KaKaRoTo – The Payload Mess

[ebtank]

KaKaRoTo the creator of PSFreedom has released some information, via his blog, on the differences between his work and others, here is what he said:

Hi all,

I see a lot of people asking me some questions and I notice a lot of ignorance in the net about the different payload and the latest PL3 payload. So I want to make things clear..
First of all, people should stop talking/requesting/using the hermes v3 payload, I don’t like his work, and the payload is not good, it might crash the system in some cases, it’s not written properly, and hermes doesn’t even seem to understand how git works.
Also, PL3 already includes (for some time now) all the good stuff from hermes, it already supports installing game updates, or running games without a disc, anything else that Hermes added is useless and dangerous.

Some might have seen my tweets about my new payload being released, and many are asking me what is the difference between my payload and what is already available.
PL3 doesn’t support syscall 36 anymore, for multiple reasons, first, it was bad code, it was mapping a path to a single hardcoded value (/dev_bdvd or /app_home or /dev_flash or whatever is hardcoded in the payload) which means that, since we (the PSGroove and PSFreedom developers) don’t want to support running backups, all the official payloads weren’t working with the backup manager without being patched first. The syscall 35 I added in my payload is more generic though, it is the proper way of doing things. You can map any path to another other new path, the prototype looks like this :

syscall_35 (char *old_path, char *new_path);

This means that the payload doesn’t need to have a hardcoded /dev_bdvd path in it, or have extra code for mapping /app_home to something else.. or having syscall 36 change both /dev_bdvd and /app_home breaking homebrew when using a discless mode with a backup manager. You also don’t need a special payload to run the ‘firmware usb loader’.. It all just works because the choice of the path mapping is given to the homebrew applications themselves. This means that the backup managers will just map /dev_bdvd to what they want and they will work by default on my payload, there will be no need for a patched version of the payload to make them work.
This however means that the backup managers that depend on syscall 36 will stop working. For now Gaia Manager is the only backup manager available that is compatible with my payload. But I’m sure more will be ported to use syscall 35.
People need to understand that this new syscall 35 has to become the new standard, this is what all the payloads should use, nothing else, and this is what everyone should start using, not the old, crappy, backup-manager specific, PSJailbreak written, syscall 36.

We need to have some form of standardization for all these payloads, I’m tired of seeing about 100 different payloads floating on the internet, it doesn’t make sense. I always believed in a single payload that works for everyone, and that’s why I created PL3, that’s why it’s a project independent of PSFreedom (and PSGroove has been ported to it) and that’s where all the efforts should go. Also, by using PL3, you automatically gain support, and all the same features, for whatever previous firmwares PL3 already supports (3.01, 3.10, 3.15 and 3.41).

I have just recently seen this new payload that everyone is so happy about that includes “all the good things from 3 worlds”, the one created by Rancid, which includes the stuff from hermes, waninkoko and Mathieulh… and I was shocked to see how much people were happy about this.. people don’t really seem to understand that this wasn’t necessary at all? PL3 has had all those patches for a while now, so why did Rancid even bother making this payload that includes the patches from hermes, waninkoko and Mathieulh? Why would you spend your time doing something that already is available!

This blog post is meant to stop all this ignorance and let people know that they don’t need to look for a special payload, just use PL3 and you’ll get everything you need. It is also meant to explain to everyone what is different about my payload.

On a side, I have received a P3Hub device, kindly donated to me by the people from r4king.com, and I have now tried PSGroove for the first time! I’ve also created a fork of jevinskie’s port of PSGroove which is now improved and updated to support the latest PL3 version. This means that the PL3 payload is available for everyone, those using PSFreedom as well as those using PSGroove, so there is no excuse now on not using it or relying on badly written payloads developed by people who barely know how to code (yes, using winrar instead of git is a good indication of that).

Update:
I forgot to rant about peek&poke!!! So let’s do it now… well, the default payload in PL3 has peek and poke disabled, and for a simple reason : Nobody needs them! and more importantly they are misued! I’ve look at the code of the different backup managers, and it looks like all of them use poke to patch the memory to ‘fix something’ because they think that it’s their job to do it.. no it’s not! If you have a working patch, then submit it to PL3 and if people complain, tell them “use the proper payload”, don’t try to take advantage of peek&poke to go and modify the kernel’s instructions! The reason is simple.. you are a homebrew app that does X, then do X, leave the kernel patching to the payloads! Just as PL3 doesn’t map /dev_bdvd to /dev_usb000/I.Like.This.Game/ and locks it out! Also, I’m on firmware 3.15, so when you decide to poke and patch the kernel with a hardcoded offset, you’re just screwing up my kernel because the offset is firmware dependent! it’s not the same depending on the firmware you use, and I don’t want you playing with it. So.. peek&poke are really not useful to anybody, they are not even available on a normal linux pc, so why would you want them in your default payload, right?! The only people who should use a payload with those syscalls enabled are real developers, people who want to analyze and patch the kernel on the fly while they are doing some development of, maybe, a kernel driver! That’s it. Anyways, that’s enough ranting from me for today!

P.s:
In my branch of PSGroove, I wrote a script that build the .hex file for every supported device (from the README) for every supported firmware.

Update:
Thanks to evilsperm, I’ve updated the archive with hex files for these devices : Blackcat, Xplain, Olimex, UsbTinyMkII, Bentio and OpenKubus.
Update 2:
Some people reported crashes with my payload when running backups with installed updates. I figured out the cause and fixed it now in git. The hex files above have also been updated

Thanks for reading.

here are the hex files

psgroove_hex_new.rar

here is Gaia Manager

gaia_manager_v1.0-RC6.rar

[CoFree]

guys
this is the hex file i will be using when not doing some testing
i will also test the 3.10 with its hex file for the blackcat also

[denv0r]

none of my games except maybe dead rising 2 work with this payload.

[CoFree]

you are saying that most of your iso you have zipped to your internal Hd dont play

[ebtank]

none of my games except maybe dead rising 2 work with this payload.

Are you using Gaia Manager ? That is only backup manager this is currently compatiable with

backup managers that depend on syscall 36 will stop working. For now Gaia Manager is the only backup manager available that is compatible with this payload. But I’m sure more will be ported to use syscall 35.

and also you need to include what board are you using,what firmware are you on,what hex are you using, with out this info its kinda hard to help you out . I my self have tested this with the minimus avr board and 3.41 using Gaia manager and every thing works perfect getting all my game updates for PS MOVE and even games that only worked on the internal hdd now work on the external

[denv0r]

sorry i was a bit vague. im using the minimus v1 board. the hex i used was psgroove_usbkey_at90usb162_16mhz_firmware_3_41.hex. the backupes were originally backed up using backup manger. when i load the games using this hex and gaja, the games dont work.
so far they work fine using hermes v3 hex file for the minumus board and backup manager. but i like gaja way more and would like to use it.

[ebtank]

sorry i was a bit vague. im using the minimus v1 board. the hex i used was psgroove_usbkey_at90usb162_16mhz_firmware_3_41.hex. the backupes were originally backed up using backup manger. when i load the games using this hex and gaja, the games dont work.
so far they work fine using hermes v3 hex file for the minumus board and backup manager. but i like gaja way more and would like to use it.

That is the same one I am using and no problems I would try to reprogram it if that dont work then you can use psgroove_blackcat_at90usb162_16mhz or the teensy 1.0 at90usb162_16mhz let me know how it works out

[denv0r]

still no go. when i use the 3 different hex files, i get the same results. a black screen and i have to turn my ps3 off. kinda sucks. i guess ill use backup manager and hermes v3 until something new comes along.

[ebtank]

still no go. when i use the 3 different hex files, i get the same results. a black screen and i have to turn my ps3 off. kinda sucks. i guess ill use backup manager and hermes v3 until something new comes along.

Question did you use a hermes payload when you ripped your games ? Have a look here http://robinhoodsplayground.com/forum/v ... 04&t=14046" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;