Hacking Wii U USB loading - install WiiU games to USB or internal memory

[realg123]

you can play WITH DNS hax. DNS hax only prevents eshop access and updating. online play works just fine with DNS hax.

How do we enable DNS hax?

 

[naddel81]

How do we enable DNS hax?

tubehax in DNS settings. thats it.

 

[CyberMario]

You can uninstall games installed using this method using the Wii U data management right?

 

[apt4893]

You can uninstall games installed using this method using the Wii U data management right?

Yup just go into Settings and uninstall the same way you would any other game.

 

[endoverend]

Is this still the most current method of loading backups on USB? Or is there some more efficient way to do it using rednand?

 

[apt4893]

Is this still the most current method of loading backups on USB? Or is there some more efficient way to do it using rednand?

This is most efficient. Rednand requires a 64Gb sd card for 32GB models and is more complex. But allows DLC, VC, etc.

 

[endoverend]

This is most efficient. Rednand requires a 64Gb sd card for 32GB models and is more complex. But allows DLC, VC, etc.

So is there any way I can use the two in tandem? I currently have rednand installed and am wondering what I can do with it.

 

[apt4893]

So is there any way I can use the two in tandem? I currently have rednand installed and am wondering what I can do with it.

I haven't done rednand yet so someone can correct me if they want but I think as long as you load in rednand you can do both. and use funkiiu to get DLC and load with wup

 

[dreesje]

I'm actually a newbie but I managed to install games with WUP installer and uTikDownloadHelper.
Thanks to the clear instructions and help I found in this specific topic.
Only one thing isn't clear to me yet (despite all the reading), so I hope somebody can clearify this for me.

As far as I understand Nintendo shouldn't be able to detect if I play my game from my (original) disk or from my usb-drive.
Suppose i accidentaly update to a new firmware (If there comes one) I would expect I could still play my installed games, since Nintendo could
possibly stop the use of this method for future installs but NOT for the games I already installed with this method.
Is that correct ?

 

[Scoop111]

From what I've read, Nintendo could include a check in a newer firmware that would verify if the tickets (which are stored in your NAND) are actually legit and possibly delete them if they're not. Therefore your installed games would stop working...

 

[thekarter104]

From what I've read, Nintendo could include a check in a newer firmware that would verify if the tickets (which are stored in your NAND) are actually legit and possibly delete them if they're not. Therefore your installed games would stop working...

Well, since disc tickets are always legit, you can always launch them even without hacks. Nintendo has to patch the IOSU exploit and the Brazilian exploit.

If they'd only patch IOSU, but added a check if there are not legit tickets, then the Brazilian exploit would still work because they're disc tickets.

Also, I think patching those exploits are either really complicated or impossible.
It already has those checks. It checks for which NNID has purchased a game and his ticket, that's why you can't redownload your legit purchased games for free via eShop on another console because the ticket is still on the console you bought it from.
I don't think Nintendo will create a new firmware. Wii U is pretty dead to even Nintendo themselves.

 

[Scoop111]

I meant legit in comparing if the tickets are "legit" for an eshop-title, which would have to include the console id. Disc tickets are legit on their own, but not for an installed title. Meaning, the update could check, if there is an eshop ticket for an installed title, but only finds a disc-ticket. That wouldnt match...

 

[dreesje]

Thanks for the explanation. So, probably titles installed with wupinstaller that have a disc ticket are almost impossible to patch which means that you could still go online with these installed games after a firmware update.

 

[Scoop111]

I wouldn't say it's impossible. It really depends on what efford Nintendo is trying to put into it. I had a short chat with @Cyan in the beginning of this thread when the method came out. To my understanding they could do as follows:

Release an update. It scans the system for installed titles. To Nintendo those must be eshop-titles, otherwise they wouldn't be installed on the system. Now scan the NAND for a corresponding ticket of a certain title. Then scan this ticket for an entry which contains the Console-ID. Disc-Tickets though do not have a Console-ID. (For us they pretty much work like a master-key.) So they woud know the title has not been installed from the eshop the proper way and therefore could block or delete it.

I personally don't believe this to happen. If they know about this installation-method and the scene in general, they also know that most people use tubehax or other ways to block updates. So an update would not reach their actual target. The community itself is relatively small and since they're no Game-Releases for the next 3 or so months it's actually in their interest to keep the WiiU-Owners busy with their consoles until the Switch comes out.

By that point they might bring out a last update. If it's even worth the time and work. Since all 3rd party devs are pretty much gone, there is no need anymore to protect other company's interests. So they might as well just drop it...

 

[Cyan]

when that method was released, we all thought the first 2 bytes in the ticket was a flag for "game type" (either eshop or disc).
So I said it would be easy to detect the installed ticket is wrong by checking that byte, having ticket flagged as "eshop ticket" without a tied console ID.

But it was revealed that the first two bytes was wrongly decrypted from the beginning, and there's no "game type" here.
Both disc and eshop use the same values, so there's no real comparison to do on the ticket itself, as the disc ticket is legit and is also installed here when playing a disc officially. There's nothing wrong having that ticket installed inside the console, it's the way official games are working.

What could be checked is if the ticket contains a consoleID and the game's files are on the NAND, but again it can't be relied as updates are always stored internally, and it could be any files (from meta, code or content, any files can be updated and located on NAND, so a path check is irrelevant).
What the firmware could do is check the file path before merging it with the update path to serve to the game interpreter.
it would require some whitelist, as few titles are not console dependent either (system titles are not tied to consoles, some free eshop titles seems to not be tied either)

 

[Scoop111]

What could be checked is if the ticket contains a consoleID and the game's files are on the NAND

That was actually my point. I put aside that whole "game type" thing because as you say it was revealed to be irrelevant.

I'm struggling to understand your last sentence. I have no idea about the NANDs file-structure, but believed Nintendo would know where they store their stuff and how to check it.

 

[Cyan]

not all tickets downloaded from eShop have a tied consoleID.
so you can't base the detection on being on NAND without a consoleID, as legit eshop content will be marked as illegal too, so it would require a whitelist to not detect these known official eShop titles without consoleID as pirated.

Note that it's assumption only. I didn't check all my internal tickets downloaded from eshop to see if they contained my consoleID or not.
But updates are not tied to a console (the untied tickets are provided by NUS freely from NUSGrabber and not generated on console transaction), same for system files, and apparently same for some free eshop demo and apps.

 

[Scoop111]

Thanks for clarifying that. Yeah, I was only talking about non-free content, which could simply be found by title-id (by using some sort of whitelist as you say). As for the updates, they wouldn't overwrite the original eshop-ticket, would they? I was probably thinking the other way around.
Purchased ehop games (most likely) can only be valid if there is a ticket somewhere in NAND containing the (or basically any) console ID, assuming Nintendo does so for all purchased eshop games. Then scan all belonging files for a ticket containing the console-ID.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be wrong here. But I can't imagine the Nintendo has no ways to identify their own tickets...

 

[Osakasan]

Is it possible to install games from other that the SD card? Mine is not big enough for the heaviest games and i'm not in position of getting a new one.

If not, is it possible to load the installer and the use other SD card to install the game?

 

[Cyan]

You can swap SD card to install "another" game, but you can't swap SD card to "continue" current game install because of not enough space on your card.
The nintendo installer program is throwing an error if it can't find a file instead of waiting and retrying.
Remember it's not supposed to be anywhere else than NAND (or usb) when you download your game from eShop so nintendo didn't add a "SD remount" function to their installer.

WUP installer is only telling the official program to start the install process from a different path.
Nintendo installer is doing the installation, we can't add new feature or option. To do that, we would need to write our own installer program to extract and copy files to NAND or USB manually.


Installing from another path than SD would probably require a homebrew installer too (to read USB FAT32 or exFAT for example).
currently, it's limited to NAND or SD or network (slooow, few hours!).

edit:
what you could do is :
use WUP server to copy the encrypted files to NAND or USB. (SD->USB is fast)
use install() command to install it to NAND or USB. I think you can give the path where the .app files are located.
This way you can "put the .app" in multiple session to the same folder before launching the install command.
You need twice as much space to do that (encrypted + decrypted size)
then delete the encrypted folder (if the installer is not doing it automatically when installed on NAND, it's doing it when installing legit eshop downloads, right?)