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My Pi 400 Travel Desktop

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow8472, and today I am trying out my Raspberry Pi 400 as a lightweight daily driver. Let’s get started.

rPi 400

The Pi 400 is a special edition of Raspberry Pi – essentially a Pi 4 built into a keyboard. It’s missing a USB 2.0 port (made up for by the keyboard) and the 3.5mm audio jack. In theory, the miniature keyboard computer is perfect for travel – assuming you have a screen at your destination that is.

Choosing a Distro

My first thought was to try installing Arch. A brief search found an Arch on ARM project as vanilla Arch only supports x86 architecture. The instructions involved formatting a drive on the terminal. I bought a 256 GB SD card and did so on the first convenient rPi install I had – Kali linux.

It took a few failed attempts to install Arch. The pure open source method that reportedly works on the regular Pi 4 didn’t on my Pi 400, and the standard method wasn’t cooperative when installing a login manager and any of a few desktop environments. Running on a time crunch before leaving on a trip, I switched to DietPi, another lightweight distro I’ve worked with before for, but for a much different project. As with Arch, MATE was uncooperative, so I settled with XFCE. Special thanks to Balena Etcher for a special warning when formatting large drives.

Packing For a Trip

To shortcut setup, I copied my browser and LibreOffice data from my main desktop. LibreOffice worked for me, but didn’t carry the full dark mode – a problem I’ve encountered before, but ultimately decided to live with.

Firefox ESR –as installed from DietPi’s hedged garden– refused to accept my profile. Regular Firefox –installed from the apt repositories– was up to date and started as expected. Notably, it included my extensions – especially Bitwarden, my password vault.

A screen was not procured at my destination, so I packed one from home. The missing audio jack was also problematic, so I packed my Blue Yeti with plans to disable voice monitoring. For redundancy, I packed an HDMI monitor, but busted the ​​styrofoam while stuffing it into the slightly wrong box. As of writing, I have done nothing with sound.

Deployment

We left on our trip. Upon arriving, I found my over-packed tech bag lacked a long enough HDMI cable. I borrowed a longer one. The monitor signal kept flickering. For a while, I assumed I was overloading the Pi with a couple hundred browser tabs, but after a power blink and several reboots, it came out that the HDMI was bad. We bought a replacement, and it’s been working properly since.

Ejected Challenges

Arch wasn’t the only thing I had to back off from. I brought a couple additional Pi 4’s to have myself a nice, little network with Pi-Hole ad blocking, but Wi-Fi strength and configuration challenges meant those were both a no-go.

Another challenge I want to pull off is playing Stardew Valley. I copied the files over back home, but haven’t had time to try the conversion I found yet.

Takeaway

Finishing a project as a rule is better than stalling an overly ambitious one. I have an on-the-go workstation, even though it still lacks polish.

Of special interest, this week marks the 6th anniversary of my Robotics Lab. And some months ago, I decided I wanted to do a Sabbath year cycle. I’ve proven that I can be consistent at posting, even if I feel my quality slips some weeks. The facts of the matters is that weekly posts are getting a bit repetitive for me, so for the next year, I’m only going to post when I finish a major project, such as when I have the full software suite I have in mind for my homelab. After that, perhaps I’ll stick to monthly. We’ll see in a year’s time.

Final Question

Setting up a travel computer on the quick was a bit of a trick. What must-haves would you include in a similar package?

I look forward to hearing your answers in the comments below or on my Socials.

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Server Rebuild With Quadlet

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today I am continuing my work on my home’s network. Let’s get started!

State of the Homelab

Bitwarden. I self host using Vaultwarden, a 3rd party server. Done properly, it fits nicely in a larger homelab stack, but its OCI container can stand alone in a development environment. Due to skill limitations, I’ve been using it in this configuration. My recent network work has invalidated my manually self-signed certificates, and I’d rather focus my efforts on upgrades instead of re-learning the old system to maintain it.

Today, I am working on my newest server, Joystick (Rocky Linux 9). I compiled some command-by-command notes on using `podman generate systemd` to make self-starting, rootless containers, but just as I was getting the hang of it again, a warning message encouraged me to use a newer technique: Quadlet.

Quadlet

Quadlets? I’ve studied them before, but failed to grasp key concepts. It finally clicked though: they replace not just running `podman generate systemd` once I have a working prototype setup, but also everything I might want to do leading up to that point including defining Podman networks and volumes. Just make your Quadlet definitions once, and the system handles the rest.

The tutorial I found that best matches my use case can be found at mo8it.com [1]. Follow the link under Works Cited for the full text. It’s very detailed; I couldn’t have done a better job myeslf. But it doesn’t cover everything, like how `sudo su user` isn’t a true login for `systemctl –user …`. I had to use a twitchy Cockpit terminal for that (Wayland-Firefox bug).

Caddy

Caddy is the base of my dream homelab tech tree, so I’ll start there. My existing prototype calls for a Podman network, two Podman volumes, and a Caddyfile I’m mounting as a volume from the file system. I threw together caddy.container based on my script, but only the supporting network and volumes showed up. Systemd picked up on “mysleep.container,” an example from RedHat.

As it turned out, caddy.container had missed a capitalization. I found the problem by commenting out lines, reloading, and running `systemctl –user list-unit-files` to see when it didn’t load. Likewise, my Caddyfile volume had a file path bug to squash.

Vaultwarden

Good, that’s started and should be stable. On to Vaultwarden. I updated both ButtonMash and Joystick’s NFS unit files to copy over relevant files, but Joystick’s SELinux didn’t like my user’s fingerprints (owner/group/SELinux data) on the NFS definitions. I cleaned those up with a series of cp and mv commands with sudo and then I could enable the automounts.

Vaultwarden went up with simple enough debugging, but the challenge was in accessing it. I toyed with Cerberus/OPNsense (hardware firewall) DNS overrides until Caddy returned a test message from <domain.lan>:<port#>.

Everything

My next battle was with Joystick’s firewall: I forgot to forward tcp traffic from ports 80 and 443 to 8000 and 44300, respectively. Back on Cerberus, I had to actually figure out the alias system and use that. Firefox needed Caddy’s root certificate. Bouncing back to the network Quadlet, I configured it according to another tutorial doing something very similar to what I want [2]. I configured mine without an external DNS. A final adjustment to my Caddyfile to correct Vaultwarden’s fully qualified domain name, and I was in – padlock and everything.

Takeaways

I come out of this project with an intuition of how to manage Systemd files – especially Quadlet. The Quadlet workflow makes Podman container recipes for Systemd, and a working container will work forever – baring bad updates. I would still recommend prototyping with scripts when stuck though. When a Quadlet fails, there is no obvious error message to look up – it just fails to show up.

Even though it is still new, a lot of my time on Joystick this week was diagnosing my own sloppiness. Reboots helped when I got stuck, and thanks to Quadlet, I didn’t have to worry about spaghetti scripts like how I originally organized ButtonMash and never stabilized this victory I re-achieved today.

Final Question

NextCloud is going to be very similar, which I will make a pod along with MariaDB and Redis containers. But I am still missing one piece: NFS. How do I do that?

I look forward to your answers below or on my Socials.

Works Cited

[1] mo8bit, “Quadlet: Running Podman containers under systemd,” mo8it.com, Jan. 2-Feb. 19, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://mo8it.com/blog/quadlet/. [accessed: Sept. 13, 2024].

[2] G. Coletto, “How to install multi-container applications with Podman quadlets,” giacomo.coletto.io, May 25, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://giacomo.coletto.io/blog/podman-quadlets/. [accessed: Sept. 13, 2024].

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Replacing My Tablet’s Battery

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow8472 with a side project of the week. Let’s get started!

I’ve had my Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1 (2016) since before my new Android device lockout. It’s held out for the most part, but several months ago, it developed a problem where it would lose power while plugging it in or unplugging it. At worst, it would pulse its battery charging picture until eventually moving to a charge meter. The problem grew worse over time, and new power cables didn’t solve the problem. The parts to replace the USB connector and battery were out of my price range. One day, I even made a “Goodbye” backup.

I don’t know how I found this, but a little pressure on the back let my tablet boot again. Sometimes, the battery would register as empty and shut down once Android loaded – even when connected to wall power and the battery showed up as 100% again a moment later.

I zeroed in on the left-middle (viewed from the front in portrait mode) as the place to press. As I got used to this arrangement, I had to keep pressing harder. Eventually, I pried the back cover off with an orange peeler. The battery has two sections, and I’d been pressing on the bottom-outside corner of the upper pack. The battery itself did not appear bloated or otherwise damaged, and continued to work applying pressure directly to the battery pack (DUMB IDEA, by the way; DO NOT TRY) and pressing the tiny, exposed power button.

As it turns out, Android sees the battery as a critical part (unlike laptops), and I don’t have the tools or know-how to simulate one, but some kind of wall-only power mode would have been a courteous gesture, even if it were buried deep within the firmware.

Through another month or two of observations, I learned how the battery failed when I stopped pressing too soon after booting or if the tablet started drawing too much power, such as when turning on when when plugging it in while off. With this, I narrowed my diagnostic to just the battery pack, which I figured was worth trying to replace. Reviews of different compatible replacement batteries said not to expect more than a year out of it – even genuine ones. My guess is that it’s all old stock, changes pushed to the operating system intended to slow battery aging, or a combination thereof.

Replacing the battery once it arrived was only a matter of formality. The screwdriver that came with the kit was worthless, but I had access to a better one. I expected little of the battery, and I got little of it. It’s a step or two above junk, but it’s worlds better than the old one. I just need to be a bit more careful about how I handle my tablet from now on. If it only lasts another year or less, my plan is to replace it entirely.

Final Question

I can’t find any information online about applying pressure to batteries. Do you have any insights? If so, I look forward to hearing from you in the comments below or on my Socials.

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Responsibility of the Network

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today I have a doozy of a network week to cover. Let’s get started!

Meet the Computers

  • Cerberus – the main star today. It is our new hardware firewall running OPNsense
  • Red Router – a tp-link gaming Wi-Fi router fancied up beyond what it should have been
  • LAB – my homelab with a few servers
  • LAN – everything else connected via Wi-Fi or Ethernet

Network Implosion

It all started with revisiting a .lan domain. Cerberus’ extensive webUI left me with the hunch I’d need one machine in charge of DHCP assigning dynamic IP addresses. Red Router’s “operation mode” to work as an access point was hidden in literally the last menu to click through.

It was afternoon and no one would be using the network for the 30 seconds to 5 minutes I estimated switching the LAB and LAN Ethernet cables from Red Router over to Cerberus would take. Nope. No traffic made it through. DHCP mis-configuration? Cue a slow back and forth, bopping a setting from a workstation and trying a different physical configuration. Eventually, Cerberus ended up on my desk with Red Router talking directly to our ISP’s gateway/modem.

Order of events is a bit fuzzy from here, but when the Wi-Fi stopped working, I was without a good access to online answers. I worked the problem into the night. Around 1:00 AM, I knew I had done too much for a clean reversion. For two hours, I worked in loops hoping to spot something different. So much waiting! Cerberus would behave on my desk, then fail when redeployed. Worse: when I re-connected all the wires to Red Router, it started dancing between 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.1.1 every 45 seconds or so. I configured its IP manually, but gave up on Internet by morning at 3:00 AM, preparing to concede to my father’s suggestion earlier about hiring a professional to untangle my mess.

The Next Day

Newtork Loop. In my brain fog, I had Red Router talking to itself on a cable leftover from removing Cerberus for the night. With the house to myself for several hours, I alternated between bursts of intense diagnostics and mental processing. Somewhere in there, I rebooted the ISP’s modem.

Around noon, I realized the extra ports on Cerberus aren’t a switch as is Red Router’s default configuration, but were following firewall rules – which explained its behavior the previous day when I tried a computer from LAB without anything in-between. At around 3 PM, I got a Discord notification while mentally checked out, letting me know the network was back on.

6 PM on the second day: I situated my workstation in Cerberus’ LAN port and a Raspberry Pi in one I named LAN2. I’d previously copied firewall rules from LAN to LAN2 and LAB, but to no obvious effect – until I had the two computers ping each other. LAN2 failed as expected, but LAN’s ping was returned. I corrected the interfaces’ rules to allow them to reach out, and that was it.

Fallout

Without going into too much detail, a subnet shift like this is a major undertaking for networks with static IP servers on them. Not only do the network and computers need to be adjusted, but all traces of the old subnet need to be corrected. NFS clients needed to be told where the server was now, and the NFS server shares needed to be updated about what IP’s were allowed to mount them. I also still have Bitwarden to clients to update at my leisure.

Takeaway

OPNsense is a heavy weight in terms of configuration options. It has a learning curve compared to products simple enough to for Grandma and Grandpa to use. I may have solved my own emergency, but it may be wise to get someone looking at it professionally anyway to grade my work and give me some pointers on rootless Podman mounting NFS shares, or other long-term places where I’ve gotten stuck.

Final Question

I admit: networking is more fun than I gave it credit for before I knew basically anything. I still find it a bit taxing to mentally reach around my mental map, but I manage. How do you visualize networks?

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Telescope Bag Reinforcement

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8471, and today I am reinforcing my telescope carry bag. Let’s get started!

I got a telescope last Christmas. As part of caring for it, I got it a travel bag to take it to local dark spots. A comment on the bag’s store page recommended reinforcement – possibly with the cardboard box the bag arrived in. I wanted a frame. Metal and wood can be expensive and heavy, so I went with PVC piping. My father and I bought supplies and started the project late January, but time constraints and busy schedules halted progress until now.

We measured the bag as 40”x12”x9”. The store sold half inch diameter pipe in 10 foot/120 inch segments. My intuition said to buy two pipes, but a quick mental estimate came up 4 inches too short: 2x(120-(40+12+9))=-4. Accounting for the diameters of perpendicular segments affords the needed margin: 3x8x.5”-4”=8”.

The base went together nicely, but the bag got really tight once the first two vertical supports went in. News flash: the bag is ever so slightly trapezoidal in shape. When we came back to finish the project this week, we re-measured from the top of the bag, but those measurements would have been too short for the interior dividing wall running lengthwise along the bag. In the end, we trimmed the pipes to fit outside this wall and lowered the height until the bag could zip closed over the frame.

One future improvement remains: my accessories are currently loose in a cardboard box that barely fits in the telescope bag. It stretches the bag, making it difficult to access – especially if I’m after something without pulling out the whole telescope.

Takeaway

This project had an unusually long break in it. While I would have liked a shorter timetable, it is always a risk when working with someone else on a relatively minor project. Our schedules just happened to line up this week well enough to follow through when I pushed a little.

Final Question

What small projects do you have going on that shouldn’t take long to finish? Might now be the time?

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Sonic 3 AIR (Linux, Wii/Mega Collection Method)

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 and today I am using a hacked Wii and Linux to rip Sonic Mega Collection for a ROM to play Sonic 3 AIR. Let’s get started!

I am not a lawyer, nothing in this blog post is legal advice.

Say what you like about the GameCube, it was my sister’s and my first video game console. Among our initial collection was Sonic Mega Collection, a library of Sonic’s Sega Genesis titles. The games played poorly with an analogue stick, and I lost interest after never getting past a second zone.

Years later, a university friend re-introduced me to classic Sonic games through the world of emulation. I found myself browsing Sonic Retro and trying out several ROM hacks of base games I owned back home. Of note: fan content is a legal gray area some companies like Sega happily leave gray – letting fans explore their IP (Free advertising, anyone?) while leaving themselves room to threaten troublemakers. That said, the unwritten code of conduct for handling hacked/leaked prototypes is:

  1. No selling hacks.
  2. No advocating piracy.
  3. No redistributing raw ROM’s.
  4. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
  5. Own a legit copy if available.
  6. Support quality official ports.

That said: Sega has hired Sonic Retro talent to port their classic games.

Sonic 3 Fan Projects

Most ROM hacks on Sonic Retro are outright love letters to their respective base games, but my hands-down favorite was Sonic 3 Complete (S3C) [1]. This hack aimed to restore the game’s original vision before time constraints split it into Sonic 3 (S3) and Sonic & Knuckles (S&K) with the option to combine their cartridges into Sonic 3 & Knuckles (S3&K). S3C added a game select, custom level transitions, fine tweaks to revert assets, and an option to move Flying Battery Zone to just before Ice Cap so Sonic can snowboard down on a hatch he knocked off in a cutscene. Polishing continued until it approached the Genesis’s ROM size limit.

When the S3C team signed off in 2013, they named another project as their successor: Sonic 3 Angel Island Revisited (Sonic 3 AIR/S3AIR). In addition to similar polish to S3C, Sonic 3 AIR uses a newer engine with widescreen and 60 fps support. Mods are also supported. The catch is it requires an original S3&K ROM for game files. This used to be available from Steam, but I had to dump my physical copy using the Wii I hacked last week.

Following a tutorial as can be found on GameBananna (linked in Works Cited) [2], I installed CleanRip and backed up four of my GameCube disks – Sonic Mega Collection among them. Each game gave me three files: GAME-dumpinfo.txt, GAME.bca (data about the copy protection), and GMAE.iso (the game data itself). The .iso doesn’t mount, but Dolphin emulator lets you browse its file system anyway. I located S3&K’s .dat file and set that aside.

GameBananna’s tutorial breaks on the next step. It calls for a converter by GreyRouge [3], but the link is broken and the forum has been abandoned since early 2023.

https://zenhax.com/viewtopic.php?t=695

Instead of finding four good captures on WaybackMachine, I the topic number into a working URL [3]:

https://zenhax.com/viewtopic.php@t=695.html

But I wasn’t done yet. GrayRouge used an old version of Visual Studo, but some research, I got it working in normal C++ by making the following changes:

Replace: #include "stdafx.h"
with: #include <iostream>
and #include <string>

Replace: int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
with: int main(int argc, char* argv[])

The compiled program worked got S3&K loading in an emulator. I posted my modifications to Reddit where my hope is to be of help to someone. S3AIR was stubborn about looking for the ROM in my Steam files, so I gave it a link.

~/path/to/Sega\ Classics/uncompressed\ ROMS/Sonic_Knuckles_wSonic3.bin

Takeaway

My original motive for following through on this project was on the off chance my PinePhone could run it on the go. Yeah, no. I tried my best on a time crunch, but I did spot a warning in S3AIR’s documentation that it wasn’t going to run on ARM processors.

Also: the full program code is on Reddit. Someone re-uploaded it after the original link broke, but I lost the link to that.

Final Question

Are you on a journey similar to mine? If I was of any help, please feel free to let me know in the comments below or on my Socials!

Works Cited

[1] Sonic Retro, “Sonic 3 Complete,”Sonic Retro, Jan 12, 2022.[Online]. Available: https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_3_Complete. [Accessed: Aug. 19, 2024].

[2] Tyranger, NickyFan7, “Ways to get a Sonic 3 & Knuckles ROM (Post-Delist),” gamebananna.com, Apr. 30, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://gamebanana.com/tuts/14939. [Accessed: Aug. 19, 2024].

[3] GrayRouge, “Sonic Mega Collection (GC) dat files,” zenhax.com, Mar. 7, 2015. [Online]. Available: https://zenhax.com/viewtopic.php@t=695.html. [Accessed: Aug. 19, 2024].

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Finally Passing Wii Hacking 101

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 and today I am actually hacking my Wii. Let’s get started!

!!ALERT!!

THIS BLOG POST ABOUT WII HACKING IS UNMAINTAINED!! While unmaintained documentation can be entertaining or contain useful hints not found anywhere else, it often lacks nuance and is best treated as unauthoritative. Be careful with it. Be responsible with it. This applies to all media forms – especially YouTube.

As of writing in August, 2024, the authoritative site is https://wii.hacks.guide/ [1].

Seriously. As with installing Linux or any activity that disregards OEM walled gardens, you take a risk by hacking your Wii. Many generous people have put years of effort into minimizing these risks, but at the end of the day, the only one to blame for bricking your device is you. The community may back you up on a volunteer basis with no obligations. You own your hardware. Have fun!

With that out of the way…

Recap

A video game console must be built like a castle to protect company profits. Security must stop pirates while being as invisible as possible to legitimate customers. The Homebrew community doesn’t cleanly fit into either category; it climbs the castle walls for fun, but in ways that aim to complement the original product.

I bought a Wii from someone in my area a couple years back with the intention of hacking it. I’ve researched it sporadically since then, building confidence, then backing out each time. Last time, I made it so far as to install the Homebrew Channel on Dolphin Emulator. This time, I make it all the way.

The Homebrew Channel

All video game consoles are just specialized computers. The Wii just didn’t hide this fact as much as most previous consoles. Its operating system boots to a menu with sever channels I mostly ignored, but nonetheless shaped the system’s identity. Perhaps the most [in]famous channel is The Homebrew Channel, a menu for 3rd party software and the primary objective for this week.

There is no direct way to install the Homebrew Channel, so an exploit must be used. The Wii has a rich history of exploits that rely on specially corrupted saves of specific games, but the three in use today only require an SD card formatted to FAT32 (LetterBomb and Wilbrand) or an Internet connection (str4hax). The idea is to load HackMii and install The Homebrew Channel from there.

Glossary of Terms

The Wii uses a lot of abbreviations. Refer to this section if you see any.

  • Brick v. – to mess up software so bad, the system won’t start. It may as well be a clay brick.
  • CIOS – Custom IOS
  • IOS – Acronym unknown. Pertains to files in Wii’s firmware (Has nothing to do with Apple’s iPhones)
  • NAND – System memory
  • NUS – Nintendo Update Server
  • NUSD – NUS Downloader
  • WAD – Wii Application Distribution
  • YAWMM – Yet Another Wad Manager ModMii Edition

Groundhog Exploits

First of all, what kind of Wii am I hacking?

  1. White with GameCube adapters
  2. US Serial number
  3. Firmware upgraded to 3.3U to play Animal Crossing: City Folk (U for US region)
  4. Bought 2nd hand, but presumably stock (unmodded)

As part of my setup, I joined the r/Wiihacks Discord server. The community was friendly enough, but I let myself be pressured into updating to firmware version 4.3U, but only once I’d confirmed my serial number matched US region. Updating to or past 4.2 carries a slight chance of bricking in exchange for simplified research. I was OK, but I strongly advise you to research how to update to 4.1 and hack from there.

I started with str4hax, which aims the Wii’s DNS at a special server that replaces the User Agreement with Dashie (Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic) and takes one to two minutes to glitch the system into loading a script that boots the Wii into BootMii. I saw the exploit performed on a YouTube video, so I knew to expect rainbow static with green flashes. BootMii hung (got stuck) on its anti-scam warning, so I tried it around a dozen times in total.

What I didn’t understand at the time was the difference between exploit and payload. This difference was more apparent after running Wilbrand, a Wii Message Board based exploit named after the inventor of TNT. Using a bunch of special information including a Wii’s MAC address, it generates a special letter stored on a properly formatted SD card. When this letter is opened, the Wii crashes and loads boot.elf from the SD card. It took several tries to format my SD card, but once I had Wilbrand working, it was a much faster turn around. When it works correctly, HackMii should load quickly.

Neither of these were perfectly consistent:

  • str2hax hung on Dashie for me once and a few times the script to load HackMii failed trying to change Internet settings.
  • Wilbrand sometimes gave me a black screen and a blinking blue disk drive (.5 sec. on/.5 sec. off). I also had it drop TV signal in a different fail state.

HackMii Being Stubborn

Whichever exploit you use, when HackMii loads correctly, it puts a scam warning on screen, and after 30 seconds (or until HackMii finishes loading) it should tell you to press 1 to continue on to installing The Homebrew Channel and BootMii.

In my experience though, HackMii hung on this screen with no visual feedback besides the remote being stuck on (working correctly, HackMii does disconnect the remote). I was stuck here for over a day. Wisdom gleaned from community documentation and forum posts say this error is caused by one or more cIOS (or custom IOS) present on the Wii, which can be an indicator of piracy. The accepted diagnostic tool is SysCheck, but its documentation says to load it from The Homebrew Channel I haven’t installed yet!

Under advisement, I was directed to try using ModMii, a tool intended exclusively for Windows. Running under WINE, the CLI edition of version 7.0.2 wants to update to the latest version: 7.0.2. It also failed to set up its download list. The GUI edition was slightly less buggy in that it recognized it was up to date. I tried a few versions of WINE/Proton using Lutris to switch between them, but nothing worked. I was not desperate enough to explore trying .net to see if that made ModMii run. WINE rating: Garbage

Exploring on my own, I felt silly when I found a file called installer.log:

HackMii v1.2 installer starting up
PVR = 00087200
running under IOS 38 rev 0xe19
52 titles are installed
Found IOS 16: revision: 0x200.
Found IOS 10: revision: 0x300.
Found IOS 80: revision: 0x1b20.
Found IOS 38: revision: 0xe19.
Found IOS 37: revision: 0x161f.
Found IOS 36: revision: 0xe18.
Found IOS 35: revision: 0xe18.
Found IOS 34: revision: 0xe18.
Found IOS 33: revision: 0xe18.
Found IOS 31: revision: 0xe18.
Found IOS 30: revision: 0xb00.
Found IOS 28: revision: 0x70f.
Found IOS 22: revision: 0x50e.
Found IOS 20: revision: 0x100.
Found IOS 17: revision: 0x408.
Found IOS 15: revision: 0x408.
Found IOS 14: revision: 0x408.
Found IOS 13: revision: 0x408.
Found IOS 12: revision: 0x20e.
Found IOS 11: revision: 0x100.
Found IOS 21: revision: 0x40f.
Found IOS 2: revision: 0x201.
Found IOS 9: revision: 0x40a.
Found IOS 4: revision: 0xff00.
launching IOS 38 for the installer…

IOS launched…

IOS versions: Installer: 38, HBC: 0
starting preparations

Acting under the assumption I might have a bad cIOS hiding in that list, I converted the revision hexadecimal numbers into decimal looked up each one up on wiibrew.org [2]. All I found was that IOS2 was a false positive and actually part of the system menu. After bringing this back to r/WiiHacks’ Discord, I was advised about an odd line:

IOS versions: Installer: 38, HBC: 0

HackMii usually works better exploiting another IOS, like IOS58, which was either absent or incorrectly loaded during the 4.3 update (I never was properly convinced either way). Discounting ModMii or technical piracy, my last chance at obtaining IOS58 was NUSD. While it is a Windows tool, I found NUSD runs perfectly in WINE on Linux. Platinum rating.

From there, I loaded a WAD file for IOS58 on my SD card alongside a WAD manager called YAWMM, and copied/renamed its boot file to <SD_card>/boot.elf as the payload in place of HackMii. Installation was straightforward from there, and HackMii was repaired.

A blow for blow description of the solution that worked for me can be found here: https://www.rwiihacks.com/tutorials/hackmiiscamstuckfix/index.html#method-3 [3]

“Press (1) to continue” appeared, and I used it to install both The Homebrew Channel and BootMii as an IOS.

BootMii and Priiloader

The Wii has three boot stages: boot0, boot1, and boot2. boot2 can be written to, but only early hardware revisions will brick if boot2 is homebrewed. HackMii detected a patched motherboard and didn’t let me install BootMii to boot2.

BootMii can backing up and restoring the Wii’s internal NAND memory. If you can install it to boot2, it gives you a low-level option to recover from a brick. I don’t get that though.

My next obstacle is SD card size. A stock Wii can only use a 2GB or 32GB SD card depending on if it is running firmware version 4.0 or later. It is recommended to have something a bit bigger than 256MB, as I have been using so far. I sacrificed my Manjaro ARM 32GB microSD for the cause, but I got a NAND backup through BootMii.

Priiloader loads after boot2 and before the System Menu and thereby is a powerful tool from recovering from a brick (though it is second to BootMii boot2 edition). It also offers a bunch of customization options to research another day, but following the wii.hacks.guide tutorial, I disabled disk/online updates and disabled an anti-flicker feature intended for tube TV’s.

D2x and cIOS

As a general rule, wisdom gleaned from the community says cIOS should be avoided, as they’ve learned how to do most things they want to do without changing firmware. However, the wii.hacks.guide checklist does install four cIOS files. Published details are vague, but I gather they do things like allow loading games off USB instead of the DVD drive and using unofficial online services. Wiibrew.org wasn’t particularly helpful when I looked each base IOS up, but then again this is my first time customizing firmware.

Diving deeper, D2x patches official IOS files during installation. This process went smoothly even if it was nerveracking. I double or triple checked each of the four ISO’s to be installed. But even if something did go wrong, that’s what doing a NAND backup early is for.

Loading Homebrew Apps

One more touch, and I can consider my Wii fully hacked for now: the Homebrew Browser. If The Homebrew Channel doesn’t find apps on the SD card (or optionally a USB drive), it shows nothing but bubbles your pointer can pop on contact. The Homebrew Browser can load and update apps to SD (or USB), but itself must be loaded manually. I installed a few recommended utilities, but further tinkering will have to wait for another topic.

Takeaway

Unfortunately, the channel I was working in/using for notes was deleted once I had gotten to The Homebrew Channel. I am mad because by then I had only written my disclaimer and half the recap by then. By God’s grace, I forgive the one[s] responsible, but my hope is that our shared lesson be the value of the footprints we leave behind when working in niche community support topics.

Final Question

Have you ever tried hacking/soft modding a Wii or any other game console? I look forward to hearing from you in the comments below or on my Socials!

Works Cited

[1] Nintendo Homebrew, “Wii Hacks Guide,” wii.hacks.guide, 2024. [Online].Available: https://wii.hacks.guide/ [Accessed Aug. 12, 2024].

[2] wiibrew.org,Nov. 18, 2021. Available: [Online]. https://www.wiibrew.org [Accessed Aug. 12, 2024].

[3] u/WiiExpertise, “HackMii Scamstuck Fix,”rwiihacks.com, 2023. [Online]. Available: https://www.rwiihacks.com/tutorials/hackmiiscamstuckfix/index.html#method-3 [Accessed Aug. 12, 2024].

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MotionEye: One Step Closer to a Critter Cam

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today I am revisiting my naughty critter cam again. Let’s get started!

Project Recap

Earlier this year, I spent a week learning about DietPi, a lightweight OS for “System On a Chip” computers — notably Raspberry Pi, and Motion, an open source home surveillance platform. These fit great into my Raspberry Pi 3B+. I burned out after getting it to stream video to a webpage.

Version numbers have marched on since, and updates were in order. Long story short, it was simpler to reinstall and relive the week in the span of one day. I set the standard “new install” settings, and installed motion from within DietPi’s “hedged garden.” I copied a default config file at /etc/motion/motion.conf to /root (I am approaching this as a short-term/low security project) and struggled against the documentation. It led me to mess with mmalcam_params when all I needed was:

rotate 180
webcontrol_localhost false
stream_localhost false

These lines rotate the image and unlock Motion’s webUI.

MotionEyeOS

The final deciding factor to reinstall started when I came across a new command for listing ports Linux will respond on:

ss -list

I found port 8765 with a login I couldn’t get in. Only after a total reinstall did I look up motionEye and find the default login is “admin” with an empty password. It’s a nice webUI, but it won’t share the camera with motion proper, and it took me a while to cycle through the different options to find the feed. My favorite feature is that it passed the “Oops, it lost power” test.

Push Notifications

MotionEye can run a commands when it sees something move, which can be anything from object detection to filter false positives to an automated squirt gun when it recognizes naughty behavior. My next major milestone though should be push notifications. On Linux, I can use notify-send over ssh, but I’d need to research an equivalent way for it to show up on Windows, Mac, and Android for other family members. In the long run, it will be simpler to dust off my Discord bot skills and give a LAN address.

So, that’s what I did. I made a bot that sends a hard coded message to a hard coded channel and closes itself as part of its startup function.

#!/usr/bin/python3

import os
import discord

intents = discord.Intents.default()
client = discord.Client(intents=intents)

#On startup: send message to and close program
@client.event
async def on_ready():
channel = client.get_channel(<channel_ID>)
await channel.send(f"Motion Detected!\nhttp://192.168.0.50:8765")
exit()

client.run('<Bot_Login_Token>')

MotionEye could run the bot once I placed it in /mnt/dietpi_userdata/, gave it permission to execute, and ensured it belonged to the dietpi user. Before too long, I had notifications through Discord to check Motion, and the hardest part of deployment was turning on the Pi’s power switch. For my “Show & Tell,” my father and I rigged up a cat tower and an LED work light on a stand to watch the stairs.

Takeaway

This temporary setup remains incomplete. For starters, the Discord bot wastes around four seconds logging in. I will eliminate this delay once I can get a signal from MotionEye into a running bot. Also of concern is that I want the bot ignoring humans – which means object detection, a field I’m not far into yet.

Final Question

Am I missing anything obvious on my road map? Let me know in the comments below or on my Socials!

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My Best Computer Comeback Ever

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 and today I have the story about how I almost lost my main computer. Let’s get started.

The Fall

Thankfully, I rarely need my reset button. Most of the time it gets hit by accident. EndeavourOS has been a good daily driver, but my system recently bombed hard – a crash I have never seen before and hope to never see again. Resetting wasn’t enough.

My main workstation uses systemd-boot, GRUB’s little cousin among boot loaders. Its job is to load an operating system when called, and it wasn’t responding. I poked around. My old, unupdated installation of Manjaro managed to load, but it wasn’t consistent. For some reason, EndeavourOS only appeared bootable in Legacy BIOS mode – even though it would hang at systemd-boot because it is UEFI only. I eventually ran out of combinations to try and loaded an alternate BIOS ROM. You know it’s a bad day when BIOS beeps thrice over a minute and hangs.

Clearing CMOS

At this point, I was outside my repair experience, but when I asked my father for help, he recalled a trick an IT guy pulled at his work to clear an unapproved BIOS lockout password. The motherboard has a jumper for clearing CMOS. Think of it like a factory reset. We found the user’s manual and followed its instructions, restoring the original ROM.

Failed boots eat a ton of time, but at one point I loaded Windows when Manjaro’s GRUB installation apparently failed completely. I searched for my GRUB disk and had to make a new one. When I did, it could only boot Manjaro in any configuration. I tried swapping SATA cables around, but that only made Windows vanish. Last I looked, its drive was zero bits in size.

Repairing my Boot Loaders

Even a jank boot method is better than nothing. Trouble is that Manjaro was horribly out of date, and needed a manual intervention. I installed EndeavourOS to avoid this very mess. A number of package names had changed, and there were a couple sets of mutually dependent packages. I think I had to mark around five to seven for removal before it went through. The longest part was sitting through package verification every time. GRUB was then a standard and easy re-install.

I found a line-by-line systemd-boot reinstall tutorial for my EndeavourOS drive. I sadly don’t have a link because I wasn’t yet planning on this being my topic for the week and I was kind of in panic mode. What I do remember is that I expected to need chroot, but I looked at the documentation (man page / <program> -h / <program> –help) and the command was flexible enough to point it at my broken installation. It was also a pain to find because so many search results were either about GRUB and/or Windows.

The Importance of Cable Management

While I had my computer apart diagnosing SATA cables, I took the opportunity to mount my third solid state drive. Previously, I only had access to cables with L shaped connectors on one end, but I have a package with a bunch of double-straight ones now. I had two free motherboard connections, and the straight ends let me stack my Linux drives in my compatible bracket while my [defunct?] Windows drive now gets a single-SSD bracket.

Alarmingly, my computer started making a bit of noise once I had it all back together in its place and I had started up a game. Turns out a ribbon cable going between the motherboard and front panel was pushed into the fan blades on my GPU, which was simple to fix.

Takeaway

Surprise topics are rarely fun. But solving these problems as they come up is how you learn Linux.

Final Question

What I could not find an answer to was if systemd-boot systems can be booted from a GRUB disk at all. I’m guessing no because systemd-boot is more integral to Linux than GRUB. Do you know how close or far I am? I look forward to hearing from you in the comments below or on my Socials!

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Joystick Server Reinstall

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow8472, and today I am rebuilding Joystick, Button Mash’s twin Rocky Linux server. Let’s get started!

Project Goals

This is a revival of my photo scanning project, first and foremost. I need to get it working, and while I will afford myself some time to experiment with doing it right, it’s more important I get it done. Once I have it working better than Button Mash, I can move my production flag over to Joystick and remodel Button Mash “properly.”

And by “properly,” I mean rootless Podman access to a network attached storage. I have explored NFS (Network File System) extensively, but Podman does things with userspace that NFS doesn’t support. I may need to be open to an alternative or using root. SSHFS lays a file system over SSH, but

Installation

I did my usual stuff when installing Linux. I remembered ahead of time that Joystick doesn’t work with Ventoy, so I flashed a USB (Balena Etcher) large enough for the full 10 GB image I downloaded. I did a clean install over its previous Rocky Linux installation. I also adjusted Joystick’s boot order so Rocky 9.4 loads by default. The system is dual booted with Linux Mint, where I did an apt update/upgrade.

Booted to Rocky, I enabled Cockpit web interface for remote management, a feature I selected for installation with the system. I created a limited user for running Podman, enabled lingering on it, got Cockpit logged into it as a “remote host,” and disabled normal password interactions. I pulled Podman containers for Caddy, Nextcloud, MariaDB, Redis, BusyBox, and Vaultwarden, and gave each a directory with a start.sh and a mountpoint. I excluded Pi-Hole and Unbound from my planned lineup because those functions are now handled by our router and would have required messing with special ports.

Troubleshooting

NFS fought me hard though. It didn’t help that Cockpit’s terminal kept glitching out on me. I noticed this behavior on ButtonMash’s Cockpit as well. Rebooting and refreshing didn’t do anything, but I found a control by navigating my browser away and back. I eventually got to thinking about what other parts it might be, and I came up with a bad version of Firefox, or Wayland. I ran Firefox over SSH on a machine still running Xorg server; it was Wayland.

And at this point, my workstation had a record bad meltdown, which ate my remaining blog time. Be sure to read about it next week!

Takeaway

Projects get interrupted. Something comes up and grand plans wait in the background. I’m tired of server doing just that, but it’s happened again.

Final Question

My longest enemy remains: Rootless Podman vs. Network Storage. How do I do it? I look forward to hearing from you in the comments below or on my Socials!

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