simply called “root.” pathnames (folder/directory paths) are symbolized with this forward slash, such as /var/mobile.

Applications

contains you guessed it applications. in addition to the stock iphone applications, some of the third-party applications that you may install will be placed in this folder. This is where you’ll typically go for such things as customizing application icons or even modifying the program code. User-installed applications from the app store will be installed in /var/mobile/Applications/.

Library

contains various preferences and frameworks, as well as the ringtone and wallpaper folders.

System

This is where a lot of the Mobile os X system iles can be found. The programs that customize your phone with custom graphics, carrier logos, and skins change many graphics iles in this folder.

bin

bin is short for binary, meaning simply a program you can run, usually command-line based. on an iphone, you’ll ind the various essential shell utilities and command-line programs here.

cores

This is where core dumps are stored. When a program crashes, the os sometimes writes a ile to disk showing the memory state of the program just before it crashed, for the purposes of debugging.

iphone hacks

dev

dev stands for device. in Unix, almost everything is treated as a ile from the programmer’s perspective the hard disk, network cards, and Bluetooth can all be accessed with iles such as /dev/disk0.

etc

a shortcut to /private/etc, the etc directory is traditionally where coniguration iles the text iles that deine settings for programs are stored.

private

contains a lot of important iles, including music, photos, and some email data.

sbin

This is the place for superuser binaries programs for system administration.

tmp

The tmp directory is where temporary iles used by programs are written. The expectation is that the contents of this directory are frequently deleted, like a “trash can.”

usr

usr is intended to be for shareable, read-only data. Folders such as /usr/sbin and /usr/bin contain additional commands, and /usr/lib contains libraries of software code shared by the whole system.

var

a shortcut to /private/var, var stands for variable and is intended to contain variable data, such as logs, news, mail spool iles and so on, which is constantly being modiied by various programs running on your system. on the iphone, it also happens to be the directory that contains much user data, originally in the /var/root directory but now stored in the /var/mobile directory.

/var/mobile

a lot of the iphone user’s personal data is stored here, including music, pictures, and more.

/var/root

Prior to irmware 1.1.3, user data was stored here. it has moved to /var/mobile. as you gain more experience navigating through your directory, you can begin using the other main ability offered by your browser software: modiication of iles and folders. Diskaid allows you to add, replace, or delete any ile or folder in your directory. These abilities open your iphone up to an all-new breed of customization options, from changing icons and backgrounds to modifying the iles that an application is based on.