Hacking How to install clean cia's to sysnand of card that has emunand! (GW card required)

Suthek

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So I figured out a simple trick to install clean CIA's to your sysnand on an SD that has an emunand partition.

What you need:
Hardware:
GW red card.
3DS exploitable by GW. (9.2 or lower)
Main Emunand SD Card. (that you already use for everything.)
A second SD card formatted to fat32.
GW microSD card.

Software:
--Some clean CIA's.
--Bigblue.3ds
--launcher.dat

Step 1.
remove your emunand card from your 3ds.
Step 2.
put it in your pc and put all those clean CIA's on there using your PC.
Step 3.
Place GW launcher.dat on the second SD card. (that's the only file you need on there.)
Step 4.
Place this launcher.dat SD card in your 3DS.
Step 5.
Place Bigblue.3ds on the GW sd card.
Run GW exploit as usual. (DO NOT INSTALL EMUNAND)
Step 6.
Boot gateway mode.
Step 7.
Remove SD Card.
Step 8.
Put your emunand SD Card back into the 3DS. (now with clean CIA's in the root)
Step 9.
Run big blue and install.
Step 10.
Now you have clean CIA's and Emunand CIA's all on one SD Card.

**Recommended that you have a hardmod when touching the sysnand.
 

Suthek

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That's the trick...
getting into gateway mode in sysnand on a emunanded SD card. (it's a shame the gateway menu doesn't allow you to by default.)
Saw people talk about merging SD cards but this appears to be way easier.
 

Suthek

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Why not just put the clean cias in the second SD card? Swamping SD cards seems really pointless.

Then you'd have one SD card with clean CIA's and one SD card for emunand.
You'd have to regularly switch back and forth depending on which you want.
Unless you're referring to later merging the SD cards?
 

Garro

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Then you'd have one SD card with clean CIA's and one SD card for emunand.
You'd have to regularly switch back and forth depending on which you want.
Unless you're referring to later merging the SD cards?

Oh yeah, you're right. I didn't consider the case of wanting to use both the sysnand and emunand.
 

cearp

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That's the trick...
getting into gateway mode in sysnand on a emunanded SD card. (it's a shame the gateway menu doesn't allow you to by default.)
Saw people talk about merging SD cards but this appears to be way easier.
sure ok, a neater way, if you are confident, is to 'break' the emunand parition, by using a hex editor to change the start of it
 

NicEXE

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if you are confident, is to 'break' the emunand parition, by using a hex editor to change the start of it
Hmm. That is a great homebrew idea. Maybe even for a custom gateway launcher. A menu comes that has 2 options, boot into emunand and boot into sysnand. The first option "fixes" some emunand partition data and the second option "breaks" those partition data.
There should be some filesystem overhead at the start of the SD, right? Stuff that should always be there and don't really change. Because if you go far away and mess with emunand's data then you need to keep track of what you "broke" in order to "fix" it later. Also I think that if you mess with emunand's data, gateway is still going to try and boot into it.

Can anyone show me where I'm right/wrong?
 

cearp

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Hmm. That is a great homebrew idea. Maybe even for a custom gateway launcher. A menu comes that has 2 options, boot into emunand and boot into sysnand. The first option "fixes" some emunand partition data and the second option "breaks" those partition data.
There should be some filesystem overhead at the start of the SD, right? Stuff that should always be there and don't really change. Because if you go far away and mess with emunand's data then you need to keep track of what you "broke" in order to "fix" it later. Also I think that if you mess with emunand's data, gateway is still going to try and boot into it.

Can anyone show me where I'm right/wrong?
yes, it's very possible :)
maybe Roxas75 could put this in rxTools? (i think it is a cool idea)
 

Maximilious

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Very confused about this. This seems like an ass-backwards way to install CIA's to sysNAND which is never advisable. Simple way is to copy CIA's to ONE SD card, run exploit, don't format emuNAND, run GW mode, install CIA's, format emuNAND. Then emuNAND will match your sysNAND with the CIA's you installed saving you a lot of time. Still not advisable but having two cards is pretty pointless for this process imo (I do have a second SD for my "legit" emuNAND and primary with my third-party site CIAs).
 

cearp

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Very confused about this. This seems like an ass-backwards way to install CIA's to sysNAND which is never advisable. Simple way is to copy CIA's to ONE SD card, run exploit, don't format emuNAND, run GW mode, install CIA's, format emuNAND. Then emuNAND will match your sysNAND with the CIA's you installed saving you a lot of time. Still not advisable but having two cards is pretty pointless for this process imo (I do have a second SD for my "legit" emuNAND and primary with my third-party site CIAs).

why is installing cias to sysnand 'never' advisable? - it is stuff like this that makes people really worried and nervous about all this stuff since they think they will get a brick if they sneeze at the wrong time
 

Maximilious

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why is installing cias to sysnand 'never' advisable? - it is stuff like this that makes people really worried and nervous about all this stuff since they think they will get a brick if they sneeze at the wrong time


Why use sysNAND at all? I see no point in splitting my system up between games saves, ect. Just format emuNAND which transfers your saves, and use it to be on your merry way. The only reason I see to use sysNAND anymore is for ninjhax since my emuNAND is updated past 9.2. Really, sysNAND is merely the entrypoint for using your system the way you want, and anything done in it just increases your chances of messing it up. This is coming from someone without a hard mod too. If I had one, I may feel a bit more comfortable doing things in sysNAND, but really I'm all for simplicity, not complexity.
 

cracker

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One good reason: Being able to boot up a game when you aren't around wifi and can't use go.gateway3ds and don't want to keep your system in sleep mode 24/7.
 

Maximilious

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One good reason: Being able to boot up a game when you aren't around wifi and can't use go.gateway3ds and don't want to keep your system in sleep mode 24/7.


Go.Gateway runs the website on your phone, no web connection needed... And for N3DS it is now an offline exploit.
 
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Suthek

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So I figured out a simple trick to install clean CIA's to your sysnand on an SD that has an emunand partition.
Simple way is to copy CIA's to ONE SD card, run exploit, don't format emuNAND, run GW mode, install CIA's, format emuNAND.

I suspect you missed the whole point of this post.

The method you describe is if you don't already have an emunand SD card. (Off track from the OP)
Formatting my emunand and cleaning my SD card every time I want to install sysnand titles is ludicrous.
That alone makes your simplest way the most complicated and explains why I provided an alternate solution.

Although people could get into the debate of "Why", that isn't relevant. People want to do it. This appears to be the easiest way to continuously add to your sysnand while maintaining your emunand all on one SD card.
That said, I'll add a blerb about how having a hardmod is recommended.

sure ok, a neater way, if you are confident, is to 'break' the emunand parition, by using a hex editor to change the start of it
Excellent point. I could see more people being comfortable with swapping an SD card over using HEX but that's an awesome solution.


Can someone please explain what's a clean cia?
Although this was already touched on, there's a handful of titles that can be installed to your sysnand that simply work.
There's even people doing system transfers to friends and the clean cia titles are sticking. (for example, when you have a friend with a 9.3+ console.)


If you remove SD while 3DS is turned on will be sent a alert of error and reboot the 3ds

This is incorrect. Removing the SD card just prompts saying it's not recommended. A simple "OK" dialogue. No reboot occurs.
Unless you're referring to removal while in emunand? That would most definitely cause your machine to crash.
 

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