Hacking Question Setting Up EmuNAND Partition on SD Card for Atmosphere

[RHOPKINS13]

Hi y'all,

I'm very excited about the new emunand functionality in Atmosphere, and I want to try it out. As I understand it, there are three different ways of storing your Emunand for Atmosphere:

1. An emunand partition on your SD card - Separate partition for storing files can either be exFAT or Fat32
2. An emunand folder with backups of boot0, boot1, and raw nand (single file) - MUST use exFAT
3. An emunand folder with backups of boot0, boot1, and raw nand (multiple files) - Either exFAT or Fat32

I know that emunand support is current considered experimental, but I would THINK that option number 1 would be the safest to use, with a separate FAT32 partition for file storage. I intend to also use emulators and homebrew that is said to be much safer using FAT32 than exFAT, and it would seem to me that using a nand backup kept in multiple files would be more prone to problems than one that is stored plainly on the SD card, not even inside of a FAT32 partition.

So the question is, how does one actually set up this partition? I haven't seen any guide for this, perhaps I should get off my lazy ass and check the Atmosphere discord. I'm familiar with using dd in Linux to clone drives and partitions, and to make images.

Is it as simple as using dd to copy your NAND backup to the beginning of your SD card? And then using a tool like gparted to create a FAT32 partition after it? What about boot0 or boot1?

 

[makazula]

you have to combine your boo0+boot1+rawnand into a single emummc.bin first (do it in that order). then yeah, you create the partition in your sd for files and another for emummc - this partition should have roughly the same size as the emummc.bin (do it a bit bigger just to play safe).

dd emummc.bin into that partition, setup the atmosphere emummc.ini and you're good to go.

 

[ZachyCatGames]

Hi y'all,

I'm very excited about the new emunand functionality in Atmosphere, and I want to try it out. As I understand it, there are three different ways of storing your Emunand for Atmosphere:

1. An emunand partition on your SD card - Separate partition for storing files can either be exFAT or Fat32
2. An emunand folder with backups of boot0, boot1, and raw nand (single file) - MUST use exFAT
3. An emunand folder with backups of boot0, boot1, and raw nand (multiple files) - Either exFAT or Fat32

I know that emunand support is current considered experimental, but I would THINK that option number 1 would be the safest to use, with a separate FAT32 partition for file storage. I intend to also use emulators and homebrew that is said to be much safer using FAT32 than exFAT, and it would seem to me that using a nand backup kept in multiple files would be more prone to problems than one that is stored plainly on the SD card, not even inside of a FAT32 partition.

So the question is, how does one actually set up this partition? I haven't seen any guide for this, perhaps I should get off my lazy ass and check the Atmosphere discord. I'm familiar with using dd in Linux to clone drives and partitions, and to make images.

Is it as simple as using dd to copy your NAND backup to the beginning of your SD card? And then using a tool like gparted to create a FAT32 partition after it? What about boot0 or boot1?

Partition based isn't any more or less safe from bans than file based as Ninty doesn't check for files. Partition based might be safer when it comes to corruption though. Partition based will also have better performance

For setting it up, here's a little guide from #switch-hacking-meta on ReSwitched made by Ave:

Spoiler

Setting up emummc in a nutshell (mostly for linux) - update atmosphere to 0.9.0 on your microsd. Also ensure that your microSD is MBR, not GPT (gparted calls this msdos). - if you want to use an old backup, grab those files, you'll need them. If not, boot into hekate, dump raw gpp and boot0/1. - combine all files on your pc, in the order of boot0, boot1 and rawnand (cat BOOT0 BOOT1 rawnand.bin.00 rawnand.bin.01 rawnand.bin.02 rawnand.bin.03 rawnand.bin.04 rawnand.bin.05 rawnand.bin.06 rawnand.bin.07 rawnand.bin.08 rawnand.bin.09 rawnand.bin.10 rawnand.bin.11 rawnand.bin.12 rawnand.bin.13 rawnand.bin.14 > emummc.bin). Resulting file should be 31276924928 bytes unless you modded your console with a larger (or a smaller) emmc (if you don't know what this is about, then you haven't modded yours). - create a fat32 partition on your microsd of the same size as the resulting file you just created (can be a bit bigger, do it a bit [100MiB or so] bigger if you want to be safe), dd the combined file to it with bs=512M (replace values with your own ones: sudo dd if=<your_emummc_bin_path> bs=512M of=/dev/<your_sd_card_partition> status=progress). You might need to shrink your current partition to fit in the emummc, which will take some time. I personally backed up my data and wiped my whole microsd and set it up fresh. - create an emummc/emummc.ini file on your microsd and fill it with details of partition's sector and such, template:
[emummc]
emummc_enabled = 1
emummc_sector = 0x[hexadecimal sector, you can learn decimal value of "First Physical Sector" from gparted (`Start` from `fdisk -l` also works), and convert it to a hexadecimal, you can use robocop for this, run .hex <number> on # bot-cmds]
emummc_id = 0x[anything, to differentiate the emummc]
- inject fusee, and you'll be in emummc.(edited)

 

[RHOPKINS13]

Partition based isn't any more or less safe from bans than file based as Ninty doesn't check for files.

Yeah, I guess I should have made that clearer in my post. With emunand, I'm more concerned about being safe from data corruption than I am about bans.

And I'm using a separate microSD card for emunand, so I'm not worried about Nintendo checking for stuff.

EDIT: Also, THANKS FOR THE INSTRUCTIONS YOU POSTED! Looks great, going to set this up tonight!