Hacking [RCM Payload] Hekate - CTCaer mod

[Lacius]

i'm on 8.0.1. Bought from a friend a second hand unpatched unity <july 2018 and was never hacked before. So, i've bought the dongle rcm loader from xkit, and downloaded hekate payload but it wont inject. Hekate allegedly supports 8.0.1, but i dont see hekate screen loading up when it should

Are you also using sept? It's required on 7.0.0 and higher.

 

[almmiron]

Are you also using sept? It's required on 7.0.0 and higher.

No, i was not aware. Well, What i want is do nand backup without hack traces, then install atmosphere. I need to injecet this sept payload.bin first? (it have 5mb, the rcm loader only have 2mb size)

 

[Lacius]

No, i was not aware. Well, What i want is do nand backup without hack traces, then install atmosphere. I need to injecet this sept payload.bin first? (it have 5mb, the rcm loader only have 2mb size)

Before we get too far, please explain what you're specifically doing and where the problem specifically happens. I might have misunderstood your last post.

 

[almmiron]

Before we get too far, please explain what you're specifically doing and where the problem specifically happens. I might have misunderstood your last post.

Thanks for the time, but i figure it out. I was not being able to load hekate. That was my point, since i'm not used with usb-c, it was not properly connected. But now i'm in progress, already loading cfw. Thanks again.

 

[Hayato213]

i'm on 8.0.1. Bought from a friend a second hand unpatched unity <july 2018 and was never hacked before. So, i've bought the dongle rcm loader from xkit, and downloaded hekate payload but it wont inject. Hekate allegedly supports 8.0.1, but i dont see hekate screen loading up when it should

Unit is probably patched bud.

 

[almmiron]

Unit is probably patched bud.

it's not . Already doing hekate raw backup! my sd is a class4, so it may take couple hours...10 minutes ans still 1%

 

[Punisher60]

I have been looking for something like this. This is a great community

 

[Krude]

I remember reading something about the switch's microSD reader's specs in this thread.... it's so long, i can't find it anymore though.
What's the max speed i should go for, what's the most the card reader can handle? No point throwing out money for an A2 card if the switch can't make use of it after all.

 

[CTCaer]

You can even use a UHS-II card, but it will capped at UHS-I speeds. (UHS-X is the bus type. U# is the UHS speed grade).

Switch in HOS is capable of 100MB/s (~200MHz clock). So you can get max perf with a U3/A2/V90, UHS-I or UHS-II.
V90 is not supported as a special mode, but this mark makes sure that the card is able to reach max UHS-I speeds on read/write.
A2 is an important mark, because it means that the card is able to handle random read/writes very well. And you run games from there, that do such reads.

 

[hippy dave]

When did A2 become common? Mine is A1

 

[Krude]

Thanks for the info. It's sorta funny that UHS-II or even UHS-III is a thing when even the pretty expensive high-grade V90 tag only guarantees speeds of 90 MB/s, which the UHS-I cards and bus can still deliver. Hell, the U3 speed grade only guarantees 30, seems like a waste to go UHS-II or above.

Speaking of speeds, so the switch bus onlny goes up to 100 MB/s.
So when i have the choice between let's say, a SanDisk Extreme (U3,V30,A2) and a more expensive Sandisk Extreme Pro (U3, V30, A2), i should pick the cheaper one? Apparently the Pro has higher read speeds up to 170 MB/s, but if the switch doesn't go that high anyways...

 

[CTCaer]

Thanks for the info. It's sorta funny that UHS-II or even UHS-III is a thing when even the pretty expensive high-grade V90 tag only guarantees speeds of 90 MB/s, which the UHS-I cards and bus can still deliver. Hell, the U3 speed grade only guarantees 30, seems like a waste to go UHS-II or above.

Speaking of speeds, so the switch bus onlny goes up to 100 MB/s.
So when i have the choice between let's say, a SanDisk Extreme (U3,V30,A2) and a more expensive Sandisk Extreme Pro (U3, V30, A2), i should pick the cheaper one? Apparently the Pro has higher read speeds up to 170 MB/s, but if the switch doesn't go that high anyways...

I would go with the more expensive if money is not a problem.

The thing about sd cards is that they straight up lie to you about the speeds.

The numbers you see on the packages are a marketing thing.

The nands inside sd cards are not a single chip in most cards.
Especially in sandisk ones they have 2. One small one that is fast and one bigger that is slow.

What they do is that they have let's say 100MB/s in the tag on the package, but after that nand is depleted, you get around the U3 speeds.
You can easily see that when suddenly the speed drops to let's say 43MB/s.

Myself I use a samsung evo plus U3. I can get 96.4MB/s reads from 0 sector to last one. The same type of sandisk that also costs double the money, will crap itself after 30-40% is filled.
But these specific ones you talked about, were tested and seem to sustain their perf to the max.
So both of these cards will have a good speed and the 2nd one will most certainly max out bus speed at all occasions. So it comes down to value (money vs perf gains).

 

[carlinux]

Could anybody tell me if there's a way to make Hekate to look for /bootloader and the other stuff in other than the first fat partition (like a estandar GRUB or EFI loader) ?

Since the OFW/CFW uses the first fat partition of the SD, it would be good to be able to use the rest of the disk/sd for example for:
- Boot Partition.
- Linux Partition
- Emunand Partition

And that way the OFW would be able to use the first partition as Storage without interfering with the rest of the OSes and CFW . right?
Is this possible (making hekate to load boot files from whatever partition i want) ?
I would feel more secure and Ban protected if i don't have a folder in the partition OFW uses in the sd telling them what i'm doing (like booting EMunand, Lakka etc).

 

[CTCaer]

Could anybody tell me if there's a way to make Hekate to look for /bootloader and the other stuff in other than the first fat partition (like a estandar GRUB or EFI loader) ?

Since the OFW/CFW uses the first fat partition of the SD, it would be good to be able to use the rest of the disk/sd for example for:
- Boot Partition.
- Linux Partition
- Emunand Partition

And that way the OFW would be able to use the first partition as Storage without interfering with the rest of the OSes and CFW . right?
Is this possible (making hekate to load boot files from whatever partition i want) ?
I would feel more secure and Ban protected if i don't have a folder in the partition OFW uses in the sd telling them what i'm doing (like booting EMunand, Lakka etc).

Yes it is possible to do that. You can have up to 4 sd card volumes (MBR constraints).
fatfs can be configured to identify these and access them with your label of your choosing. For example: `sd2:/bootloader/` or `cfwfiles:/bootloader/` that will both point to let's say 2nd partition.
Currently hekate is configure to search for the first FAT32/exFAT partition and use it as default.

 

[carlinux]

Is there Documentation i could check in order to configure/build hekate to do so?

ATM I just want it to into the second partition as boot partition while i'm using the first for OFW files. My final "master plan" is to use the third for Linux and the forth for future ATmo EmuNand or maybe lakka... I mean.. i have a 200GB sdcard and this is a lot of space to not try to cramp all the OSES altogether

 

[CTCaer]

Is there Documentation i could check in order to configure/build hekate to do so?

ATM I just want it to into the second partition as boot partition while i'm using the first for OFW files. My final "master plan" is to use the third for Linux and the forth for future ATmo EmuNand or maybe lakka... I mean.. i have a 200GB sdcard and this is a lot of space to not try to cramp all the OSES altogether

No documentation other than explaining how it works and point you to the correct places.
But no time to do that today.

Also have in mind, because of some specific limitations, the current limit for partition size is 2GB. This may change in the future though, because I have something in mind on how to fix it.

 

[carlinux]

Also have in mind, because of some specific limitations, the current limit for partition size is 2GB.

I'm sorry but I don't understand where is this 2GB limit. Usually people that uses Hekate has huge partitions for CFW and Nintendo storage in their sdcards right? In any case if that limit is just for the "boot" partition, no problem in sacrifice one (of four) partitions for just the bootloader.

Regarding explaining how it works, yeah sure, Whenever you can, no pressure. You already did A LOT for the scene. Thanks a lot for all that.

 

[Chiveta]

@CTCaer i have problem, my switch shuts down if I run the sx payload and boot hekate.

 

[ZachyCatGames]

@CTCaer i have problem, my switch shuts down if I run the sx payload and boot hekate.

That’s an issue with sxos

 

[Hayato213]

@CTCaer i have problem, my switch shuts down if I run the sx payload and boot hekate.

Boot Hekate directly, not through another bootloader, as stated above it is a SX OS problem.