Hacking Question Frustrated by lack of good Atmosphere tutorials out there.

Chrushev · Apr 28, 2021

EDIT: Solution here - https://gbatemp.net/threads/frustra...utorials-out-there.587702/page-2#post-9457204

Ive been using SXOS for 3 years, zero issues. But due to recent events I am trying to switch over to Atmosphere. Ive spent 8 hours trying to get it to run. My only requirements are Emunand and booting with SXOS dongle.

I got the latter down, converted hekate.bin into boot.dat. I can boot.

The tutorials out there are simply abysmal. They boil down to:

1) Boot via method of your choice, without zero explanation of what this may entail. But fine, I got this down.
2) Backup your NAND
3) Boot into CFW, as if this is freaking magic.

Not one tutorial that I came across talks about any ini files (hekate_ipl.ini), no talk about fusee-primary.bin, what it is, how to use it etc...

My steps are:

1. Format SD card to FAT32
2. Copy over latest Atmosphere files to Sd Card (do certain Atmospheres support only certain OFW versions? or would latest Atmosphere support any OFW no matter how old? Because Emunand is being created off of OFW 4.0)
3. Copy over latest Hekate files to Sd Card
4. Copy over latest sigpatches to Sd Card, not a single tutorial talks about how to do this. Ive found sigpatches labeled hekate, Ive found sigpatches labeled atmosphere, I only have to guess the difference between these and which to use in what cases. is there a difference? No idea! What about what sigpatches should really have? Ive seen zips with 4+ folders, Ive seen zips with 2 folders. Which one is the correct one?
5. Boot into Hekate and create Emunand (I tried both file and partition)
6. Attempt to boot into Emunand.

Now freaking what? There is no way to boot into it. Tutorials dont cover this. I tried injecting fusee-primary.bin and also putting it into payloads folder and selecting it from hekate. In both cases after atmosphere logo its black screen. Tutorials dont cover what to do here, so I am just trying to put together pieces from googling.

Atmosphere has been around for years, its astonishing how unfriendly it is to new users. I understand that the process may be easy, and second nature to someone who has been using it for a while. Or has it set up already. But to someone who is new, its extremely unfriendly, cant find a single tutorial that doesnt skip steps. Reading them its like someone decided to be helpful and write this great tutorial, then got bored half way through and just rushed the job.

At one point I gave up and tried using Deepsea package. Same thing, black screen. Found some Russian thing called "Kefir" that one actually worked, but it adds so much garbage apps and changes all of the boot screens etc that I really dont want to use it. I just want damn vanilla Atmosphere with nothing else, no homebrew, no cheats, no layerfs, nothing... just vanilla on Emunand. Why is it so hard?

PS - Sysnand boots no problem.

Hayato213 · Apr 28, 2021

Base on what you posted so far, you need to use Hekate/Fss0 patches from the thread below, what you also need is a hekate.ipl it tell Hekate what to do base on the config. The emummcforce=1 line force it to boot into emunand if there is one exist.

{--- Custom Firmware ---}
[CFW (SYSNAND)]
emummc_force_disable=1
fss0=atmosphere/fusee-secondary.bin
atmosphere=1
logopath=bootloader/bootlogo.bmp
icon=bootloader/res/icon_payload.bmp
{}

[CFW (EMUMMC)]
emummcforce=1
fss0=atmosphere/fusee-secondary.bin
atmosphere=1
logopath=bootloader/bootlogo.bmp
icon=bootloader/res/icon_payload.bmp
{}

{--- Stock ---}
[Stock (SYSNAND)]
emummc_force_disable=1
fss0=atmosphere/fusee-secondary.bin
stock=1
icon=bootloader/res/icon_switch.bmp
{}

https://gbatemp.net/threads/sigpatc...ee-secondary-only.571543/page-49#post-9456769

https://switch.homebrew.guide/emummc/emummc.html

The guide above shows you how to configure an emunand partition and how to boot it with Hekate.

MasterJ360 · Apr 28, 2021

as far as sigpatches goes its easier to use NeutOS Atmosphere instead b/c it has built in updated sigptaches. You can skip #4 entirely using that.

wurstpistole · Apr 28, 2021

MasterJ360 said:
as far as sigpatches goes its easier to use NeutOS Atmosphere instead b/c it has built in updated sigptaches. You can skip #4 entirely using that.

Recommending CFW packs is generally not good advice since the end user does absolutely not learn anything about how the CFW is set up when using those - and then will just come bitching again when at some point said CFW package is discontinued, as has happened countless times already. Atmosphere is really not that hard to set up. If you can't do that, then maybe Switch hacking is not for you. There is a gigaton of good Atmosphere tutorials already, so I really have no idea what OP is on about. Probably didn't even bother to really look for one.

MasterJ360 said:
Converting sxos files to work with atmosphere will be tricky

No, it's not. Converting SX emunand to work with Atmosphere maybe takes 15 minutes.

And now to you, OP.

Chrushev said:
The tutorials out there are simply abysmal.

Write your own then, once you figure it out.

Chrushev said:
They boil down to:

1) Boot via method of your choice, without zero explanation of what this may entail. But fine, I got this down.
2) Backup your NAND
3) Boot into CFW, as if this is freaking magic.

Because it is. That's it, usually.

Chrushev said:
Now freaking what? There is no way to boot into it. Tutorials dont cover this. I tried injecting fusee-primary.bin and also putting it into payloads folder and selecting it from hekate. In both cases after atmosphere logo its black screen.

Tutorials don't cover this because that is all you need to do. If you put all files where they need to go, you inject fusee-primary and that's it. Atmosphere will boot.

Chrushev said:
Atmosphere has been around for years, its astonishing how unfriendly it is to new users.

It is not. You are doing something wrong and I have two pretty good guesses:

a) you're just putting files at the wrong place, not where they belong or, also very likely:

Chrushev said:
I got the latter down, converted hekate.bin into boot.dat

This. So much this. Don't do that. If you absolutely want to rely on that crappy SX dongle that limits your payload options, at least be smart enough to use the SX gear payload and have hekate boot through this. Don't convert payloads, that's prone to bugs.

All I can say is, I have converted two consoles from SX to Atmos, one with, one without Emunand with zero problems. One boots through RCM loader, one through SX dongle. You are the problem, not the tutorials. And that entitled behavior of yours will most likely not encourage anyone around here to help you. Learn to read, stop converting payloads and just be done with it. You're the problem here.

Chrushev · Apr 28, 2021

wurstpistole said:
Recommending CFW packs is generally not good advice since the end user does absolutely not learn anything about how the CFW is set up when using those - and then will just come bitching again when at some point said CFW package is discontinued, as has happened countless times already. Atmosphere is really not that hard to set up. If you can't do that, then maybe Switch hacking is not for you. There is a gigaton of good Atmosphere tutorials already, so I really have no idea what OP is on about. Probably didn't even bother to really look for one.

No, it's not. Converting SX emunand to work with Atmosphere maybe takes 15 minutes.

Alright, genius, please link a tutorial that covers fusee-primary.bin, hekate_ipl.ini, creating a boot.dat, steps for bootting into Emunand, and which sigpatches to use and where to put them. Honestly based on what you typed it seems like you did not read the post, you just read the title and rushed down here to be unhelpful with your comment. Because "switch hacking is not for you" comment makes zero freaking sense. Its just dragging files from one place to another. if you think that makes you a hacker. I hate to break it to you.

MasterJ360 · Apr 28, 2021

lol right he only came to this thread to correct petty things instead of providing any helpful info to the OP.

wurstpistole · Apr 28, 2021

MasterJ360 said:
lol right he only came to this thread to correct petty things instead of providing any helpful info to the OP.

No one in their right mind would help someone like this person. Not with that attitude. That's not asking for help, that is bitching to cover up the own incapacity.

Chrushev said:
Alright, genius, please link a tutorial that covers fusee-primary.bin, hekate_ipl.ini, creating a boot.dat, steps for bootting into Emunand, and which sigpatches to use and where to put them. Honestly based on what you typed it seems like you did not read the post, you just read the title and rushed down here to be unhelpful with your comment. Because "switch hacking is not for you" comment makes zero freaking sense. Its just dragging files from one place to another. if you think that makes you a hacker. I hate to break it to you.

Read my updated post, I certainly read your post and commented on it.
Sadly, it only confirms my last sentence. You're acting like an entitled child and can, to be honest, just fuck off. No one will help you with that attitude of yours. Frankly, no one gives a crap if your console runs.

MasterJ360 · Apr 28, 2021

wurstpistole said:
No one in their right mind would help someone like this person. Not with that attitude. That's not asking for help, that is bitching to cover up the own incapacity.

Hes just frustrated b/c the conveniency that sxos has is not in the Atmosphere world. Anyone who used sxos before the migration can relate to that. Even I had issues updating to a new atmopshere a year ago where back we couldn't just copy/paste over files b/c it would cause errors or not understanding how to config certain things. Theres are things that need manual attention that some ppl aren't used to yet. Honestly tho you could have pointed him a link to an updated tutorial instead of the bickering. Yes this site is a goldmine of information, but that too can be overwhelming on where to look for general information. NeutOS isn't really a cfw pack its a modified Atmosphere payload that contains sigpatches.

Chrushev · Apr 28, 2021

wurstpistole said:
No one in their right mind would help someone like this person. Not with that attitude. That's not asking for help, that is bitching to cover up the own incapacity.

Read my updated post, I certainly read your post and commented on it.
Sadly, it only confirms my last sentence. You're acting like an entitled child and can, to be honest, just fuck off. No one will help you with that attitude of yours. Frankly, no one gives a crap if your console runs.

Literally people helping up and down this thread. Are you ok? Your posts make no sense and are a waste of pixels, honestly... people like you give the scene a bad name. I feel sorry for you, but I feel more sorry for people that interact with you in real life. You seem to be quite the character.

And no, it doesnt have anything to do with boot.dat creation/conversion, same issue happens if I try TegraRCMGUI to inject from PC either fusee-primary.bin or hekate.bin

And no its not me putting things in wrong locations because literally packs that have everything in correct locations have the same behavior.

If i was a betting woman, Id guess the issue is with Hekate's emunand. Wonder if it has even been tested lately, since most people created theirs on way older versions.

Chary · Apr 28, 2021

Sorry I can't offer any help into the matter, but I've run into the same problem. I had an ex-fat micro SD and it didn't want to play nice with moving to Atmosphere. I'm sure it's due to something I did wrong along the way, or just having used ex-fat, but there definitely should be an idiot proof guide stapled to the section. I just gave up and left my Switch on an older FW and I'll be buying Pokemon Snap on my legit one lol. IF such a guide exists for SX->Atmo I'd love to see it.

wurstpistole · Apr 28, 2021

It exists. https://rentry.co/SwitchHackingIsEasy

linuxares · Apr 28, 2021

https://nh-server.github.io/switch-guide/ and this exists

Hayato213 · Apr 28, 2021

Just dropping my two cents worth of opinion, from going from SX OS to Atmosphere can be a deep learning curve if it is the first time setting up, due to the fact you didn't have to do much work to get it up and running with SX OS. With Atmosphere you have to learn how to setup an emunand, which bootloader to use, which signature patches to use, it can be hard for a beginner. There are guides out there that explain how to create an emunand, how to boot it.

The Real Jdbye · Apr 28, 2021

Chrushev said:
Ive been using SXOS for 3 years, zero issues. But due to recent events I am trying to switch over to Atmosphere. Ive spent 8 hours trying to get it to run. My only requirements are Emunand and booting with SXOS dongle.

I got the latter down, converted hekate.bin into boot.dat. I can boot.

The tutorials out there are simply abysmal. They boil down to:

1) Boot via method of your choice, without zero explanation of what this may entail. But fine, I got this down.
2) Backup your NAND
3) Boot into CFW, as if this is freaking magic.

Not one tutorial that I came across talks about any ini files (hekate_ipl.ini), no talk about fusee-primary.bin, what it is, how to use it etc...

My steps are:

1. Format SD card to FAT32
2. Copy over latest Atmosphere files to Sd Card (do certain Atmospheres support only certain OFW versions? or would latest Atmosphere support any OFW no matter how old? Because Emunand is being created off of OFW 4.0)
3. Copy over latest Hekate files to Sd Card
4. Copy over latest sigpatches to Sd Card, not a single tutorial talks about how to do this. Ive found sigpatches labeled hekate, Ive found sigpatches labeled atmosphere, I only have to guess the difference between these and which to use in what cases. is there a difference? No idea! What about what sigpatches should really have? Ive seen zips with 4+ folders, Ive seen zips with 2 folders. Which one is the correct one?
5. Boot into Hekate and create Emunand (I tried both file and partition)
6. Attempt to boot into Emunand.

Now freaking what? There is no way to boot into it. Tutorials dont cover this. I tried injecting fusee-primary.bin and also putting it into payloads folder and selecting it from hekate. In both cases after atmosphere logo its black screen. Tutorials dont cover what to do here, so I am just trying to put together pieces from googling.

Atmosphere has been around for years, its astonishing how unfriendly it is to new users. I understand that the process may be easy, and second nature to someone who has been using it for a while. Or has it set up already. But to someone who is new, its extremely unfriendly, cant find a single tutorial that doesnt skip steps. Reading them its like someone decided to be helpful and write this great tutorial, then got bored half way through and just rushed the job.

At one point I gave up and tried using Deepsea package. Same thing, black screen. Found some Russian thing called "Kefir" that one actually worked, but it adds so much garbage apps and changes all of the boot screens etc that I really dont want to use it. I just want damn vanilla Atmosphere with nothing else, no homebrew, no cheats, no layerfs, nothing... just vanilla on Emunand. Why is it so hard?

PS - Sysnand boots no problem.

You don't need to make a new emuNAND. You can reuse your SX OS emuNAND and keep your saves. Assuming you were using hidden partition emuNAND, this goes in SD:\emuMMC\emummc.ini

Code:

[emummc]
enabled=1
sector=0x00000002
path=emuMMC/RAW1
id=0x0000
nintendo_path=Emutendo

Apart from that, you need Atmosphere, Hekate and the latest sig patches. Sig patches can be found here:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/sigpatches-for-atmosphere-hekate-fss0-fusee-secondary-only.571543/
These patches include hekate_ipl.ini so you don't need to change anything else. But I would delete the sysMMC entries in hekate_ipl.ini as you never want to boot into sysNAND CFW by accident as that could result in a ban. And when you want to boot OFW, boot it normally rather than from Hekate, it's safer.

Chrushev · Apr 28, 2021

wurstpistole said:
It exists. https://rentry.co/SwitchHackingIsEasy

Followed it to the letter. Upon trying to boot Atmosphere CFW I get Atmosphere logo, then black screen. As before.

wiiNinja · Apr 28, 2021

@OP
Nobody gets paid around here for writing up tutorials to your standards. If you put your money where your mouth is, may be you'll get exactly what you want (put up a bounty, pay somebody to do it for you). It does require some work to get your device to where you want it to be. Put in some brain power and elbow grease, at the end, when you have it done, you'll learn a lot more than before you started, and you'll appreciate it a lot more.

Chrushev · Apr 29, 2021

Tried Kosmos, tried sdsetup. All lead to black screen.

Weirdly Kefir is working. I am now working backwards from Kefir trying to figure out which file Kefir has that Atmosphere doesnt. If I overwrite atmosphere folder with latest one from github it goes to black screen. Its supposed to be the exact version that is in kefir.

I ran a directory structure diff on both and see no difference. Yet if I replace it with Atmosphere one, black screen.

here are the files that work, (atmosphere folder from Kefir) if anyone wants to compare it to atmosphere folder from github - https://filebin.net/b0gxq8fbcv37zh4r/atmosphere.rar?t=3xpm4669

I definitely narrowed it down to the atmosphere folder because all other files I replaced manually from github (hekate/sigpatches).

Does anyone know where the system version is stored? When In Emunand it says its KEFIR version. Is this file part of the bootloader or is this part of atmosphere?

Hayato213 · Apr 29, 2021

Chrushev said:
Tried Kosmos, tried sdsetup. All lead to black screen.

Weirdly Kefir is working. I am now working backwards from Kefir trying to figure out which file Kefir has that Atmosphere doesnt. If I overwrite atmosphere folder with latest one from github it goes to black screen. Its supposed to be the exact version that is in kefir.

I ran a directory structure diff on both and see no difference. Yet if I replace it with Atmosphere one, black screen.

here are the files that work, (atmosphere folder from Kefir) if anyone wants to compare it to atmosphere folder from github - https://filebin.net/b0gxq8fbcv37zh4r/atmosphere.rar?t=3xpm4669

Does anyone know where the system version is stored? When In Emunand it says its KEFIR version. Is this file part of the bootloader or is this part of atmosphere?

You probably broke something for it to boot to black screen, your sysnand boot? Kefir ain't a CFW, it is just a tool to allow you to link a Nintendo account.

Chrushev · Apr 29, 2021

Hayato213 said:
You probably broke something for it to boot to black screen, your sysnand boot? Kefir ain't a CFW, it is just a tool to allow you to link a Nintendo account.

yes sysnand boots, kefir is not a tool to link account its like Kosmos or SDsetup, it just packages everything and installs it onto SD for you. The issue is that they plaster their logos over everything. And they label version as KEFIR under system settings. I want to run vanilla Atmosphere.

Kefir's setup is the only thing out of everything Ive tried that can boot into Emunand. Im trying to figure out why vanialla atmosphere doesnt work. As you can see from my posts in this thread, ive followed guides, ive done the process a hundred times. It just wont boot into Emunand with vanialla Atmosphere.

Hayato213 · Apr 29, 2021

Chrushev said:
yes sysnand boots, kefir is not a tool to link account its like Kosmos or SDsetup, it just packages everything and installs it onto SD for you. The issue is that they plaster their logos over everything. And they label version as KEFIR under system settings. I want to run vanilla Atmosphere.

Kefir's setup is the only thing out of everything Ive tried that can boot into Emunand. Im trying to figure out why vanialla atmosphere doesnt work. As you can see from my posts in this thread, ive followed guides, ive done the process a hundred times. It just wont boot into Emunand with vanialla Atmosphere.

Well you did something for it to boot into a black screen, by default the Emunand take a copy of your Sysnand and use that as NAND,
I mean if you had SX OS emunand you can do what The Real Jdbye said. I have no experience with using Kefir so can't help you with that.

Hacking Question Frustrated by lack of good Atmosphere tutorials out there.

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