This is an old Unix tip, so many of you may not need it, but many folks may be playing around with “root” for the first time (or the first time in a long time).
“toor” (merely “root” spelled backwards) has frequently been used by sysadmins who want to a) change the shell or other customizations for root without risking locking themselves out of their account if something goes wrong and b) have a backup login account “just in case” something goes wrong.
For example, I much prefer zsh to sh or bash, but since there are few ways to fix the iPhone if something goes wrong with the shell, I’d rather not risk it.
So I simply added another entry to /etc/master.passwd on the iPhone:
In addition to this:
root:XUU7aqfpey51o:0:0::0:0:System Administrator:/var/root:/bin/sh
I also have this:
toor:XUU7aqfpey51o:0:0::0:0:System Administrator:/var/root:/bin/zsh
Note: some folks also like to change the home directory (/var/root) to be something else for toor. You could do that by changing it like so:
toor:XUU7aqfpey51o:0:0::0:0:System Administrator:/var/toor:/bin/zsh
Just make sure that /var/toor exists.
To connect, just use:
ssh toor@your.iphone.ip.address.here
ps - you have changed your root password from XUU7aqfpey51o right? Just use whatever you have for root’s password for toor
