3ds-microsd-on-linux

This is a guide detailing how to use 3DS microSD management on Linux.

Getting started

This command mounts the 3DS's microSD card as a CIFS.

$ sudo mount.cifs \
	//$3DS_NAME/microSD\
	-o user=$3DS_USER,\
	password=$3DS_PASS,\
	ip=$3DS_LOCALIP,\
	servern=$3DS_NAME,\
	uid=$USER,gid=users,nounix,\
	vers=1.0 /mnt

That command will successfully mount your 3DS's microSD card to /mnt. Please note that sudo is required.

If the connection has been dropped (for example, the 3DS is not in microSD management), commands like ls will freeze.

Connection loss

A downside of doing this is that connection is very unstable. Even a simple ls /mnt will cause a the filesystem to "ghost".

Filesystem ghosting

If you mount the share, and execute ls, it will seem to "empty" out the share for some reason. However, files will still be writeable. You just can't see them.

This is proven by the following:

[/]% ls /mnt
 Directory of /mnt
Total                       0 bytes
Free space        59021819904 bytes (95.4%)

# Listing /mnt (the share.) Note the amount of bytes
# free; "Free space"

[/]% vim /mnt/something.txt

# I open up vim and write something.

[/]% ls /mnt               
 Directory of /mnt
Total                       0 bytes
Free space        59021787136 bytes (95.4%)

# Note that it seems empty...but the Free space has
# DECREASED!
[/]% 

The updating of "Free space" seems to be unstable, as I only wrote a few words to /mnt/something.txt, and the free space lowered by a lot of bytes. It got lowered by a lot of bytes because I just copied the starter kit to the SD card a few minutes ago, and I'm assuming that the remaining space had only updated just now.