v9.0 Joyconhax Edition

(April Fools, obviously)

As the 3DS rapidly approaches end of life, and DS flashcards are becoming harder to find, we've been busy looking into new ways to load Luma onto supported hardware. We're pleased to announce that our research has yielded a new boot method: joyconhax! Joyconhax is simple, easy, and only requires a pair of Switch joycons.

Use is simple: place the JoyCons within close proximity to the sides of your 3DS to establish direct kernel access, pair the joycons with your host computer, and upload the Luma3DS FIRM file to the drive that pops up. Have fun!

v9.0

Here's our holiday gift to you :)

• Use open source reimplementations of the SM and PXI FIRM modules
• Fixed breakpoints in the Rosalina debugger (thanks @Nanquitas)
• Added RAM viewer/editor/dumper feature to Rosalina (thanks @LiquidFenrir)
• Rosalina now cleanly reboots the console when the option is selected
• Fixed Rosalina screenshots for RGB5_A1/RGBA4 framebuffer formats (used for example in Virtual Console titles)
• Stubbed isTitleAllowed to allow Nintendo-blocked titles to launch (outdated Ironfall/Flipnote Studio 3D/etc)
• ARM9 exheader and FS patches are now always applied as they cause no drawbacks
• Throw an error if file writes or emuNAND boot are attempted while the SD card is write-locked
• Display boot source on the bottom screen in the config menu
• The console will now shutdown when the shell is closed in the Luma menus, unless the user booted via ntrboot
• Numerous Exception Handler fixes
• FatFS updated to v0.13
• Check if NWM is running before allowing WiFi toggling in Rosalina
• Screenshots are now sorted by date/time using osGetTime, removing the counting delay if the user has a lot of screenshots, thanks to @Hayleia!

Note: BootNTR is broken in this version, unless you use the latest commit, not release from this repo: https://github.com/Nanquitas/BootNTR

Edit (20/12/17 18:28 EST): BootNTR Selector v2.10 has been released with support for Luma v9.0, you can now use the latest release instead of needing to manually compile the latest commit!

Notes on the changes made to Rosalina's debugger:

• The physical memory access "bit31" mapping (0--0x30000000 => 0x80000000--0xB0000000) as well as privileged (kernel) mappings confuse debugger clients like IDA's which interpret the value of the registers. Access to those mappings can be toggled using "monitor toggleextmemaccess" instead (issue reported by @Nanquitas).
• Additionally, support for the buggy IDA 6.8 gdb client was removed. Please use IDA 7.0 or higher.

P.S: IDA 7.0 added client support for no-ack mode (Debugging options > Set specific options), which should be enabled to make debugging twice as smooth. "Use stepping support" should be unchecked.

v8.1.1

• Add WiFi and LED toggling in Rosalina
• Add loading of extended headers from SD card/CTRNAND, they can be loaded from /luma/titles/TITLEID/exheader.bin. Among the other things, this also allows to load bigger code.bins
• "Logged" ErrDisp errors are now written to /luma/errdisp.txt without causing an error screen
• Fix LayeredFS for Pokemon Art Academy and possibly other games which mistakenly load files from rom:// instead of rom:/
• Fix conflict between emunand selection and payload booting when "Autoboot EmuNAND" is checked, you now need to press L + DPad to boot payloads if that option is checked
• Rearranged options in the Rosalina menu
• Fix warnings with devkitARM r47

Note: given the efforts in supporting two separate codebases and the lack of confirmed issues which can be attributed to the changes in 8.1 compared to "legacy" Luma, we're discontinuing that branch. If you have an issue which you can reproduce on this release (test at least twice to make sure it can be reproduced) but not on a "legacy" build, please submit an issue to this GitHub repository. We will fully discontinue the "legacy" codebase in 2 weeks from now if no such issue is reported and verified.

We're taking donations to help a homeless friend who is in dire need for help.

v8.1

• Add saving of Rosalina settings (key combo and homebrew title ID)
• Add a reboot and a power-off option in the "Miscellaneous" Rosalina menu
• Display the IP address on most menus when either InputRedirection or the GDB stub (or both) is enabled
• Full support for system versions >= 4.0
• Partial support (all arm9 patches, but no arm11 patch) for 3.0
• Halve the time necessary to take a screenshot
• Boots around 1 second faster on New 3DS
• Add region-free patch for e-manuals
• Add DSP firmware signature patch by @MerryMage
• Fix InputRedirection, C-stick/ZL/ZR redirection works in games too
• Fix langemu bugs
• Fix write-only hardware watchpoint support in the gdbstub
• Fix random boot issues
• Fix booting on 2.x and 1.x dev units
• Merge #561
• Fix building on macOS
• Other minor improvements and fixes

Existing software compatible with InputRedirection are InputRedirectionClient-Qt, InputClient-SDL, TPPFLUSH

We're taking donations to help a friend.

v8.0

This major release introduces Rosalina, Luma3DS's custom system module, the functionalities of which are described below.

You'll need to upgrade to boot9strap v1.2 or higher.

Edit: please use newer releases!

---

• A menu which can be opened at any time (combo: L+Down+Select, although you can change it at runtime), featuring:
  • A process list submenu (used to select process to attach when the debugger is enabled)
  • A processes patch submenu: patches FS and SM
  • A N3DS Clock+L2 submenu (hidden on O3DS)
  • A screenshot action. This is slow but it works
  • Other various options, see below
  • A display of the remaining battery percentage in the bottom right of the screen, and of the Luma3DS commit at the bottom left
• Input redirection:
  • Implementation thanks to @Stary2001, based off the work of ShinyQuagsire
  • Allows you to control your 3DS using your PC with, for example, an external controller (Xbox360 controller, etc.)
  • Should work with every game with minimal lag
  • C-stick/ZL/ZR redirection is N3DS-only, possibly only with newer games
  • Use this client (compatible with xinput on Windows, evdev on Linux, should be compatible with OSX) or that one
  • If you activate this feature in Home Menu, applications will be prevented to disconnect the 3DS from the Internet while they're running. This takes effect until the next boot
• 3DSX loading:
  • Thanks to @fincs
  • 3DSX files can now be loaded seamlessly, and work just like installed titles (meaning you can use the Home Menu and applets while a 3DSX application is running, use the GDB stub (see below), etc.)!
  • No need for *hax payloads anymore!
  • By default, the title used to boot boot.3dsx is hblauncher_loader, but this can be changed at any time (Miscellaneous options > Switch the hb. title to the current app.) : simply launch any title, use that option, close the title ; the next time you launch that title, it will run boot.3dsx
  • *hax payloads don't work anymore. You'll have to use version of the Homebrew Menu >= 2.0, which can be found here (and in the homebrew starter pack later on)
• Better language emulation:
  • Language (and region) emulation should now work for all games
  • You can now specify a country (2 letter code) and a state ID (2-digit hex integer), for example: EUR FR FR 01
• A fully-featured GDB stub:
  • Network code and skeleton thanks to @Stary2001
  • Can debug up to 3 processes simultaneously (the process to attach to are to be selected in the process list menu)
    • Use the process menu when the debugger is enabled to select processes to attach to.
  • Use -lctrud and -lcitro3dd instead of -lctru and -lcitro3d, -Og instead of -O2, drop -fomit-frame-pointer build debug versions of your own applications.
  • Compatible with both GDB and IDA PRO:
    • The GDB stub requires a patched version of GDB to work, available here (3ds-gdb-* archives), which will get eventually integrated into devkitARM itself.
    • The GDB stubs also works with IDA (Use single-step support, in the specific debugger options prompt, should be unchecked).
  • Software breakpoints, 2 hardware watchpoints (globally), all basic features and many more, like catch syscall, info os, etc.
  • Can access the 80000000..B0000000 strongly ordered mapping (see below) as well as privileged memory
  • If you activate this feature in Home Menu, applications will be prevented to disconnect the 3DS from the Internet while they're running. This takes effect until the next boot

Now for some developer/technical details:

• A "kernel extension" extending the features of Kernel11 ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°):
  • New features for existing SVCs, for example:
    • New types for svcGetProcessInfo: 0x10000 to get a process's name, 0x10001 to get a process's title ID, 0x10002 to 0x10007 for section attributes, 0x10008 for TTBR1, etc.
    • New types for svcGetSystemInfo: 0x10000 for CFW info, 0x10001 for N3DS-related info, 0x10002 for TTBCR and TTBR0 per core, etc.
    • New types for svcGetThreadInfo: 0x10000 for thread local storage
    • Many other changes not listed here
  • New SVCs:
    • See csvc.h ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
    • Indirect SVC: svc 0xFE
  • Debug features:
    • SVC permission checks don't exist anymore
    • Everything behaves as if the "Allow debug" kernel flags was always set, and svcKernelSetState as well as the official debug handlers always believe that the unit is a development one. This is needed for the below item
    • No need to do svcKernelSetState(6, 1, 1LL) for user-specified exception handlers anymore.
    • Numerous fixes of Luma3DS's fatal exception handlers. Moreover, they are now only used either on privileged-mode crashes or when there is no preferred alternative, that are namely: KDebug based-debugging, or user-defined exception handlers.
  • New memory mapping: PA 00000000..30000000 -> VA 80000000..B0000000 [ Priv: RWX, User: RWX ] [ Shared, Strongly Ordered ] (accessible from the GDB stub)
  • Because of memory issues, ErrDisp is not launched; err:f has been reimplemented.

Minor issues: the menu can sometime freeze in some games (that will be attempted to be fixed before next release), versions < 9.0 haven't been tested.

---

• Luma is now a proper FIRM with separate arm11, arm9 and modules sections
• Switched to a whitelist for FIRM loading
• It's now possible to boot newer DS flashcarts (the ones appearing in the original DS' main menu) and early DSi flashcarts directly from Home Menu
• Luma now works with NANDs using custom NCSDs/MBRs
• "Enable exception handlers" was removed, since it's always on with Rosalina choosing the best exception reporting method depending on the context
• Luma can now boot on its own as FIRM0/1 (although note this is not recommended or supported at all and we very strongly recommend using boot9strap)

v7.1

• boot9strap support (all older entrypoints, including ARM9LoaderHax and menuhax, are no longer supported).
• Replaced .bin (brahma/a9lh) payload loading with .firm (FIRM format) payloads. This format allows for way more flexibility and is also the only one supported by boot9strap.
• Holding START when only one payload is present directly boots it.
• Small LayeredFS fixes.

v7.0.5

• You can now load code.bin binaries and code.ips patches for system modules and applets.
• Fixed LayeredFS being broken in 7.0.4 with several games (Animal Crossing, Zelda Triforce Heroes and probably more).
• Rewrote a large part of the LayeredFS code, this should allow to properly fix eventual conflicts that arose with extdata and other non-RomFS archives.

v7.0.4

Unfortunate events related to moderator censorship have occurred regarding the /r/3DShacks subreddit (read more on Plailect's guide). Given this we cannot, in good faith, support this subreddit or its IRC until there is a change in leadership and will no longer be participating.

Sorry for the many close releases, but some bugs were discovered regarding LayeredFS.

• Fixed not closing folder handles after checking for "romfs" folders' existence.
• Fixed extdata being redirected in 7.0.3 (could have caused issues if an extdata and a romfs file with the same path and name existed), thanks @mariohackandglitch for discovering this.
• Added displaying title IDs for ARM11 exceptions.
• Sped up the pattern searching for LayeredFS.
• Cleaned up loader's code.

v7.0.3

Unfortunate events related to moderator censorship have occurred regarding the /r/3DShacks subreddit (read more on Plailect's guide). Given this we cannot, in good faith, support this subreddit or its IRC until there is a change in leadership and will no longer be participating.

• LayeredFS compatibility has been improved: update RomFSes which are mounted as "ext:" (such as Taiko no Tatsujin: Don Don! Mystery Adventure) now work.

v7.0.2

Unfortunate events related to moderator censorship have occurred regarding the /r/3DShacks subreddit (read more on Plailect's guide). Given this we cannot, in good faith, support this subreddit or its IRC until there is a change in leadership and will no longer be participating.

• Improved LayeredFS compatibility: games like New Super Mario Bros. 2 and Zelda: Triforce Heroes now work.