idea/suggestion - A guide to remove the "update" folder to futureproof users from system updates

[MattKimura]

This can be added as an additional guide such as your A9LH to B9S guide on 3ds.guide that sits on top of the page. Deleting the system's update folder has proven to prevent any form of system updates and is more futureproof than using DNS. The update folder can be recreated at any time just like any ordinary folder. I just think it's extremely useful to create a worry free setup where the user cannot possibly mess up later on. Basically you just need Ftpiiu Everywhere and an FTP client, and CFW enabled. If using Mocha, get Diimok's Ftpiiu Everywhere and if using Haxchi/CBHC, get FIX94's release. Once connected to the wii u through FTP, the user can browser to "root/storage_mlc/sys/" and delete the update folder which has nothing in it. I know what you're thinking, "Users are too dumb and they can't be trusted with a simple task such as deleting one empty folder". It's literally the easiest thing to do and it's super effective.

How the Wii U system updates works is it downloads the update files into this update folder, before it can apply the update to the system. But since it won't have a folder to store the files, it simply will never update until that folder is back. The folder isn't recreated automatically after rebooting.

[ghost]

I would think such a thing wouldn't break the system like that (uh, duhhhh, if [[ ! -d "update" ]];then;mkdir update;fi;), if this actually works it's really sloppy workmanship in the OS.

[Masamune3210]

Sorry to say, but as far as I know this does in fact break system updates. This is not uncommon unfortunately as most programs that work on things that are not supposed to be externally modified are programmed to take one path and seldom have any fallbacks like creating a dir if it doesn't exist

[ghost]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about it. That's a really useful trick for people who don't want their console downloading updates, it's just mind-boggling to me that something like that would have been overlooked. I guess that part of the system shouldn't be modified so it should be theoretically impossible to have the console end up in a state like that, but there really should be a failsafe for that, especially given that it's Nintendo's only avenue for locking the console back down if the user has broken in.

[Masamune3210]

Programming a fail state makes no sense for a system that should never get into that state in the first place, and we can probably guess that Nintendo isnt that good at thinking ahead when it comes to security, considering every system since the Wii has been horribly broke security wise. Most updaters are programmed in such a way as to adhere to a certain expected state, and to fail if the state is changed in an unsupported way, as to not cause any damage to a system that may be corrupted or otherwise changed. Apple computers will outright refuse to update the firmware of the system if a certain partition is missing or damaged. Besides, its not their only way to lock the console back down, since they can still theoretically release new games with a new update, that would not work without a new lib or bit of code that the new update adds

[Moire9]

Apparently sometimes formatting the system and/or repairing DRC can re-create the folder.

[Plailect]

There's still no real easy way to do this (without FTP, which I'd like to avoid). I'll add this if an app is ever created to manage this locally.