Hacking Question Need help with installing CFW, nearly bricked switch

Thecloneofjesus · Jul 6, 2018

Hey guys,
last night I tried to install CFW onto my switch. It quickly became clear that i’m out of my depth. It’s frankly very lucky that I didn’t brick my switch and at one point I thought I had.

I have a ton of questions i’d love some help with before I try again. I’m following the guide but I guess it wasn’t quite basic enough for me. I apologise in advance for how frustratingly basic these problems are, i’m not tech minded at all.

I’m using a 2010 iMac that’s running MacOS High Sierra.
I have a 64gig SD card formatted to ExFat
My switch is running version 5.1.0
I have a usb-A to usb-C cable I bought from amazon.
I am using t3chnolog1c's Switch Guide
I have the TX SX Pro (dongle and jig)

So here is what i’m doing:

I want to install Hekate before installing TX SX, as I want to make a full backup of my switch. I’m told Dumping RAW eMMC is the correct term (I don’t really know what that means). I also want Hekate for access to the HB app store, emulators and backing up saves etc.

I have downloaded “Switch starterpack” and copied the SD_Root files to the root of my SD card. I have placed a few backups of my games in a separate folder. I haven't put anything else onto my SD card that wasn't in the SD_Root file - is that correct?

Question: I have heard that I should go to Terminal and run this command:“sudo chflags -R arch /Volumes/Switch HB”Why is that? Should I do this every time I change the contents of the SD card?

What I did and the results I got:

- I Followed the guide's “Getting Started Mac” section up to where it says to install Python3 and pyusb. My Mac has Python 2.7.4 installed by default, but trying to install pyusb stumped me. Youtube tutorials further demonstrated that I was out of my depth and that I needed to try a more manageable approach.

- I tried following the section in the guide titled “Getting Started Chrome OS” - not because I had Chrome OS, but because I had read that this method worked on Mac when using Chrome browser.

- I downloaded CTCaer’s Hekate fork (just the .bin file) and went to the web fusee launcher website as instructed, I put my switch into RCM mode and plugged it into my Mac. I had no notifications on my mac saying it could see my Switch, but I wasn’t really expecting one.

- I clicked upload payload and selected Hekate_ctcaer_3.1.bin (was this the right file?)- I clicked “Do the thing” and the website said the following under Results: Requesting access to device, preparing to launch uploaded, connected to NVIDIA Corp. APX’’.

Then nothing else happened for 5-10 minutes, so I disconnected my switch, removed the jig, held down the power (to turn it off) and then tried to reboot it normally. It didn't work for a few tense minutes (perhaps still in RCM mode) but then it did and all seems fine.Do you guys know what I’m doing wrong?Off the top of my head I was wondering if it was because switch might not have been updated to read exFat format cards (it might have been, but i wondered if that was a cause) or that I didn’t run the terminal command on the SDcard. I’ve since fixed those issues but am too frightened to try again without advice.

Additional questions:

Can I have SX OS and Hekate installed together or is it one at a time?
I have the TX SX Pro dongle. Can I use this to inject Hekate? It would be probably be the easiest way for me to inject payloads, rather than via the website. If so how can I add or remove what's on the dongle? I would only want to inject Hekate at first (to do a backup) and then id want TX SX as well.
At what point am I in danger of being banned (hypothetically speaking and i’m prepared for it happening). Is the moment you inject a payload or the moment you run a rom or only when you use TX SX?
I manually changed my secondary DNS to 62.210.147.20. but the switch changes that to 062.210.147.020. is this normal/ok? I assume the point of manually changing the primary and secondary DNS is so that the Switch cannot connect to the internet?
I have three small SD cards (32gig). I planned to put different games I wanted on the different cards until I could afford a massive SD card. Will this work and will I need to the SD root files on each card? Would I have to turn it off (to switch SD cards) and inject the payload each time? (not much of an issue if the dongle can do it all).
Should I expect any problems with Battery life percentage or problems using sleep mode with this set up?

Please make any answers as basic as possible, I’m terrible at this.

Thanks for all the help guys, I will teach this advanced science magic to my friends.

Hib0 · Jul 6, 2018

Just disable internet connection for now, that's the safest option atm.
If you have the TX PRO dongle there is no need to use the USB-A to USB-C cable.
I'm guessing you already installed SX OS onto your SD card.
Download the latest version of hekate from here: https://github.com/CTCaer/hekate/releases > You want to download the .bin file. > And put it onto the root of your SD card.
Put the SD card back into your switch and boot into the SX bootloader. > Select "Options" > And launch Payload. > Select the hekate bin, and you are now in the hekate menu, and can do backups or what ever you want.

Thecloneofjesus · Jul 6, 2018

Thanks for getting back to me about this. I've not installed SX OS or done anything with that yet - as my plan was to back up my original switch before applying SX OS to the device. Because of this I'm not even sure how to install that to my SD card (do I just drag and drop some files to the root?).
As mentioned I'd really like to back up my unmodified console in Hekate first - and if I've understood you correctly, the method you've described only works through a completely installed version of SX OS?
Any further help would be greatly appreciated buddy. I suspect there must be a simpler way then how I'm going about it. Like potentially loading a hekate payload onto the dongle (no idea how to do that?)

Thanks so much buddy

gamer4lif3 · Jul 6, 2018

Kinda makes no difference since u need rcm and hekate anyway to backup but u can always just use hekate on its own useing pc/mac payload Sender.

xy-maps · Jul 6, 2018

Hekate and SX OS are in the classical sense no real CFW wich get installed, there is nothing installed but only read from the SD card. Do it as described above and copy the SX OS boot.dat and the Hekate payload to the SD card and boot Hekate via the payload launcher from the dongle menu without booting SX OS. Then you can back up and boot into SX OS.

Hacking Question Need help with installing CFW, nearly bricked switch

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