Hacking Can I brick trying to update my al9h?

[YourHero]

As clear as it can be.

To boot arm9loaderhax.bin, your console MUST have a valid NCSD header, secret sector, and firmware partitions.

The first one is never modified in normal operation; the firmware partitions are rewritten (with an obvious potential risk, if the power fails at the wrong time or stuff) whenever the unmodified* operating system is updated, or a9lh is updated

* CFW used with a9lh blocks the rewriting of the firmware partitions, as installing a clean kernel to them would remove a9lh on o3ds, and brick a n3ds (because the secret sector used with a9lh is incompatible with the original one)

So you're saying I currently do not have protecting for this on current A9LH, or you are saying in the future they could bust said protection and kill my A9LH?

 

[YourHero]

Ok so I did it and updated, and now it's all nice. I got A9LH without SD card. Cool. But my question is do I need arm9loaderhax on the SD card too now? Can I remove that? There was not a cleanup in the guide.

 

[Ryccardo]

So you're saying I currently do not have protecting for this on current A9LH, or you are saying in the future they could bust said protection and kill my A9LH?

My point was that the brick risk of updating A9LH is comparable to (and slightly less of) that of installing an official update on the sysnand of a non-A9LH console;

as for your new question, it is the job of your CFW to protect the kernel partitions:
Luma always does this,
with Cakes and Corbenik it's optional,
Pasta, Palantine, RxTools, Gateway, and maybe Reinand don't have this safety feature, that's why Gateway users are strongly recommended to keep using emunand

But my question is do I need arm9loaderhax on the SD card too now? Can I remove that?

In theory you could do without (assuming your cfw works perfectly from internal storage only); but it's quite more convenient to manage your arm9loaderhax.bin, cfw files, and other .bin homebrews on a SD, not to mention the space gain is little

There was not a cleanup in the guide.

Remove the "a9lh" folder and the safea9lhinstaller.bin -- again, the work is more than the reward

 

[YourHero]

Yea thanks for the replies. I appreciate it greatly. I'm going to keep using off the SD card but it does have it on the NAND now so everything is as safe as possible I guess. Thanks.

 

[progaor06]

i cant update a9lh i get blackscreen when holding down on d-pad any way to fix this i followed steps to the t also.

luma works still hourglass works still just not update odd

 

[nechigawara]

Someone made a thread that gave some details about versions, but anyways, it's recommended to update to the latest one of A9LH anyways.

Glad that there is someone remembering my thread.
Anyway, to determine your A9LH version, for anyone who interest: https://gbatemp.net/threads/al9h-sd-less-versioning.451361/