Hacking Sneek Frustrations

[godreborn]

I'm not sure why this is happening, but I cannot get sneek or sneek+di to work. I manually compiled uneek about two years ago, and I had no problem with that. however, now, I'm trying to use sneek or sneek+di with dml. I always get a black screen no matter what I do. I've tried manually compiling, using the gui program, and using modmii. I've tried two different nands (one of which was the one I used with uneek) as well as a nand created by modmii. I also tried two different sd cards. this doesn't make sense at all. I'm not sure if something is not being compiled correctly or what, but this shouldn't be happening especially with the automatic nature of modmii. after all, it is simply drag and drop.

 

[obcd]

Well, first there is sneek(+di) and uneek(+di) there is also the neek2o version.
You are not exactly giving us much information what version you are trying to get running.
There are also several ways now to launch the neek environment. We don't know which one you use.
Another important thing is if your wii is having bootmii@[member='boot2490'] or just as ios.

If you compile the neek stuff yourself, make sure you use the correct arm tools. The most recent ones don't produce correct code.
sneek2o + di is broken. There is a bug that causes issues.
A modmii nand with sneek and sneek2o can take up 10 minutes before the first screen appears.
After initial setup, it can take another 20 minutes to reach the system menu.

 

[godreborn]

I was/am trying to get sneek or sneek+di working. I even tried uneek using the compiler as I read that some sd cards will allow uneek but not sneek. all ended with a black screen. I've tried using the sliksvn manual dos method, the auto-installer using the gui tool, as well as modmii's nand and sneek creation. I don't recall ever having this problem originally. I'm not sure if I'm not waiting long enough, but I think I've waited over ten minutes. I'm just baffled as to what's going on mainly due to the automatic functions being either drag and drop or merely renaming a file. I don't see how that could mess up. the original uneek works, and I noticed that the manual creation of sneek creates a kernel file that is of comparable size to my uneek's kernel, but the automatic installer creates one that is quite a bit larger. how is that even possible??? according to the tutorial, all kernel files should be the same size regardless of whether or not ur using sneek or uneek. I've tested everything, and everything points to the kernel file being the problem. I received no errors with any process, so I really don't know what else to do or how to determine what's wrong. originally, I made a uneek of nand 3.2. I'm on 4.1 nand now--would that have any bearing? it's almost as if the kernel doesn't know where to look for the nand. I've put it on the root of the sd card, and I've even used the original 3.2 nand as well as the uneek's kernel that was created using the manual installation. again, all result in a black screen. it really doesn't make any sense.

btw, what is neek2o? I don't seem to recall that when compiling uneek 2 years ago.

 

[obcd]

Mid 2011, Crediar stopped working on neek development. At that moment, Overjoy and I started to work on it.
We called our work neek2o to clearly have a difference between the original neek and ours.

We have a di that can launch wbfs backups from the harddisk. So it's no longer needed to extract the game files into fst.
We have system to relocate the emulated nand folders to a subfolder of the usb drive (uneek2o) or sd card (sneek2o)
We also have a launch channel that can launch uneek2o without sd card in the wii. (And an application as well)
So, it's possible to keep the original bootmii folder on the sd card. It's not needed anymore to boot neek2o
We also have embedded a system to maintain homebrew usb access in uneek, using isfs calls.
Using that, modified homebrew programs can dtill use the usb drive (in uneek2o) like if they run on real nand.

Around november, Crediar picked up his work on uneek again. He added direct game extraction into fst extracted format.
Since he needed more code space for that, He altered the way kernel.bin was created.
Due to that, the file size of kernel.bin could become bigger. (It used to be around 165KB)

Sneek requires a fat(32) formatted sd(hc) card with a 32KB cluster size.
If you used it for dml, you likely formatted it with a 64KB cluster size for better performance.

 

[shortz1994]

on top of what obcd say's, some times you also need to put your anti virus to sleep while the nand an the rest of the files are being built. i have noticed that showmii nands/ wads.. while doing it's thing will pop up a little window, an you have to click out of it ( does the ding thing, an say's some thing not sure what it is.). also even though while using neek2o you don't need an sd card to launch from hdd. modmii will still build two sneek folders.( again while your anti virus is sleeping). but will not if it's awake.( tested this many times, i have 5 nands, an to build each one i had to follow these steps.).
still not sure why some anti virus programs go bonkers, an some don't care. while using the files to build sneek,neek. but so far this is what works for me.
an check google code for neek2o related files, an try a lower revised,like 54 or one of the others. i know 54 i have had for a long time, an seems real stable. (nothing aginst the newer versions, again this is what works for me.)

 

[obcd]

One of the files needed to build kernel.bin is IosKpatch.exe.
The AVG anti virus scanner (hopefully falsely) identifies this file as a virus and refuses to run it.
You can add the file to an exception list. The files in that list are no longer checked.
(Still better than turning your virus scanner off completely)

 

[shortz1994]

One of the files needed to build kernel.bin is IosKpatch.exe.
The AVG anti virus scanner (hopefully falsely) identifies this file as a virus and refuses to run it.
You can add the file to an exception list. The files in that list are no longer checked.
(Still better than turning your virus scanner off completely)

i don't use AVG i use CA one one machine an use NORTON on the other.. even after adding this to the exception list it still pops up, as a backdoor trojan.(on norton). on CA it just blocks it.
so i just put them to sleep for 5 min till it's done building a nand. it's no big deal.

 

[zerofalcon]

I tried months ago using sneeky compiler and so far my sneek+di and dml setup works fine. I have a microSD 16 gb sandisk class 2 formatted to FAT32 64kb cluster size with a SD adapter, this way most GC games works great with no lags. Try using sneeky compiler.

http://code.google.com/p/sneeky-compiler/

 

[godreborn]

I managed to get show wii mads to work by turning off my anti-virus software. however, I was still unable to get sneek to load. I know that it's reading the kernel.bin as changing the name caused the disc light to flash. I also tried a different sneek compiler. does sneek now require the installation of the neek wad? is neek essentially a way to go between sneek/uneek and ur regular nand? neek wasn't available when I originally installed uneek, so I'm not entirely sure I understand what it is. where does the nand need to be on the sd card if installing the modmii's neek? does it need to be on the root of the card like normal? just to clarify, the armboot is what injects patches in real-time to the emulated nand and the kernel.bin uses that information as well as tells the system where the emulated nand is located (SD or USB)?

 

[obcd]

The original neek system was launched by changing the bootmii armboot.bin in the sd card bootmii folder.
The neek armboot.bin loads the sd:/sneek/kernel.bin and launches it.
So, people who had bootmii @ boot2 launched directly into neek environment.
People who only had bootmii @ ios needed to launch neek by starting bootmii trough the homebrew channel.
They could also reload ios 254 (bootmii ios) which launched the neek environment.

The neek2o system has it's neek channel. The application in that channel loads kernel.bin from sd (sneek2o) or usb (uneek2o) into memory.
It than launches an embedded armboot.bin that launches that kernel.bin from memory. This is done because the armboot.bin(mini) isn't having usb access. When you are in neek, the channel simply reboots the wii and returns you to the real nand environment.

The old method to boot still works as well. Modmii will create a bootmiisneek folder during it's setup. Copiing the contents of that folder into the bootmii folder will revert to the old launching method.

Neek2o is capable of working with multiple nands. It searches the root of your storage (sd for sneek, usb for uneek) for a nands folder. The nand folders should be in subfolders of that folder. To my knowledge, modmii will choose a pl_eu subfolder for the european nand and a pl_us folder for the usa nand. Under that folder, you can find the nand folders that used to be on the root of the sd card like title .. ticket .. sys .. shared1 ..

Neek2o will create a nandcfg.bin file with the nands it can find under the nands folder. It will use the first one in that list.
For backward compatibility, it will still use the nand in the root of your storage if the nands folder doesn't exist.

Kernel.bin is basically part of an ios with the ISFS file system (normally the nand flashchip) rerouted to either sd card or usb drive.
The armboot.bin isn't doing any real time patching to the kernel.bin. It's the ES and FS modules from the ios that are replaced.

 

[godreborn]

so once the wii detects the kernel.bin, it'll know from that file where the nand is located? is there a way to detect corruption with the armboot, kernel, or nand? what doesn't make sense is everything seems to work correctly with no error yet it won't load no matter what. I can't figure out what file might be causing this. is it even possible for an sd card to be compatible with uneek but not sneek?

 

[obcd]

There is a kernel.bin that searches for a nands folder on the sd card (the sneek one) and there is a kernel.bin that searches them from the usb drive (the uneek one) If kerel.bin can't locate the sneek/nandcfg.bin folder, it will search for a nands folder. It will catalog all subfolders of the nands folder as valid nands. That information is stored in the nandcfg.bin file.

With the new channel to launch neek2o, it's possible to launch uneek2o without an sd card.
So, if your sd card isn't correctly formatted, it's possible that it won't work with sneek2o.

So, how is your sd card formatted? What's it's cluster size?

You can add a sneek/eslog.txt file to the sneek folder. (It's simply an ascii file with a few characters of text in it created by something like notepad)
The verbose version of neek2o should write debug information to that file.

Considering corruption:

armboot.bin: Is embedded in the channel launcher application.
kernel.bin: You got my versions to test with.
nand folders: You can either extract a bootmii backup nand, or you can create one with modmii.
Besides that, you need the debug output to find out if something is wrong with those. If some stuff is missing, you should see the dvd slot light flashing.

A thing to check first is the creation of the nandcfg.bin. If you find that in the sneek folder after a launch attempt, it proves that kernel.bin is starting and also proves that neek is able to access your sd card. If that file isn't created, the issue isn't your nand for sure.