custom-install

Installs a title directly to an SD card for the Nintendo 3DS. Originally created late June 2019.

Summary

Windows standalone

1. Dump boot9.bin and movable.sed from a 3DS system.
2. Download the latest releases.
3. Extract and run ci-gui. Read windows-quickstart.txt.

With installed Python

Note for Windows users: Enabling "Add Python 3.X to PATH" is NOT required! Python is installed with the py launcher by default.

1. Dump boot9.bin and movable.sed from a 3DS system.
2. Download the repo (zip link or git clone)
3. Install the packages:

• Windows: Double-click windows-install-dependencies.py
  • Alternate manual method: py -3 -m pip install --user -r requirements-win32.txt
• macOS/Linux: python3 -m pip install --user -r requirements.txt

4. Run custominstall.py with boot9.bin, movable.sed, path to the SD root, and CIA files to install (see Usage section).
5. Download and use custom-install-finalize on the 3DS system to finish the install.

Setup

Linux users must build wwylele/save3ds and place save3ds_fuse in bin/linux. Install rust using rustup, then compile with: cargo build --release --no-default-features. The compiled binary is located in target/release/save3ds_fuse, copy it to bin/linux.

movable.sed is required and can be provided with -m or --movable.

boot9 is needed:

• -b or --boot9 argument (if set)
• BOOT9_PATH environment variable (if set)
• %APPDATA%\3ds\boot9.bin (Windows-specific)
• ~/Library/Application Support/3ds/boot9.bin (macOS-specific)
• ~/.3ds/boot9.bin
• ~/3ds/boot9.bin

A SeedDB is needed for newer games (2015+) that use seeds.
SeedDB is checked in order of:

• -s or --seeddb argument (if set)
• SEEDDB_PATH environment variable (if set)
• %APPDATA%\3ds\seeddb.bin (Windows-specific)
• ~/Library/Application Support/3ds/seeddb.bin (macOS-specific)
• ~/.3ds/seeddb.bin
• ~/3ds/seeddb.bin

custom-install-finalize

custom-install-finalize installs a ticket, plus a seed if required. This is required for the title to appear and function.

This can be built as most 3DS homebrew projects with devkitARM.

Usage

Use -h to view arguments.

Examples:

py -3 custominstall.py -b boot9.bin -m movable.sed --sd E:\ file.cia file2.cia
python3 custominstall.py -b boot9.bin -m movable.sed --sd /Volumes/GM9SD file.cia file2.cia
python3 custominstall.py -b boot9.bin -m movable.sed --sd /media/GM9SD file.cia file2.cia

GUI

A GUI is provided to make the process easier.

GUI Setup

Linux users may need to install a Tk package:

• Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt install python3-tk
• Manjaro/Arch: sudo pacman -S tk

Install the requirements listed in "Summary", then run ci-gui.py.

Development

Building Windows standalone

Using a 32-bit version of Python is recommended to build a version to be distributed.

A virtual environment is recommended to isolate the packages from system directories. The build script make-standalone.bat assumes that the dependencies are in PATH.

Install the dependencies, plus cx-Freeze. In a virtual environment, the specific Python version doesn't need to be requested.

pip install cx-freeze -r requirements-win32.txt

Copy custom-install-finalize.3dsx to the project root, this will be copied to the build directory and included in the final archive.

Run make-standalone.bat. This will run cxfreeze and make a standalone version at dist\custom-install-standalone.zip

License/Credits

save3ds by wwylele is used to interact with the Title Database (details in bin/README).

Thanks to @nek0bit for redesigning custominstall.py to work as a module, and for implementing an earlier GUI.

Thanks to @LyfeOnEdge from the brewtools Discord for designing the second version of the GUI. Special thanks to CrafterPika and archbox for testing.

Thanks to @BpyH64 for researching how to generate the cmacs.