Apple iOS Personal Hotspot Annoyances

This week, I ran into an annoying feature regarding the Apple iOS Personal Hotspot function of my iPhone 5s. I had to do some software testing with various WiFi clients. This worked fine, up to the moment that new devices ran into connectivity problems.

The new devices could connect, but got a message that there was no/limited Internet connectivity. Checking the IP address of the devices showed that they had an 169 address assigned.
So the iPhone wouldn't give new IP addresses to the new devices. Earlier devices that connected correctly could reconnect without a problem though.

It turned out to be a 'normal' DHCP problem. The IP address scope on the iPhone was depleted.

The iPhone has a small DHCP address pool that can give out 16 addresses (172.20.10.0-172.20.10.15). Of these 16 addresses are 3 taken by the network, broadcast (172.20.10.0 and 172.20.10.15) and iPhone itself (172.20.10.1). Leaving 13 addresses for other devices.

In normal situations, this shouldn't be a problem, but when your testing stuff, you can run into a shortage of IP addresses. Besides the shortage of addresses there is another challenge; no way of altering the DHCP lease time, or even clearing the issued IP addresses.

The lease time for the DHCP address is approximately 1 day (85536 seconds), as shown by a little network traffic capturing below.

20:53:29.544291 56:e4:3a:38:4d:64 > 00:23:6c:8d:7f:8e, ethertype IPv4 (0x0800), length 342: (tos 0x0, ttl 255, id 45806, offset 0, flags [none], proto UDP (17), length 328)
    172.20.10.1.67 > 172.20.10.2.68: BOOTP/DHCP, Reply, length 300, xid 0xfd7e0982, Flags [none]
      Your-IP 172.20.10.2
      Server-IP 172.20.10.1
      Client-Ethernet-Address 00:23:6c:8d:7f:8e
      sname "Free-Public-WiFi"
      Vendor-rfc1048 Extensions
        Magic Cookie 0x63825363
        DHCP-Message Option 53, length 1: ACK
        Server-ID Option 54, length 4: 172.20.10.1
        Lease-Time Option 51, length 4: 85536
        Subnet-Mask Option 1, length 4: 255.255.255.240
        Default-Gateway Option 3, length 4: 172.20.10.1
        Domain-Name-Server Option 6, length 4: 172.20.10.1

There is a function to reset the network settings on the iPhone, but that just clears everything regarding (wireless) network settings, but it doesn't touch the DHCP service in the iPhone. A reboot of the iPhone doesn't do the trick either. So you just have to wait till it clears automagically.

So there is room for improvement......

Train iPhone 5s Touch ID

Touch ID is the name for the fingerprint reader in the new iPhone 5s. When you configure it, you have the possibility to register a number of fingers (5) with which you can unlock your iPhone.

Settings -> General -> Touch ID & Passcode -> Touch ID

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For some reason this always failed after a couple of days on my phone. For some reason the fingers didn't 'register' properly, and I was forces to use the PIN.

The way to solve this (temporary) was to re-register the fingers, until I read about a way of training the device.
When you're in the menu where you normally register your fingerprints, you can register additional print data for each finger by just placing one og the already registered fingers on the home button. When the finger is recognized the registered finger entry on the iPhone turns grey for a second (as shown in the screenshot). Doing this for every finger a couple of times increases the registered data for those fingers. The more data that's registered the better the chance that the finger keeps getting recognized in the future.

UPDATE: With the iOS 7.1 update the Touch ID responds a lot better.

Updating to iOS 7.0.5 Turned Ugly

During the update of my iPhone it got stuck in the so-called recovery mode. This means that everything on the iPhone is lost, and that you need to restore everything from a backup. Thankfully, the last backup was made 10 minutes before the upgrade process began. So no worries there.

The panic started to kick in when the actual recovery process terminated with an unknown error (17).

An unknown error occurred (17)

No matter what I tried, the error kept re-occurring

Searching the Interwebs,  I founds several forums mentioning modifying the hosts file on your computer. Any entries referring to the apple.com domain should be removed.

Checking the hosts file out (located @ /etc/hosts on a Mac), I found a reference to a gs.apple.com with a specific IP address. At that point things started to dawn on me....

A couple of years ago I started to experiment with creating your own MobileMe thing (so I would have no need to purchase a MobileMe account back then). In that process you needed to fake some Apple web-servers. One of those servers was gs.apple.com.

After removing the entry from my hosts file and rebooting my iMac, the recovery process went flawlessly.

This 'experience' made me wonder; Did the 'crash' of the iPhone happen because of the hosts file entry? If so, this could be disastrous if someone made these servers unresponsive (e.g. DNS hack, or whatever), since the iPhone would become a brick. At least for as long as these servers are not accessible....

AirDrop Between iOS and OS X Maverick

I got my new AirDrop-capable phone today.  Not that AirDrop was the reason for getting it, but the feature itself is quite nice; being able to send files between devices. No need to use mail or other communication methods.

This evening I shot a video on my phone and I needed it on my MacBook (with OS X Maverick). Both devices are AirDrop capable, so ..... 

And there is I went wrong. After trying for about 30 minutes to get it to work I found the answer online.... Looks like that AirDrop between different OS is NOT supported by Apple. And not supported does mean that it won't work.  

OS X: Can I use AirDrop with my computer?
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4783
iOS: Using AirDrop
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5887 

That is one Epic Fail if you ask me.  

iPhone Stuck At Infinite Loop After iOS Update

The old iPhone 3G got stuck in an infinite restore loop after upgrading to iOS 6.1.2 this evening. As you might understand, the misses was not amused....

The infinite restore loop means that it keeps saying that it needs to be restored from within iTunes, but after doing that several times, you tend to loose faith. After trying it several times on a Windows laptop I tried it on my iMac. While it was restoring for the who knows how many times, I did some research on the Interwebs. The results were not encouraging.

I started gathering information, and some tools (like Tiny Umbrella) to break it from its infinite loop. After the restore the iPhone booted just fine. No idea what made it break its loop. Could be coincidence, could be my iMac. No idea.​

Anyway, the misses is busy restoring the data. She (or iTunes) made a backup just before the backup. So all should be back to normal in a few minutes.​

iPhone App Distressed FX For Free

Another photo app for iOS (iPhones etc.) has been added to the Apple Store. Normally, these apps cost money, but Distressed FX is free for a limited amount of time.

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Distressed Dough

The app used (predefined) filters, and blurring effects to manipulate photos. Photos can be made by the in app camera function, or by selecting a photo from your library.

Star Wars Ringtones

It took me long enough, but I finally made some decent Star Wars ringtones for my iPhone. First the classic opening theme from 'A New Hope' and the mother-in-law (or ex-wife) special; 'The Imperial March'.

• DOWNLOAD Star Wars - Main Title ringtone (for iPhone)
  
• DOWNLOAD Star Wars - The Imperial March ringtone (for iPhone)

Both of the files are iPhone ready. I have no idea if they work/play on other phones / platforms.

And while I'm on the subject of ringtones;

• DOWNLOAD 20th Century Fox Fanfare Movie Start Tune ringtone (for iPhone)
  
• DOWNLOAD Toccata In D Minor (Bach) ringtone (for iPhone)
• DOWNLOAD Toccata In D Minor (Bach) message tone (for iPhone)

All ringtones are created with Fission by Rogue Amoeba.

Melting Mushrooms

We're nearing the end of October 2012, and temperatures are rising. Currently it's around 20 degrees Celsius in some parts in the Netherlands. A bit on the high for this time of the year. It's even to hot for the mushrooms that grow all over the place. They seem to melt.