Hacking Confused with homebrew, need clarification.

[justln]

Hi. This is my situation.

I have:
Sky3DS with Cubic Ninja
Gateway
N3DS XL with 9.0 SysNAND, 9.0 emuNAND, unlinked, MSET setup so I can boot using settings > profile

I would like to install other CFW so that I can utilise the extra processing power and take screenshots. I have read and watched a few tutorials but am still confused.

1. Do I need to remove the Gateway MSET before doing anything?
2. Can I reformat sysNAND without upgrading? I installed some wrong cia files and they show up as black boxes before disappearing.
3. Should I just boot up Cubic Ninja, scan the QR Code and install Ninjahax?
4. What then with the Homebrew Launcher? What CFW are recommended/should I install? Pasta? Cake?
5. What do I need to do to get Gateway to work with the above? I'll probably install cia files but it would be nice to know.

I would appreciate if anyone can point me to a guide/s or answer some of my questions.

 

[jaksy]

1. No

2. I believe you'd have to carefully remove these by hand by uninstalling the improperly installed to nand titles. Removing the wrong one can cause a brick so make sure you are removing the correct file.

3.You can go ahead and install hax 2.5 and use the homemenuhax installer from the starter kit to give you a better more reliable entrypoint than mset.

4.I'd recommend forgoing the homebrew launcher as your main boot.3dsx and instead replace it with CtrBootManager (renaming the old boot.3dsx to something else so you can launch it from Ctrbootmanager too if you want).
The advantage to CBM is that it allows you to boot CFW with offsets, allowing support for cfw that normally would have to be booted through hax1.0 to get working. So basically this allows wider support for CFW with homemenuhax2.5 acting as the entrypoint which boots the bootmanager booting you into a CFW or boot entry of your choice.

5.You could still launch the gateway tool through your mset or browser entrypoints, but if you are just using the gateway tool for booting into emunand/sysnand, you could use pasta/minipasta to boot into sysnand alone or cakes to boot into emunand or sysnand.

I believe both Pasta and Cakes can be added as boot entries to CtrBootManager.

 

[MelonGx]

1. Do I need to remove the Gateway MSET before doing anything?
No, you don't. But if you install other CFW's ROP, it auto-removes GW's ROP.
2. Can I reformat sysNAND without upgrading? I installed some wrong cia files and they show up as black boxes before disappearing.
Yes, you can. But formatting auto-removes ROP.
3. Should I just boot up Cubic Ninja, scan the QR Code and install Ninjahax?
Ninjhax can't be installed into the 3DS console. It can be only installed into Cubic Ninja cart.
You need to use it to boot homebrews every time, unless you installed Menuhax.
4. What then with the Homebrew Launcher? What CFW are recommended/should I install? Pasta? Cake?
Pasta doesn't support emuNAND.
ReiNAND doesn't support Menuhax.
CakesFW & rxTools haven't had the problems above.
5. What do I need to do to get Gateway to work with the above? I'll probably install cia files but it would be nice to know.
If you want both of GW and CFW work and share the same emuNAND, you can use either of the following options:
- Use ROP to boot GW. Use Menuhax to boot CakesFW/rxTools.
- Use OoT/Ninja to boot GW. Use ROP/Menuhax to boot CakesFW/rxTools.

 

[jaksy]

@MelonGx I didn't think reformating sysnand erased the files from your sysnand NAND location, only your sysnand SD location.
If the corrupted icons are from installing a cia to sysnand's nand location I believe it would persist through a format, but I may be incorrect.

 

[MelonGx]

@MelonGx I didn't think reformating sysnand erased the files from your sysnand NAND location, only your sysnand SD location.
If the corrupted icons are from installing a cia to sysnand's nand location I believe it would persist through a format, but I may be incorrect.

For I know, if you don't install system files, it will only write the ticket to ticket.db. This one is always renewed from the formation.
But maybe I'm wrong.

 

[justln]

Thanks jaksy and MelonGx for your replies.

I'm getting a 64GB microSD soon so I'll be starting from new.

So I'll:
Reformat my sysNAND.
Install Ninjahax 2.5 from http://smealum.github.io/ninjhax2/
Install CtrBootManager.
Install HomeMenuHax.

And that should be it right? I can install cia files like coinsetter with the HomeBrew Launcher and run different CFW with CtrBootManager?

 

[jaksy]

I'd install homemenu hax (the installer is included in the hax starterkits) before CtrBootManager as securing your entrypoint in first is more important than setting up the code you want to boot from said entrypoint, but other then that yeah.

You can still access the homebrew 2.5 menu from CtrBootManager, you'd just have to name it's boot.3dsx to boot_hb.3dsx as that's what CBM looks for by default for the HBmenu entry based on it's boot.cfg file.
(Note the offset used in rxtools entry, as utilizing an offset is sometimes required for cfw to boot that don't normally support hax past 1.0)

And as a headsup I don't believe rxtools currently supports N3ds, so in that regard you'd do better looking into using cakes as your CFW emunand booter.

 

[justln]

Thanks for the information, I'll try it out soon!