App2USB / AppToUSB by Stooged: A Modification of PKG2USB for PS4

I will post this as a separate thread from the PS4 PKG2USB as the 2 payloads vary and it saves confusion.

Original Post: I was playing around with the ext0 mount and recreating the file structure that would be there if the pkg was installed to external storage.

There is a trick I found where if you copy the CUSAXXXXX folder from /user/app to /mnt/ext0/user/app and then unplug the hdd and plug it back in it causes the ps4 to do a repair and then the game is recognized as installed on external storage and from there there are other issues.

BUT with the great work SiSTRo has done in PKG2USB with the symlinks its a lot easier to manage with exfat and just normal USB.

So building on his PKG2USB and symlinks I modified what I was working on for the ext0 mount to work with the usb0 or usb1 and symlinks.

Downloads:

• 455 Source GIT
• 405 Source GIT
• AppToUsb 5.05 (Latest Release)
• AppToUsb 4.55 (Latest Release)
• AppToUsb 4.05 (Latest Release)
• PS4 App2USB (Scene Collective)

Changlog via dbsuarez

This payload searches the entire /user/app folder and copies all installed fpkg games to usb from the system drive and creates the symlinks like SiSTRo has kindly shown us the ability to do.

If you want to target a single game not the whole folder use PKG2USB.

If you install more games just run the payload again and it will copy any new games to the USB and so on.

With symlinks you are making a link to a directory so you want to pick which USB port to have the hdd on and keep it on that same port or the links will point to the wrong directory. USB0 is what I use.

Thanks again to SiSTRo, xVortex, Anonymous, CelesteBlue!

PS4 JAILBREAK 5.05 How To Use APP2USB by seanp2500

Running PS4 Games From a USB with App2USB (5.05 Jailbreak)

Download: app2usb.rar (726 Bytes - configured to export app+update+dlcs to external disc, includes app2usb.ini)

 

[Mark041]

Anyone uses a WD My Passport Ultra HDD? My PS4 wont detect it even though it is already formatted to EXFAT. please help tnx

 

[anagia]

@stooged would it be possible for the payload to check all the smlinks and correct them in the event of an error? nb Previously I used the old payloads

 

[strike07]

i have a question, lets say i use a 1TB external hdd to transfer all internal games into it.

so if in future happen me buying more larger external hdd, can i direct copy the content from 1TB to new hdd? would the game still works?

 

[dyers]

yes it would still work, the ps4 would still have a symlink to usb0, so if you purchased a new drive and just moved the entire structure from the 1tb to 4th, as long as you kept it exFAT filesystem and it is detected by the ps4 with no issues, it would just work.

I'm having the same problem as @seanp2500
The "skipping linking" dialog doesn't seem to happen(though I've seen it previously when testing), I'm suspecting I've missed something required. Do the pkg files need to be a specific filename? I seem to recall on one of these 20 pages someone said the pkg name doensn't matter.

I'm using the naming format that n1ghty's pkg_rename tool uses.
Is the ini file supposed to be on the root or in the PS4 folder? (i used both just in case but it still failed to do the linking and started copying the file from the internal drive, so now i wait)

For my next test run, would it work to exclude the game in the ini to prevent it from being copied from internal, so i can further test the check_usb function?

Is there anyway to update the OP so that we don't have to dig through 20+ comment pages to find the answers to some of these questions?

For now I'll examine the source code to find my answers. This tool is great, thanks for your contributions to the scene.

 

[seanp2500]

actually with a smaller list pkg linking does work doing more testing it seems like if games fail try reboot system

disregard shorter list just failed

 

[dyers]

After examining the code and running another test, it worked!
If you exclude the game in ini it doesn't do any processing at all. If you enable MOVE_MODE but don't include games nothing is done as well.
CHECK_MODE with no ignore list worked for the 3 games i tested, I see it compares the files so the filenames don't matter.

I'd almost rather have an option in the ini that basically excludes it from copying from the internal disk at all, because if i've made a mistake I'd rather try to fix the ini than wait for the internal to external copy complete.

If the software would have a debug parameter that might write to a log file, that could help us determine why the installed internal pkg files don't seem to match the files they were installed from.

All this testing was on v9, it works great in my latest testing, perhaps it's just specific games that have problems.

 

[confuzled]

I apologize sincerely if I am being a pest, but I am quite confused.

I finally got the app2usb software to run correctly. Doing so caused a bunch of data to be copied to the usb drive, but no data was removed from my internal HDD. When attempt to launch the game with ext HDD removed, I get an error, which is to be expected. Plugging the drive back in allows the game to launch properly.

This tells me that is it is running from EXT HDD. Why am I then unable to delete to original content off the INT HDD. If I am doing something incorrectly or misunderstanding something, please let me know. I would like to run the content solely from EXTHDD. And if possible, delete the content from the INT HDD.

 

[Mike8236]

Hi Mark041, I am using same drive as you its working for me. Sorry just noticed your post.

 

[dyers]

@confuzled you are not understanding how this payload works, the app.pkg file that gets installed to the internal disk when you use the debug menu, is first moved to the external disk, once it completes, a symlink (google it) is created on the internal disk that points to the file on the external drive.

Currently the best test of whether the game is on external is if it fails to launch without the drive attached as you already tested. If you browse the file system over FTP everything appears to be on the internal, but it's not, it's just the ftp client has no function to show a symlink.

If you access the storage to view the file system, the results can be odd. For example, i have no games on internal, everything on external. I have a 500GB internal and a 1TB external. Storage shows 1TB capacity with just over 500GB in use. In my scenario I should be able to load about 1.5TB of data total using both the symlink to external and leaving some games as internal disk.

On twitter someone did some testing and explained how the storage is displaying the file system size and free space and it made sense, but I can't find it now. IIRC it basically just takes total file size plus file free space and adds it together to get the total capacity. Since I have almost nothing on my internal, it sees 460GB free and 540GB in use and so it concludes i have a 1TB capacity.

TL;DR you do misunderstand, after running this payload your data has moved you need not take any further action to free internal space.

 

[stooged]

@confuzled

this is how you delete the internal pkg files.

from a fresh ps4 boot up...
1: unplug your usb hdd.
2: run the ftp payload.
3: go find the pkg you want to delete.

there is also a post in this thread where I explained how the storage works

AppToUSB by Stooged: A Modification of PKG2USB for PS4