Homebrew [Release] 3DSBank - "Nintendo 3DS" folder selector

[CoolMe]

I did get Universal Updater elsewhere, didn't see Checkpoint anywhere on there.

It's there.

since I have both the 3DSX one and a CIA on my primary bank.

3dsx files are not installable like with cias, they're stored in the "apps" folder and can be accessed with any folder.

 

[thevideogameraptor]

It's there.

3dsx files are not installable like with cias, they're stored in the "apps" folder and can be accessed with any folder.

I double-checked the Universal Updater again, went down every application there, and I did not see a Checkpoint app there.

 

[thevideogameraptor]

I'm getting strange results with custom badges with 3DSBank. I installed them just fine on my second bank, but they don't show up on my first bank, and nothing I do gets them to show up. GYTB says there is no badge folder when I try to use it on my first bank.

EDIT: I wanted to use badges to decorate my folders, and it worked fine on my second bank, but my folders aren't decorated on my first bank.

 

[RocketRobz]

I'm getting strange results with custom badges with 3DSBank. I installed them just fine on my second bank, but they don't show up on my first bank, and nothing I do gets them to show up.

Badges are treated like titles installed onto the SD card, as they're also saved in the "Nintendo 3DS" folder.

 

[thevideogameraptor]

Badges are treated like titles installed onto the SD card, as they're also saved in the "Nintendo 3DS" folder.

So I'd need to copy all the badges on my second bank into a new badges folder, then install that in the first bank with Anemone?

 

[RocketRobz]

So I'd need to copy all the badges on my second bank into a new badges folder, then install that in the first bank with Anemone?

Yes.

 

[thevideogameraptor]

Yes.

Thanks, I thought that might have been the issue.

Post automatically merged: Nov 28, 2024

Yes.

I've tried making a second badges folder (called Badges2), I've tried putting them into GYTB's Badge folder, I tried installing them with GYTB in the second bank as well, I've even tried deleting the original badge folder and making a second one, nothing I do will get the first bank to recognize the badges.

 

[signer-ink-beast]

Came here to say OMG, THANK YOU. Been using this for a few years now, and it makes my life easy on my 3DS.

Going over the 300 title limit on the 3DS is hell. You ain't seen slow on the 3DS until you do that, IMO, even with large capacity SD cards. The difference is night and day, and that's only the beginning of the problems that come with that.

* I like to inject HBL into Download Play with Rosalina, save so that it persists, and deliberately use 3dsx versions of general utilities like FBI, Checkpoint, Anemone, FTPD, etc. if they're available. That removes the need to duplicate them between banks, and it's 1 less title used for every utility.

I dig having different sets of home menu themes set up in different banks. I can see more of my favorites as I move between them.

 

[zackarhino]

I'm no expert, but I'm a little worried that this software corrupted either my sysNAND or my brand new SD card. Allow me to elaborate.

I set up my 3DS with a ton of software on a 128gb card. This was fine, but I started to run out of space, which was still okay, but then I hit the title limit (which I figured out when FBI just disappeared), which was not okay. So I bought a brand new Nintendo-branded 256gb SD card from Best Buy and formatted it per the 3ds.hacks guide precisely, even testing it with h2testw. Again, this worked perfectly fine, everything transitioned over perfectly. However, it went a bit wrong when I started using 3DSBank. I got acquainted it, then started to move around my software (by uninstalling and reorganizing installs on the 3DS, between FBI and gm9). I got a decent amount of progress committed, but one time when I went back to switch to slot 0, the app sort of froze for a bit, then I noticed that all my folders and software were gone. The only thing that remained were the HOME menu folders, the system apps, and the DSiWare, as expected.

I tried going through the title manager in gm9 to see what was still installed in a given folder, and it gave me something along the lines of "couldn't start title manager!". It works for TWL NAND, just not the SD card titles. When I examined the files for 3DSBank, I noticed that it deleted all 6 of my folders, except for 0 and 3 (3 only showed up when I went back to the app), and none of them had any 3DS software.

I read through this entire thread- I know that you said that your software can't delete apps, but I have a hunch that something went wrong when the folders were getting swapped, since the bank seemed to be behaving strangely when everything got lost, and I can't imagine that a brand new officially licensed SD card would go corrupt the first day I use it when I formatted and used it correctly. Thankfully, I still have a recent backup, since I didn't format the old SD card, and the new one still seems to be working, I think... It's past 2am and I have to go to bed. I still did lose like 2 hours of work though.

You were talking about fixing some stuff, changing it to libslim and a new API or something. Is this still in the works? Going by the testimonies of the people here, there seems to be a lot of occurrences where high-volume SD cards are corrupted while using the folder selector. I would really like to use this software but I'm worried it's going to destroy my SD card because it's so big.

Thanks,
Zack

 

[RocketRobz]

I'm no expert, but I'm a little worried that this software corrupted either my sysNAND or my brand new SD card. Allow me to elaborate.

I set up my 3DS with a ton of software on a 128gb card. This was fine, but I started to run out of space, which was still okay, but then I hit the title limit (which I figured out when FBI just disappeared), which was not okay. So I bought a brand new Nintendo-branded 256gb SD card from Best Buy and formatted it per the 3ds.hacks guide precisely, even testing it with h2testw. Again, this worked perfectly fine, everything transitioned over perfectly. However, it went a bit wrong when I started using 3DSBank. I got acquainted it, then started to move around my software (by uninstalling and reorganizing installs on the 3DS, between FBI and gm9). I got a decent amount of progress committed, but one time when I went back to switch to slot 0, the app sort of froze for a bit, then I noticed that all my folders and software were gone. The only thing that remained were the HOME menu folders, the system apps, and the DSiWare, as expected.

I tried going through the title manager in gm9 to see what was still installed in a given folder, and it gave me something along the lines of "couldn't start title manager!". It works for TWL NAND, just not the SD card titles. When I examined the files for 3DSBank, I noticed that it deleted all 6 of my folders, except for 0 and 3 (3 only showed up when I went back to the app), and none of them had any 3DS software.

I read through this entire thread- I know that you said that your software can't delete apps, but I have a hunch that something went wrong when the folders were getting swapped, since the bank seemed to be behaving strangely when everything got lost, and I can't imagine that a brand new officially licensed SD card would go corrupt the first day I use it when I formatted and used it correctly. Thankfully, I still have a recent backup, since I didn't format the old SD card, and the new one still seems to be working, I think... It's past 2am and I have to go to bed. I still did lose like 2 hours of work though.

You were talking about fixing some stuff, changing it to libslim and a new API or something. Is this still in the works? Going by the testimonies of the people here, there seems to be a lot of occurrences where high-volume SD cards are corrupted while using the folder selector. I would really like to use this software but I'm worried it's going to destroy my SD card because it's so big.

Thanks,
Zack

3DSBank cannot corrupt your SysNAND, as it does not read or write anything there.
As for it deleting your folders, I think it's known for libfat to not work fully properly on large SD cards or smth. libslim still has a few bugs, so I don't plan to switch to it just yet.
I also considered switching from libnds to BlocksDS, as that uses FatFS for reading and writing the SD card. idk when I'll do that though.

 

[zackarhino]

3DSBank cannot corrupt your SysNAND, as it does not read or write anything there.
As for it deleting your folders, I think it's known for libfat to not work fully properly on large SD cards or smth. libslim still has a few bugs, so I don't plan to switch to it just yet.
I also considered switching from libnds to BlocksDS, as that uses FatFS for reading and writing the SD card. idk when I'll do that though.

Well maybe it wasn't the sysNAND, but I'm fairly certain there was something with the app because it definitely deleted all my games when I tried to change folder. The weird gm9 error occurred at the same time, but it could have been something different.

Well I hope you can get a fix out somewhat soon, because I'd love to be able to max out my 3DS without running a high risk of corrupting all my installs. I would maybe try looking into it, but I'm not that experienced at writing lower-level code, so I would worry about deploying something stable. Looking forward to seeing where this project goes from here.

 

[zackarhino]

Actually I just looked at the codebase for libslim and it doesn't look that scary. I've worked with C++ before for a little bit, maybe this could be a good opportunity to learn C. What is it that you want to fix before implementing it, the issues?

I can't guarantee that I can help though, because this I'm not too sure what I am capable of and I have enough stuff that I want to get done already, but if it's not too bad maybe I can try to investigate.

By the way, do you know if there's a way I could restore my data? I do have that backup, but I would prefer to not have to transfer over my whole SD card again. Can I just move the original Nintendo 3DS folder back to the new SD card? I haven't got the chance to look yet, but at a glance it doesn't seem like my new card isn't corrupted

 

[RocketRobz]

Actually I just looked at the codebase for libslim and it doesn't look that scary. I've worked with C++ before for a little bit, maybe this could be a good opportunity to learn C. What is it that you want to fix before implementing it, the issues?

I can't guarantee that I can help though, because this I'm not too sure what I am capable of and I have enough stuff that I want to get done already, but if it's not too bad maybe I can try to investigate.

Known bugs are listed here: https://github.com/DS-Homebrew/libslim/issues

By the way, do you know if there's a way I could restore my data? I do have that backup, but I would prefer to not have to transfer over my whole SD card again. Can I just move the original Nintendo 3DS folder back to the new SD card? I haven't got the chance to look yet, but at a glance it doesn't seem like my new card isn't corrupted

Yes, you can just move the "Nintendo 3DS" folder back onto your SD card.

 

[zackarhino]

Known bugs are listed here: [removed link]

Yes, you can just move the "Nintendo 3DS" folder back onto your SD card.

Okay, I'll see what I can do. I've been meaning to brush up my resume and stuff, some github commits would be nice. Either way it won't be for a while though.

So no way to get the folders back though right? They're just axed?

 

[RocketRobz]

So no way to get the folders back though right? They're just axed?

Could probably use data recovery software such as Recuva or some others (which idk the names of).

 

[zackarhino]

Okay, so I have some information that might be useful or might not be. I downloaded a file recovery program and used it on my 3DSBank folder.

It seems that the reason that the files were corrupted was the it replaced the 'S' character with the 'æ' character in the Slot file names, and I think that the 'X' icon means that the folder was marked as deleted. Are we sure that libfat may have caused issue? To me, I feel like it is strange that it consistently corrupted each folder in the same manner, but you'll have to forgive me if I'm speaking out of ignorance, because I've been doing a bit of a deep dive on filesystems, console architectures, and even C and low-level code, so this is a bit out of my wheelhouse. It's a bit more challenging than what I usually do, but that also makes it a good learning experience. I would like to work on this libslim code but I don't know if I'm a bit in over my head. I also have a lot of studying to do so I'm a bit tight on time. I would love to help improve this software though.

Thanks for your time,
Zack

 

[RocketRobz]

Okay, so I have some information that might be useful or might not be. I downloaded a file recovery program and used it on my 3DSBank folder.

View attachment 495639

It seems that the reason that the files were corrupted was the it replaced the 'S' character with the 'æ' character in the Slot file names, and I think that the 'X' icon means that the folder was marked as deleted. Are we sure that libfat may have caused issue? To me, I feel like it is strange that it consistently corrupted each folder in the same manner, but you'll have to forgive me if I'm speaking out of ignorance, because I've been doing a bit of a deep dive on filesystems, console architectures, and even C and low-level code, so this is a bit out of my wheelhouse. It's a bit more challenging than what I usually do, but that also makes it a good learning experience. I would like to work on this libslim code but I don't know if I'm a bit in over my head. I also have a lot of studying to do so I'm a bit tight on time. I would love to help improve this software though.

Thanks for your time,
Zack

Yes, I am sure, as the 3DSBank source code contains no instance of the 'æ' character. It does use the rename function for moving the folder though, so it's possible there's some better function I'm not aware of.

 

[zackarhino]

Yes, I am sure, as the 3DSBank source code contains no instance of the 'æ' character. It does use the rename function for moving the folder though, so it's possible there's some better function I'm not aware of.

Alright, I'll have to peruse through the 3DSBank code as well. I just skimmed it and it looks like there's not that much code. Do you accept pull requests? Again, it's gonna be a while if at all though.

Is there a reason it runs in DS(i?) mode? Is it just to use the dependency? This is only for CIA files right? I'm still a little confused by that

 

[RocketRobz]

Alright, I'll have to peruse through the 3DSBank code as well. I just skimmed it and it looks like there's not that much code. Do you accept pull requests? Again, it's gonna be a while if at all though.

Yes, I do.

Is there a reason it runs in DS(i?) mode? Is it just to use the dependency? This is only for CIA files right? I'm still a little confused by that

It says this in the first post:

This app runs in TWL/DSi mode to avoid potential issues when moving the "Nintendo 3DS" folder into the 3DSBank.

If 3DSBank we're a 3DS mode homebrew (regardless if it's .cia or .3dsx), then issues like crashing and/or the folder being unmovable would occur, due to the possibility of files in the "Nintendo 3DS" folder being open.

 

[zackarhino]

Yes, I do.

It says this in the first post:

If 3DSBank we're a 3DS mode homebrew (regardless if it's .cia or .3dsx), then issues like crashing and/or the folder being unmovable would occur, due to the possibility of files in the "Nintendo 3DS" folder being open.

Ah OK, that makes sense, I figured it would be something like that. I read that before but I forgot about it. Alright well, hopefully I'll catch up soon on progress. Thanks for the clarification.