Xmb settings file Xml

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ILYA B SILKIN

Member
Hi. This forum has been really awesome I. Learning so much about ps3s. Not to mention hen is like developing by leaps and bounds and soon will be as powerful as cfw.

My question is about the location of xmb setting. The other day I had to rebuild my database on a hen modded superslim and it did not mess up my hen by knocked off all of my game albums. You know when you make them to separate tools from retro games etc. Took forever to set it all up originally. So I am wondering if there is a file I can backup so if it happens again I can just copy some xml file and be back to normal.
 
whenever you create an album, it should be recorded in: metadata_db_hdd which is in dev_hdd0/mms/db . I've never actually tried replacing a current one with an older one, so it may be tied to the other indexer files in that folder. you might want to copy everything in there.
 
I will test this today. I will creates some albums and then restore database. They should be gone. then I will copy the mms folder back and see if everything is back to the way it was. I think I will also try doing just the regular ps3 savedata backup to see if it does anything.
 
I suggest you to dont do it, mesing around with the databases have the risk of losing the databases
I guess at that point (with a corrupted or mistmatching database) the firmware will force you to generate new databases.. so maye is not much risky but dunno, i dont like the idea

Backuping and restoring databases by unnofficial means is like making a "restore point" in microsoft windows... but in PS3 the databases stores lot of info
Most of the things you do in XMB updates the databases... installing programs, uninstalling them, organizing them in folders, there are counters of how many times you booted an app, timestamps of when it was installed, the last time you booted it, etc...
All this stuff is going to revert if you restore a database manually... and im not completly sure if some of them could cause some problem
 
Well. I am just experimenting. I tried it and it worked. So copying mms folder backs up your settings. Just in case someone else needs to know but was too scared to try. I was you guinea pig.
 
ILYA B SILKIN said:
Well. I am just experimenting. I tried it and it worked. So copying mms folder backs up your settings. Just in case someone else needs to know but was too scared to try. I was you guinea pig.
Click to expand...
Well, it should, but the problem i was refering before is e.g:

1) make a backup of the database now
2) create a savegame, trophy installation, gamedata installation, un/install apps or games, etc...
3) restore the database from step 1

At that point everything you did in step 2 is going to be "missing" in the database, so the XMB cant display it
In other words... you are going to have some icons with spinning arrows and the text "corrupted data"
It can be fixed by entering recovery menu and using the option "rebuild database" thought, so is not specially risky i guess, but anyway i dont like it because the databases are a mess (officially messed up) and the amount of info stored inside them is massive

Im not saying that is going to happen exactly like that... but this kind of things could happen
 
yeah, the ps4 and vita's version of the database (the app.db) is much easier to manipulate. though, I wouldn't advise creating a folder/album or additional pages manually with it. I'm not sure about folders, but creating additional pages doesn't seem to work. I've messed with the vita's very heavily. if it does get corrupt, the system will just rebuild the database again at next boot.
 
Nope I spoke too soon. After restart ps3 said database is corrupt and resbuilt it again and I lost all the albums. Maybe I will try backing up just one db file this time and see what happens.
 
ILYA B SILKIN said:
Nope I spoke too soon. After restart ps3 said database is corrupt and resbuilt it again and I lost all the albums. Maybe I will try backing up just one db file this time and see what happens.
Click to expand...

hmm...I found a mysterious number tied to each entry in the main metadata file many years ago. I could never figure out what it went to, and psdevwiki has virtually no information about the metadata file. anyway, that number may be tied to something, don't know what though.
 
ILYA B SILKIN said:
Nope I spoke too soon. After restart ps3 said database is corrupt and resbuilt it again and I lost all the albums. Maybe I will try backing up just one db file this time and see what happens.
Click to expand...
You only need to deal with the file named: metadata_db_hdd

It stores info for the contents that appears in XMB categories. "game", "photo", "music" as far i remember... and i guess "video" too
 
I tried playing around with this before and there is something in the PS3 that doesn't match up. It kicked me out to the restore screen. But seems @sandungas was right and I see you already are experiencing issues. I tried this when the PS Vita DB hacking was still a big deal but like @pinky said it's not easily manipulated like Vita and no known apps to handle editing.
 
the vita/pstv are a bit finicky sometimes. I deleted duplicate icon pngs from the appmeta, then injected @Berion 's custom icons earlier. I just put them all fixed in my temp folder, deleted the original appmeta on ur0, then copied and pasted the fixed version. all icons appear correctly except somehow ratchet and clank full frontal assault and resistance seem to be missing icons now for some reason. I did delete the vitamin and mai dump tool icons, which somehow got those two games' images deleted. I had a similar problem on the vita where default apps were missing icons. I fixed it though. I'm just redownloading those two games to get my pstv fixed up again.
 
I think I figured out what happened with those two icons. deleting those two unused apps' icon folders had an adverse effect on two random games. resetting the pstv seems to have worked, 'cause when I redownloaded the games, they still didn't reappear. I removed their icon folders as well, then transferred them from the sd2vita. now, I just need to redownload the two games again. I'm redownloading after remembering that the whitelist v2 prevents updates from being installed, so I had to start over. apparently, I didn't have v2 installed, so it was a waste of time. it rebuilt the database, as it should if you enable/disable v2, so custom icons were again gone. I still had the modified appmeta on my sd card, so I just deleted the one on ur0, then transferred over the modified one again. I did delete both games' stuff from it before doing that, so that it can install fresh. I did look in the app.db as well. it was pointing to the right location as was the folders in appmeta, so it was messed up in memory.
 
sandungas said:
You only need to deal with the file named: metadata_db_hdd

It stores info for the contents that appears in XMB categories. "game", "photo", "music" as far i remember... and i guess "video" too
Click to expand...



So I tried only backing up the DB file and it did not work at all. Ps3 would not even display xmb screen. I had to check file system for it to work again. So it needs additional files located in the metal folder. But as we know even backing up the whole folder still will ask you to restore database. Oh well now we know.
 
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