Hacking [RCM Payload] Hekate - CTCaer mod

[XaneTenshi]

Maybe I am, just not seeing it because of how big the OP is, but where is the link to the script that joins a partially dumped Nand backup? I don't see it:/

 

[Azel]

A new backup followed by a flash of the one I had on my fake card was what I had in mind, but I am worried I could irreparably damage something by flashing a corrupted RAWNAND file.

copy your 1st one to the new card, of course, but worst case senario you can always reflash the other nand dump.

Maybe I am, just not seeing it because of how big the OP is, but where is the link to the script that joins a partially dumped Nand backup? I don't see it:/

https://github.com/CTCaer/hekate/releases/download/v3.2/joiner_scripts_for_windows_linux_macos.zip

 

[Ericthegreat]

I know it says doesn't support exfat on non exfat systems but I backed up my nand on a 1.0 system on a 64 gb SD, switch asked to update (I did not do it).

 

[Azel]

It does support exfat on non-exfat systems.
"Hekate - ipl, is a custom bootloader with extra features.
It must not be confused with CFW, hbmenu and anything else that is on the Horizon OS (Switch's OS) side.
E.g., hekate supports exFAT formatted sd cards, but if you never downloaded the exFAT update, it will not work on horizon os or any homebrew.
So, please don't report problems that happen after leaving hekate - ipl (hbmenu can't see apps, etc)."

 

[daxtsu]

I know it says doesn't support exfat on non exfat systems but I backed up my nand on a 1.0 system on a 64 gb SD, switch asked to update (I did not do it).

The first post is just a reminder that exFAT won't work in Horizon if you don't have the update in Horizon. Hekate works with exFAT regardless of the state of Horizon. A lot of people seem to have had (and still have) this misconception that the hardware doesn't support exFAT at all without Horizon having first grabbed that update, which isn't true.

 

[CTCaer]

So here's an issue i've been having with Hekate: Sometimes it takes WAY too long for tegraRCMsmash to load hekate, when it does the menu is all distorted and then when i try to load firmware it says the sd card is not mounted, even though it actually is. Is the issue my mem card?

This comes from the client side (windows usb stack). I've seen that some times (I also had strange colors on switch screen).
The letters are printed slowly on windows cmd window, when this happens.
Because it's so slow, something happens with the payload writing to IRAM and gets corrupted. You can direct this to tegrarcmsmash repo, but it's not a big issue imo. It's probably a windows quirk and it might need a lot of time lost on debugging.

How exactly does one make the boot logo bitmaps? I get the impression from the very few images I've gotten online that they must be 32-bit (otherwise I can't see any difference in the files I've created versus what actually works,) but normally a bitmap won't have an alpha channel and it's hard to somehow force it. I basically just want to do the image on the first page simply expanded to fit the screen for Hekate starting up because it's just so much nicer than the default but still basically an "official" image for this. I can't see any other differences between the image I created and the one that actually works.

Also, is it just the one logo? The sample INI I saw showed a logo under a CFW. It would be nice if I could make a different logo depending on what it's actually booting (especially with autoboot.) It seems like it only ever did the one however?

You can put whatever logo you want to all entries. Different ones. If an entry does not have, it uses hekate official logo. If the customlogo option is enabled and an entry does not have a logo, it uses bootlogo.bmp at root folder. If this does not exist, it uses hekate official.
You can use GIMP 2.10 and up for creating a 4 channel bmp. Does not matter if the 4th channel is color or alpha channel (X8 or A8).

I am sorry if this has been asked before as I could not find anything about this so here I go.

I dumped BOOT0, BOOT1 and RAWNAND on a 64GB card a little while ago. I just tested the sd card I used for the dump a few days ago and it turns out that I have a fake card that is only 29.2GB and not 64GB.

Considering the fact that I used CTCaer and that the dump and verification were considered successful by it, does it mean that I am good or would CTCaer have been fooled by the fake card and ended up dumping corrupted/incomplete files?

Anything I can do to test the files?

if your sd card is truly 29.2GB and you made a backup with a clean sd card (formatted, nothing inside), it can fit. The rawnand.bin is around 29.1GiB and the 2 boot partitions are 8MiB total.

 

[PsychOsmosis]

I tried Hekate for the first time today (I launch it as an external payload with my SX PRO).
When I try to look at SD card info or try to backup, I get this error message :

(Yellow) Error: exFAT - Bitmap allocation is missing
(Red) Failed to mount SD card (fatFS error 13).
(Red) (Make sure that a FAT type partition exists)

My SD card is a Sandisk Extreme 400Gb formatted using the Switch system UI, then I cloned the partition of my old 256Gb SD card onto it and merged the remaining free space with said partition (I couldn't get the card to be read by the Switch if I copy-pasted the folders onto it, it was the only way to get it to work).

I tried searching for other people with the same problem but it seems I'm the first with this specific yellow error...

Thanks in advance for your help!!

EDIT: It's worth mentioning, if it wasn't clear, that the SD card is working perfectly with the Nintendo Switch and on Windows.

 

[CTCaer]

I tried Hekate for the first time today (I launch it as an external payload with my SX PRO).
When I try to look at SD card info or try to backup, I get this error message :

(Yellow) Error: exFAT - Bitmap allocation is missing
(Red) Failed to mount SD card (fatFS error 13).
(Red) (Make sure that a FAT type partition exists)

My SD card is a Sandisk Extreme 400Gb formatted using the Switch system UI, then I cloned the partition of my old 256Gb SD card onto it and merged the remaining free space with said partition (I couldn't get the card to be read by the Switch if I copy-pasted the folders onto it, it was the only way to get it to work).

I tried searching for other people with the same problem but it seems I'm the first with this specific yellow error...

Thanks in advance for your help!!

EDIT: It's worth mentioning, if it wasn't clear, that the SD card is working perfectly with the Nintendo Switch and on Windows.

Your card partition is probably. Did you remove switch back before? Normally these errors come from the 1bit bus width (hekate drivers do not support it).
Your card, of course, supports 4bit wide. But it can fallback if some data pins are not connected.
Can you try to press and hold the connector for the sd card reader and try and make a dump of BOOT0/1?

 

[Myron49485]

I have an unmodified Switch that has never connected to the internet nor ran any homebrew/cfw, though I did run some payloads.

I want to run a cfw on it completely in offline mode. I also want to be able to restore it back to the current clean and unmodified state, if I ever want to go online in the future.

1. Will I be safe if I use Hekate to backup my Switch, do some modding, then restore it to go online?

2. If I were to do it, will the following steps be correct?:

If I want to fully backup the system before doing any modding:
- Insert a 64GB exFat micro SD into the switch.
- Launch Hekate payload on the Switch.
- Backup eMMC BOOT0/1 (Tools... > Backup... > Backup eMMC BOOT0/1).
- Backup eMMC RAW GPP (Tools... > Backup... > Backup eMMC RAW GPP).
- Power off the Switch.
- Take out the SD and copy "/Backup" to a safe location.

If I want to fully restore the system after modding it in order to go online:
- Copy "/Backup" back onto the 64GB exFat micro SD and insert it into the switch.
- Launch Hekate payload on the Switch.
- Restore eMMC BOOT0/1 (Tools... > Restore... > Restore eMMC BOOT0/1).
- Restore eMMC RAW GPP (exFAT only) (Tools... > Restore... > Restore eMMC RAW GPP (exFAT only)).
- Reboot the Switch.

3. If I somehow brick my Switch (e.g. installing DLCs, etc), will I be able to restore it with Hekate? Also, does Hekate restore the firmware version?

Thanks for the help

 

[CTCaer]

I have an unmodified Switch that has never connected to the internet nor ran any homebrew/cfw, though I did run some payloads.

I want to run a cfw on it completely in offline mode. I also want to be able to restore it back to the current clean and unmodified state, if I ever want to go online in the future.

1. Will I be safe if I use Hekate to backup my Switch, do some modding, then restore it to go online?

2. If I were to do it, will the following steps be correct?:

If I want to fully backup the Switch before doing any modding:
- Insert a 64GB exFat micro SD into the switch.
- Launch Hekate payload on the Switch.
- Backup eMMC BOOT0/1 (Tools... > Backup... > Backup eMMC BOOT0/1)
- Backup eMMC RAW GPP (Tools... > Backup... > Backup eMMC RAW GPP)
- Power off the Switch
- Take out the SD and copy "/Backup" to a safe location.

If I want to fully restore the system after modding it in order to go online:
- Copy "/Backup" back onto the 64GB exFat micro SD and insert it into the switch.
- Launch Hekate payload on the Switch.
- Restore eMMC BOOT0/1 (Tools... > Restore... > Restore eMMC BOOT0/1)
- Restore eMMC RAW GPP (exFAT only) (Tools... > Restore... > Restore eMMC RAW GPP (exFAT only))
- Reboot the Switch

3. If I somehow brick my Switch (e.g. installing DLCs, etc), will I be able to restore it with Hekate?

Thanks for the help

1. Currently you'll be ok with this. If they start saving this data in the nintendo folder in sd files, dunno..
2. You have to move BOOT0, BOOT1 and rawnand.bin into /Backup/Restore.
3. Probably

 

[IGHOR]

Is there any way to fill up free space by zeros in USER partition?
If you doing Backup of eMMC USER or RAW eMMC and going to compress it, it will save lots of space.

 

[CTCaer]

Is there any way to fill up free space by zeros in USER partition?
If you doing Backup of eMMC USER or RAW eMMC and than compress it, it should save lots of space.

Mount it with hacdisktool and run a "wipe free space" tool.

 

[IGHOR]

Mount it with hacdisktool and run a "wipe free space" tool.

Thanks for fast answer!

I have also another question. Is there way to install own root ca certificate?

 

[IGHOR]

Mount it with hacdisktool and run a "wipe free space" tool.

This didn't work. It made decrypted filesystem zeroed, but raw data compressed size become 20 Gb
Any real solution for this? I made backup of not touched NS and it take only 450 Mb, so I wish do the same with latest firmware.

 

[CTCaer]

This didn't work. It made decrypted filesystem zeroed, but raw data compressed size become 20 Gb
Any real solution for this? I made backup of not touched NS and it take only 450 Mb, so I wish do the same with latest firmware.

You wiped the empty space with 00 or with something else?

 

[IGHOR]

You wiped the empty space with 00 or with something else?

I wiped it by 00 and verified by WinHex, it all zeros on mounted disk, but inside of raw disk it is random numbers (looks like encrypted zeros)

 

[CTCaer]

I wiped it by 00 and verified by WinHex, it all zeros on mounted disk, but inside of raw disk it is random numbers (looks like encrypted zeros)

Hmm. How they manage the crypto then.. Needs research.

 

[Nazosan]

So I got the bootlogo thing sorted -- it really does just have to be a 32-bit bitmap which is insanely hard to actually get since everything strips the alpha channel since as far as I know 32-bit is not really part of the official "standard" for bitmap. However, one thing I'm still unclear on is if there is not a way to use a different bootlogo depending on what is booting. However, it seems like the logopath parameter isn't working right? When I set it to something I get the default built-in. It seems the only way to get a bootlogo is to leave logopath out and just make sure to have a bootlogo.bmp file for it to default to instead.

 

[Canna]

So I got the bootlogo thing sorted -- it really does just have to be a 32-bit bitmap which is insanely hard to actually get since everything strips the alpha channel since as far as I know 32-bit is not really part of the official "standard" for bitmap. However, one thing I'm still unclear on is if there is not a way to use a different bootlogo depending on what is booting. However, it seems like the logopath parameter isn't working right? When I set it to something I get the default built-in. It seems the only way to get a bootlogo is to leave logopath out and just make sure to have a bootlogo.bmp file for it to default to instead.

Its not hard buddy save it as normal 24bit bmp and use a online converter to convert to 32bit
And for the logo it has to be the sd cards root bootlogo.bmp

 

[Nazosan]

Its not hard buddy save it as normal 24bit bmp and use a online converter to convert to 32bit

You say that like they're a dime a dozen. At the time I didn't find one. Honestly I'm a little unclear on why it needs an alpha channel, but anyway, I found something that works so I have that covered.

And for the logo it has to be the sd cards root bootlogo.bmp

See the logopath= parameter to understand what I was talking about there. It's in the template and if you go to the github page you'll find it also in the readme.