Hacking What am I doing wrong? Cannot build proper CIA (with icon and region)

an07her · Jan 25, 2019

I'm trying to build some CIA from RAW content just like the good old days.
I put cetk in raw folder, use make_cdn_cia to build cia and it builds BUT there's no game icon displayed with the explorer shell extension, as well as FBI showing "Region: Unknown" and no icon. Why is that?
I tried finding proper cetk - no success. Different apps to rebuild CIA - no success. What has changed that I can't make proper CIA anymore using the same methods as in the past?

The only thing that comes to mind is encryption. CTRTool reports TMD contents section as encrypted when I build them from RAW content. Is it related to it?
But then I've seen the same story with CIAs with unencrypted TMD content.

Or is it 3DS firmware related? I'm using 11.6 currently (was on 11.2 previously)

Please enlighten me, I've been looking for a solution for 1 week now.

Ryccardo · Jan 25, 2019

an07her said:
CTRTool reports TMD contents section as encrypted when I build them from RAW content.

This is correct, as it should be for a proper CDN direct dump...

hmmm, do you have the keys configured into rom-properties?

TurdPooCharger · Jan 25, 2019

Oh that. I ran into the same issue with titles from Villiain3DS and *.3ds converted into *.cia with 3DS Simple CIA Converter. The only way I ever fixed these were to install and dump them back as a CIA in GodMode9 to see icon and region info again.

an07her · Jan 25, 2019

Ryccardo said:
This is correct, as it should be for a proper CDN direct dump...
hmmm, do you have the keys configured into rom-properties?

I have no idea where to look at.

TurdPooCharger said:
Oh that. I ran into the same issue with titles from Villiain3DS and *.3ds converted into *.cia with 3DS Simple CIA Converter. The only way I ever fixed these were to install and dump them back as a CIA in GodMode9 to see icon and region info again.

I tried that previously and it worked. But it's very time consuming. If GodMode9 can do it, PC can do it too. Previous year they were properly generated with same tools.

Ryccardo · Jan 25, 2019

an07her said:
I have no idea where to look at.

Find online a text file called "[INI file] keys.conf for rom-properties 1.0", save in %APPDATA%\rom-properties\keys.conf, restart explorer (or fully logout/reboot)

an07her · Jan 25, 2019

Oh I'm using 3DSShellExt, but will definitely try more updated software. Thanks for the tip.

Edit: Works now with the proper keys in Windows Explorer. Now is left to guess what key and why is missing during CIA creation process. FBI still fails to show them.
Edit2: According to ROM Information, raw cia is Standard (0x2C) encrypted and it becomes NoCrypto after decrypting with GodMode9.

Ryccardo · Jan 26, 2019

an07her said:
Oh I'm using 3DSShellExt, but will definitely try more updated software. Thanks for the tip.
Edit: Works now with the proper keys in Windows Explorer. Now is left to guess what key and why is missing during CIA creation process. FBI still fails to show them.

I think I know what's up:

https://github.com/kkguo/DSShellExt/blob/master/DSShellExt/DSFileReader.cs#L87

I'm not too familiar with the CIA format (and too tired/under the influence to look it up on 3dbrew), but look at the logic:
Lines 110 to 120 mean "If there is no metadata (an optional block, which by the way is the only one displayed in FBI2) then go to line 154 to get it out of the actual executable";

but if you look at lines 162 and 189, you can see that it doesn't support encrypted contents at all!

And if you look back at line 110 (as well as the function it calls), if there is a metadata block at all, it will never try to get it from the NCCH

an07her · Jan 26, 2019

Ryccardo said:
I think I know what's up:
Lines 110 to 120 mean "If there is no metadata (an optional block, which by the way is the only one displayed in FBI2) then go to line 154 to get it out of the actual executable"

I'm surprised the dev of FBI didn't look into this already. CIAs without region and icons freak me out a lot.

TurdPooCharger · Jan 26, 2019

GodMode9 regenerates the meta and icon *.bin.

The one on the left is *.3ds converted to *.cia.
The one on the right is that above *.cia installed and dumped back as *.cia.

Ryccardo · Jan 26, 2019

an07her said:
I'm surprised the dev of FBI didn't look into this already. CIAs without region and icons freak me out a lot.

Well, it would be relatively processing heavy for little practical gain (I'm not even sure if it's officially part of the CIA specification), besides there are plenty of executable titles with no icon, and non-executable titles which can't even have one (just scroll through your installed titles section

)

(and I already avoid FBI2 for having loads of features unrelated to being a title installer...)

But if you ask politely on github, it can't hurt!

Deleted-236924 · Jan 26, 2019

FBI and GM9 need icon.bin at the root to display that information. This is a 1:1 copy of exefs/icon.bin and, as far as I know, this breaks spec (although in a non-intrusive manner, the CIAs still work, the 3DS just ignores it.) You're not going to build CIAs with make_cdn_cia that contain this.

an07her · Jan 26, 2019

TurdPooCharger said:
GodMode9 regenerates the meta and icon *.bin.

Maybe if you make cia from installed titles. But it still shows fine in FBI if you do cia > cia in GodMode9 and meta/icon are not included (just checked two different CIAs). The only change is CIA now being NoCrypto.

Ammako said:
You're not going to build CIAs with make_cdn_cia that contain this.

Weird enough they showed up just fine last year. Maybe Nintendo added this somewhere after 11.2 firmware.

TurdPooCharger · Jan 26, 2019

an07her said:
Maybe if you make cia from installed titles. But it still shows fine in FBI if you do cia > cia in GodMode9 and meta/icon are not included (just checked two different CIAs). The only change is CIA now being NoCrypto.

Weird enough they showed up just fine last year. Maybe Nintendo added this somewhere after 11.2 firmware.

If you decide to go the route of installing these titles with missing icon & meta and then dump them back in GodMode9, be sure to put seeddb.bin in gm9/support folder.

[GitHub, ihaveamac] SeedDB list

Upon dumping, games that require seed will have theirs imported.

There's also using hyroseed to extract the individual *.dat files for FBI. Drag an drop seeddb.bin onto hydroseed.exe. It'll spit out fbi folder which you can drop in the card root. I'm not entirely sure if FBI will automatically import a seed when installing a CIA that needs one.

If you install a game that requires a seed and dump it back as a CIA without providing one in FBI or GM9, it will continue to need one.

an07her · Jan 26, 2019

Yeah I use this db and split to dats for importing manually via FBI, but it will come in handy when using GM9. Thanks for the info!

Deleted-236924 · Jan 26, 2019

an07her said:
Maybe if you make cia from installed titles. But it still shows fine in FBI if you do cia > cia in GodMode9 and meta/icon are not included (just checked two different CIAs). The only change is CIA now being NoCrypto.

Weird enough they showed up just fine last year. Maybe Nintendo added this somewhere after 11.2 firmware.

"NoCrypto" as in, unencrypted CIAs? From what I've observed, both FBI and GM9 can read icon data just fine from encrypted CIAs, if icon.bin/meta.bin are there (I am not sure exactly which of the two they rely on, but meta.bin contains a 1:1 copy of icon.bin as well so the former seems redundant.)

Though if you're positive that your CIA without icon.bin/meta.bin displays the icon data just fine in FBI, then I guess it could be something else, but I've never seen this. For me, the same decrypted CIA will show its icon fine in GM9, but not in FBI. Could be something funky going on with this specific title though, I haven't tried with everything I have (cbf, honestly.)

Also, I'm not sure anything Nintendo changes in their FW could affect how FBI functions, but it definitely wouldn't affect how GM9 functions. It's possible that something changed in FBI since which broke that feature, given that decryption does work (for me) to allow GM9 to recognize the icon, but doesn't for FBI.

Also, I guess there is a possibility that a fork of make_cdn_cia could be made that would allow building CIAs with meta.bin included while maintaining proper tmd signatures (the whole reason why you would want to do this with make_cdn_cia, otherwise GM9 is good enough for your purposes.)

Only problem is, I'm not sure the CDN even has meta.bin for titles (or if it does, it doesn't have it for every title or they just don't give you access to it.) It might be possible to decrypt contents on the fly so you can pull the required data from them to manually build meta.bin though. But this is all just speculation.

Ryccardo · Jan 27, 2019

Ammako said:
For me, the same decrypted CIA will show its icon fine in GM9, but not in FBI.

GM9 does support extracting the icon from the actual CXI (though I haven't verified if that logic is used for non-mounted cias)

Ammako said:
Only problem is, I'm not sure the CDN even has meta.bin for titles

I'm not sure (they obviously have icons, as in pictures, somewhere - but not sure if they have icons, as in the exefs file), @SciresM probably knows better given how he loves to announce anything Pokemon-related being uploaded to CDN

Ammako said:
It might be possible to decrypt contents on the fly so you can pull the required data from them to manually build meta.bin though.

Sure, you need a ticket (containing the encrypted titlekey) in the first place, so "just" add the common keys (numbers 3D and 2C) and the logic to extract content 0/exefs/icon and 0/header

(and to not screw up if content 0 is without an icon or a CFA...)

TurdPooCharger said:
I'm not entirely sure if FBI will automatically import a seed when installing a CIA that needs one.

It is supposed to (if they are in the right path, of course!)

Deleted-236924 · Jan 30, 2019

Ryccardo said:
GM9 does support extracting the icon from the actual CXI (though I haven't verified if that logic is used for non-mounted cias)

So far, I can view icon data in GM9 on encrypted CIAs that don't have meta.bin if the CIA was encrypted with GM9, from what I can assume this may be because GM9 CIA encryption is not the same as what you get out of CDN (though good enough for the 3DS to accept.) I haven't checked what happens in FBI though.

To clarify, the same CIA straight from make_cdn_cia doesn't let me view the icon, but decrypt --> encrypt on it works (though it messes up the TMD, not necessarily in a bad way, but to anyone who cares about clean CIAs this matters.)

Hacking What am I doing wrong? Cannot build proper CIA (with icon and region)

Well-Known Member

Penguin accelerator

Meh.

Well-Known Member

Penguin accelerator

Well-Known Member

Penguin accelerator

Well-Known Member

Meh.

Penguin accelerator

Deleted-236924

Guest

Well-Known Member

Meh.

Well-Known Member

Deleted-236924

Guest

Penguin accelerator

Deleted-236924

Guest

Similar threads

Popular threads in this forum