Apple recently pushed out the iOS 5.0.1 Beta to developers which has fixed numerous bugs in iOS 5 and brings the beloved multitasking gestures back to the original iPad. It was reported that iOS 5.0.1 could have been jailbroken with redsn0w 0.9.9b7, although you would need to point redsn0w to the iOS 5.0 firmware file, and the jailbreak was tethered.

Quote Originally Posted by Dev-Team Blog

Redsn0w version 0.9.9b8 will natively recognize the 5.0.1 beta that Apple let developers start testing this week (so you don’t have to play the “point at 5.0 IPSW” trick). Because the IPSW isn’t public, you’ll still need to provide it once to redsn0w (at which point it will cache all the important pieces so you don’t need to select it again).

For those iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 users who preserve their baseband, the Mac version can also produce the NO_BB_* custom IPSW’s for 5.0.1. (But please note that ultrasn0w doesn’t get updated for betas like this.)

This is still a tethered jailbreak for all except old-bootrom 3GS users.

This new update brings support for the iOS 5.0.1 Beta. Now if you have the iOS 5.0.1 Beta firmware on your computer, you can use redsn0w 0.9.9b8 and point redsn0w to your iOS 5.0.1 Beta firmware. The jailbreak method is the same for the iOS 5 jailbreak using redsn0w 0.9.9b7 and the jailbreak is still tethered as of this point. If a tethered jailbreak does not suit you well, then you have the option to install the Semi-Tether which allows you to boot up your iPhone into a non-jailbroken state after rebooting; you will be able to boot tethered later on to get your jailbreak data back up and running. Or, if you’re more patient, you can keep waiting for the untethered jailbreak that i0n1c confirmed was being worked on.

iPhone 3GS users can still have the untethered jailbreak if they have the old bootrom, and Mac users can still make their special baseband custom ISPW files using this redsn0w for iOS 5.0.1. The Dev-Team also warns that ultrasn0w will not be updated for the beta, so it’s recommended that you wait until the official iOS 5.0.1 release to the public.

Sources: Dev-Team Blog