Hacking USB Loader GX

Shiranui-san · May 17, 2015

Cyan said:
It shouldn't.and this is bad.
it means sneek can still access real NAND.
unless it's a neek feature, but neek should never access real NAND. it's part of it's purpose to be 100% sandboxed.

game notification works like that:
when launching a game, a temporary file is written with the game name and the current time.
When you launch System menu next time (probably only on reboot, not if you shutdown) the system menu checks for temporary file and calculate the time difference from current time-launch time = play time, and write it to board menu.

in order to have sysnand write the playlog, the temporary file need to be present on the /nand/temp/ folder
but if you launched neek from HBC, nswitch doe not know your game so it can't write to NAND.
once sneek is launched, you select the game and the sneek system menu write the temp file on /sneekNAND/temp/
when you exit the game and return to sneek system menu, it checks the file and create a log on sneek's system menu board.
When you exit sneek by using nswitch (or neek2o channel), it reboot the console and you shouldn't have any temp file on your realNAND/temp/

what you can check :
in sneek, launch a game and exit. Look on the sneek's board if you have the playlog. if it's not present then the temporary file is not present in emuNAND/temp/ folder.
if not, exit to real nand by rebooting, and see if it write log again. it's bad if it does.

Very bad if you use neek on vWii, as it means vWii is still accessed and tempered by neek and a brick can occur. Knowing there's no mean to restore backup on vWii, it's really bad to use sneek/uneek/neek2o on vWii.

Are you sure you didn't boot using an USBLoader with playlog setting enabled?
in that case, the loader writes the temp file on real nand before launching neek.
when you reload real nand system menu, you get your "autoboot game" listed as played, even if you played many other games while in neek.

"played for 23h59" is the limit.
either you shutdown and reboot more than a day later, or the date used in the temp file was incorrect.
Maybe the temp file is deleted from the NAND at shutdown request, so if you shutdown neek without returning to realNAND the file got deleted from neek's nand only, but is still on real nand. But that's just if you never returned to realNAND from neek.

Another possibility :
You used (long time ago) USBLoader to play that game with playlog setting.
the loader writes the temp file.
but you are also using "return to loader", so you never return to system menu to write the playlog. (I will check if playlog is auto-disabled when using return to)
You shutdown the console and few days later you power it and as you have bootmii boot2 to autoboot HBC you still never go to system menu.
You launch nswitch and play on neek. You exit neek and bootmii returns to HBC again.
then you decide to launch system menu from HBC menu, and system menu find your very old temp file generated by usbloader and write the playtime as 24h.

I'm pretty sure I was using nswitch back on those days, not USB Loader GX nor any other usb loader. And it happened twice. I never got back from emuNAND to realNAND since I didn't install nswitch wad on emuNAND: I was playing the games and either shutdown the Wii in middle of games, or shutdown the Wii after coming back to emuNAND's main menu (where the Disc Channel, News Channel Shop Channel, etc., are).

Now, I've tried to reproduce this once again but I couldn't:
I tried loading emuNAND with nswitch. Then loaded Black Ops, played online 1 round, that's 10-12 minutes, then rebooted Wii. The playlog was on emuNAND, not on realNAND. Also tried taking pictures on Metroid Prime 3, all pictures were on emuNAND's board, none of them were on realNAND's.
Also tried renaming "bootmiineek" folder to "bootmii" to load emuNAND from the beginning. I did same tests as before, with same results.
So everything seems to be working as it should.

The only changes I made from that time to present day were updating real system menu from 4.1E to 4.3E (emuNAND was still the same as before) and changing old slow hdd. Some games blackscreened (specially CoD series when going online) using that old hdd.
Could it be that the Wii couldn't write the playlog on emuNAND located on that slow hdd and wrote it on the realNAND?

sonictopfan · May 17, 2015

Farowe said:
I was able to boot neek2o on vWii suceesfully (after a lot of workarounds) and there are 3 things i need to address:

1-neek is not used as a launching method unless i specify it within the game individual settings (global settings aren´t triggering neek)
2- on the preview 2 im a greeted with an error message everytime i try to load a game through neek telling me that neek cache hasn´t been generated and that i need to launch emunand wii menu (my file structure differs by a bit)
3-While on vWii sneek, there should be a "return to" that actually reboots the console rather than launching to an specific n2o channel as vWii doesnt have a proper neek2o channel. Maybe if you hook the "return to" function to the "return to wii u menu" channel that should do it

I'm all for that actually, also interesting about N2O only working when you change the settings on each game individual, I can confirm this on my end too, using a regular Wii, and speaking of which, it's nice to know N2O works on vWii.

Cyan · May 17, 2015

shiranui:
no, the slow hdd would not make sneek write on realnand. the system menu version either.
I don't know why you had that issue.

Farowe :
Thanks for the reports

that's what I wanted! things I forgot or didn't try.

Gobal setting issue : Fixed. (it was checking the Wii save emunand setting. well, maybe it should check that one for wii games? proper menus/renaming should be done)

launching error : Error or warning?
You are saying your setup is different, could you give me yours? what are your folders?

USBGX is checking :
sd:/sneek/kernel.bin
%s:/sneek/kernel.bin
%s:/sneek/nandcfg.bin
where %s = your emuNAND partition.

if nandcfg.bin doesn't exists, it tries to generate it.
it creates a nandcfg.bin with 1 nand path (the EmuNAND Channel path from user's settings) and set this as permanent.

if at the end, one of the 3 files are still not present, it currently gives an error "missing files".
I will change this and make it a warning if kernel.bin are present but not nandcfg.bin "autoboot disabled, continue anyway? yes/no"

is the SD card not needed to boot uneek ?
I've read few posts where it said to copy kernel on both sd and usb, but maybe it's only because bootmii is loading the SD card only to boot it.
I'll remove its check if it's not needed.

The only message about cache is this one:
%s/sneekcache/channelcache.bin (same for /sneek/diconfig.bin if booting wii game)
%s = nand folder

if channelcache.bin is not found,
"Sneek Channels game cache file not found. Neek System menu will be launched."

but it doesn't tell you to launch emuNAND (the cIOS mode emuNAND) it only tells you that autoboot will not be enabled and that neek will need to be booted to system menu to generate the cache file.
Later, I will generate it inside the loader, but I didn't had time to code that function yet so you need to launch neek to let it generate it.

on vWii, which is the TitleID of the return to WiiU ?

Any issue with boot mode set to buffer? I'll probably keep this one and delete static mode.
Did you try the options in the features menu?

Set neek = generate/add current emuNAND channel path to nandcfg.bin and set the current one as permanent.
Boot neek = launch neek without autoboot, using the permanent nand setup in nandcfg.bin

sideskroll · May 17, 2015

Farowe said:
I was able to boot neek2o on vWii suceesfully (after a lot of workarounds) and there are 3 things i need to address:

1-neek is not used as a launching method unless i specify it within the game individual settings (global settings aren´t triggering neek)
2- on the preview 2 im a greeted with an error message everytime i try to load a game through neek telling me that neek cache hasn´t been generated and that i need to launch emunand wii menu (my file structure differs by a bit)
3-While on vWii sneek, there should be a "return to" that actually reboots the console rather than launching to an specific n2o channel as vWii doesnt have a proper neek2o channel. Maybe if you hook the "return to" function to the "return to wii u menu" channel that should do it

Hey, would you care to share how you did it? I'd be willing to help test neek2o on vWii as well. I've been waiting for it for a long time.

By the way, Cyan I've noticed on your "Development Status" page that you plan to somehow remove the option for deflicker for NINTENDONT if ther's no "forced" mode being used.

Code:

[U]To do:[/U]
- officially switch to sourceforge (internal update URL, release the new installer for windows)
- Nintendont: Add SSL IOS patches to support downloading Nintendont boot.dol from github
- Update the Installer to download forwarders Wii and vWii instead of the full Wii Channel.
- add /wbfs/Title/ as working path for wii games
- Hide Nintendont deflicker setting if not using one of the "force" video mode.

You shouldn't do that. Because even if supposedly deflicker should be off on HDTVs the option to use it or not should be there.
I for one use System Default as video mode and the option does work.
I can turn on/off deflicker and I'm not using any forced modes...

Cyan · May 17, 2015

It shouldn't be there if you use AUTO or NONE.
but maybe for two options, it's not very important to hide it.

but you told me you want most transparent booting method, you should use auto (to let nintendont choose the setting), or even better (none and usbgx will not change anything before launching nintendont)

ilikegoldengrahams · May 17, 2015

Just getting into EmuNand useage and was wondering what options there are available to me, to hide the channels like news and Mii channels etc. I tried using categories but it won't seem to make them disappear. Using r1244.

Edit: I have searched this topic but all I can find is advice to uninstall them. can I uninstall ALL the extra channels that appear using EmuNand while still retaining homebrew functionality? Thanks!

OriginalHamster · May 17, 2015

Cyan said:
Original Hamster:
old config shouldn't be an issue.
maybe I didn't remove it everywhere.
You are using "Home menu: full" setting?

Bottom right corner, there are two buttons "Wii" and "power symbol", Wii button display only "shutdown" and "exit", the problem is with the " power symbol" button, as it display "full shutdown", " standby", "cancel".

That button is redundant IMO, why just dont let the Wii button handle power-on-off/menu/hbc/etc

sideskroll · May 17, 2015

Cyan said:
It shouldn't be there if you use AUTO or NONE.
but maybe for two options, it's not very important to hide it.

but you told me you want most transparent booting method, you should use auto (to let nintendont choose the setting), or even better (none and usbgx will not change anything before launching nintendont)

Good memory my friend.
But as we agreed back then. If left at "AUTO" or "NONE" NINTENDONT "decides" on a forced method by itself (proven by the fact that it doesn't ask if one wants to display the image in progressive or interlaced mode)
So I thought System Default (on both, GX global settings and NINTENDONT specifics was the way to go... Was I wrong?

Cyan · May 17, 2015

ilikegoldengrahams said:
Just getting into EmuNand useage and was wondering what options there are available to me, to hide the channels like news and Mii channels etc. I tried using categories but it won't seem to make them disappear. Using r1244.

Edit: I have searched this topic but all I can find is advice to uninstall them. can I uninstall ALL the extra channels that appear using EmuNand while still retaining homebrew functionality? Thanks!

https://gbatemp.net/threads/usb-loader-gx.149922/page-778#post-4251265
Look at the second example at the bottom of my post "hide photo channel".

sideskroll:
system default is working like Auto should work with nintendont.
instead of letting nintendont choose the video mode, I do it in the loader/reload/then launch nintendont.
so, in order to tell nintendont I still want to use the setting set in USBGX, I use the "force" instead of auto
that's why you have deflicker working

sonictopfan · May 17, 2015

ilikegoldengrahams said:
Just getting into EmuNand useage and was wondering what options there are available to me, to hide the channels like news and Mii channels etc. I tried using categories but it won't seem to make them disappear. Using r1244.

Edit: I have searched this topic but all I can find is advice to uninstall them. can I uninstall ALL the extra channels that appear using EmuNand while still retaining homebrew functionality? Thanks!

That is correct, to remove a channel from EmuNAND, for example the News Channel simply go to the game settings/Uninstall Game, now you have the option wither to uninstall the game only, meaning the channel will no longer appear, or you can uninstall everything including the banner cache and game covers, if you use ModMii to create your EmuNAND it will ask you to select which channels you want to be installed, I just make that blank myself but it's really up to you!

Cyan, I probably already know the answer to this one but once N2O is fully implemented and released do you plan on keeping the option to use EmuNAND too? If yes then I'm all set, I'll probably use NEEK for all my channels and use EmuNAND for my regular Wii gaming if that's possible!

Cyan · May 17, 2015

Of course I plan to keep it.
it would break a lot of user's current setup if I remove existing features.
I always think ahead before adding something not to break old ones, and to be future proof in case I need to add more to it later not to break it.

I recommend not using neek for all the channels, but only for the non working one.
that way, you have proper "return to" and some options working. no need to switch to neek when not needed.
just use cIOS redirection if it works.

he doesn't need to delete his channels, he can just hide them using the guide I linked above.
but he can delete them without issue. They will be deleted from your EmuNAND.

in the loader : select the channel > option > delete option > delete the channel
the "delete channel" option is not displayed on channels installed on your Wii and there's no WAD or RealNAND Title manager in the loader so it's safe and can't delete real data.

edit:
You can also use ShowMiiWad to manage your installed titles (add/delete/backup and restore savegames, etc.)

Farowe · May 17, 2015

Answering your post:

-vWii neek2o doesn´t need any files on the sd card
-vWii neek2o file structure is

(covers folder is empty and nandcfg.bin was generated by usbloader gx, it is not used by vwii neek2o)
-within the sneekcache folder there´s only a file named "hackscfg.bin" there is no"channelcache.bin"
-On preview 2 everytime i try to launch a warning pop ups telling me that sneek cache is not found and it gives me the option to either launch neek (without autoboot) or cancel
-wii u channel title id is "HCVA"
-So far buffer option hasn´t been giving me any issues but i need to do more tests in other to be safe.

Farowe · May 17, 2015

There´s is another important issue i found on the usbloader gx betas: new channel banners (which are on emunand) aren´t loading into the cache as they are just showing as black channel tiles (though the channel loads when launched)

sonictopfan · May 18, 2015

Cyan said:
Of course I plan to keep it.
it would break a lot of user's current setup if I remove existing features.
I always think ahead before adding something not to break old ones, and to be future proof in case I need to add more to it later not to break it.

I recommend not using neek for all the channels, but only for the non working one.
that way, you have proper "return to" and some options working. no need to switch to neek when not needed.
just use cIOS redirection if it works.

he doesn't need to delete his channels, he can just hide them using the guide I linked above.
but he can delete them without issue. They will be deleted from your EmuNAND.

I had no idea you could "hide" a channel, thank you for mentioning that, does this also work with the NEEK channel you sent me a link for?

As for not using NEEK with all Channels, while it will be a hustle to have to set each game individually, I can see what you mean by that, I think I'll wait until I see how cheat implementation works, one issue I always had with EmuNAND is the lack of cheats usage, but at this point I at least plan on fully switching to NEEK with N64, Neo Geo, TurboDoue, and most Wiiware games, some games work in EmuNAND but they tend to crash a lot in loading screens, others have graphical issues, these games seriously need N2O.

superkrups20056 · May 18, 2015

Hey Cyan! Finally got to try your NEEK Preview Build 2 and its great! One thing though: when I try to list all my emuNAND channels (which all boot perfectly under NEEK, by the way) only some of the names load when you look at them on the list. The other names just load corresponding to their four letter identification code (like "W2JE" instead of "Let's Catch." I'd say only 1/4-1/5 of the actual names were there, the rest just had their random 4 digit codes instead.

tiduscrying · May 18, 2015

Here to confirm that the latest preview loads NEEK perfectly. Was up and running Castlevania Rebirth in no time! ~~Question though, is there an option to return to the real nand from a NEEK emulated game? I tried changing the "return to" option in Castlevania's own settings, but it wouldn't let me.~~ Thanks for the awesome work Cyan. I was looking into whether or not GX could boot NEEK right when you started working on this! Weird coincidence!

EDIT after checking Cyan's USBGX status page. Sorry for not checking before!

Polygon-Man · May 18, 2015

superkrups20056 said:
Hey Cyan! Finally got to try your NEEK Preview Build 2 and its great! One thing though: when I try to list all my emuNAND channels (which all boot perfectly under NEEK, by the way) only some of the names load when you look at them on the list. The other names just load corresponding to their four letter identification code (like "W2JE" instead of "Let's Catch." I'd say only 1/4-1/5 of the actual names were there, the rest just had their random 4 digit codes instead.

Try to restart USB Loader GX. It worked for me.

Cyan · May 18, 2015

superkrups20056 said:
Hey Cyan! Finally got to try your NEEK Preview Build 2 and its great! One thing though: when I try to list all my emuNAND channels (which all boot perfectly under NEEK, by the way) only some of the names load when you look at them on the list. The other names just load corresponding to their four letter identification code (like "W2JE" instead of "Let's Catch." I'd say only 1/4-1/5 of the actual names were there, the rest just had their random 4 digit codes instead.

Someone else reported the same issue

I will try to see why it happen, but I hope it's not a memory issue (again).
Maybe wiitdb is loaded in mem1, and mem1 is full so some games don't have names because the file couldn't load entirely. (just a supposition).
I would need to do more tests to see what really happens (like displaying file size, read size on debug logs, etc.)

superkrups20056 · May 18, 2015

Cyan said:
Someone else reported the same issue
I will try to see why it happen, but I hope it's not a memory issue (again).
Maybe wiitdb is loaded in mem1, and mem1 is full so some games don't have names because the file couldn't load entirely. (just a supposition).
I would need to do more tests to see what really happens (like displaying file size, read size on debug logs, etc.)

Restarting doesn't fix the issue. Actually when I try to update wii title db, it doesn't let me. It runs into an error saying it can't write to the area or something!

Cyan · May 18, 2015

ok, so there's an issue with the newly moved folder location.
You didn't make a new clean install of the loader? (if you made a new install, the folder is wrong)
It should be easy to fix (in case I can just revert the change and put it back to the old folder by default)

I changed the path to /titles/ subfolder
maybe try to edit the "title path" in user's path menu.
set it to "usbloader_gx/titles/" manually, and it should move the .xml to that folder.

I think the issue is that some menus might try to access that new folder even if you don't have the .xml there.

Or if you made a new install of the loader, edit the path and confirm the same folder to add a missing slash at the end of the path. But I think the issue is more probably a hardcoded wrong path. I will check that. (well, I don't have a lot of time anymore, I'm at work again. holidays ended)

Edit:
I checked the update function, and the end slash is automatically added if missing, so the slash is not the issue.
I didn't find any hardcoded path to /usbloader_gx/ either, all path should correctly load based on the user's defined path.
So I think there's really a memory issue with gametdb feature.
I will have to debug it, I think I encountered the issue myself so I can replicate it to debug it. and I didn't update my file for a long time, so it's not a new size issue or bad file.

edit: I think I didn't try to display game's info window to see if wiitdb was correctly loaded for that game.
But maybe it's not a gametdb issue, but more a channel title's retrieving issue.
Maybe it has something to do with the changes I added in 1246 mod.

Does it happen in 1246 not mod?
Does it happen on realNAND, or only emuNAND? (I added game skip if ticket was present but .app file not found) maybe I did it wrong.

Hacking USB Loader GX

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