Reading Wii discs with Python

This big article is a translation of the three part article I wrote in January called "Lire des disques de Wii en Python" (part 1 / part 2 / part 3). Thanks a lot to Kalenz for helping me translate it!

What I mean by reading a Wii disc is simple: from a Wii DVD image, being able to get metadata about the game, like its name or its unique ID, but also being able to read the filesystem on the disc to access the game executable and data. We'll do this in three parts: first, we'll decrypt the disc clusters to be able to access the raw partition data, then we'll parse the filesystem to access files and directories, and we'll end this by a presentation of wiiodfs, the software I created to mount Wii discs on Linux using FUSE.

I currently only have one game disc image on my computer: the one from Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, PAL version, whose ID is RT4PAF (sha1sum: b2fb05a7fdf172ea61b5d1872e6b121140c95822). I'm going to work on this disc image for my tests, and if needed fix things when I'll have to open another game DVD image which doesn't work. To write this article, I'm using documentation from WiiBrew, a wiki about Wii homebrew with a lot of technical informations, and the source code of Dolphin, the Wii emulator (mostly in the Source/Core/DiscIO directory). Thanks a lot to all of the contributors to these projects.

All of the examples from this article are given in the form of Python shell transcripts. If you only want a working version of the software to use at home, look at the third part of this article, where I'm talking about wiiodfs.

Reading raw data from a partition

Some facts about Wii discs: they start with a simple header containing metadata about the game (name, ID, disc number, disc type, etc.), placed at offset 0. At offset 0x40000 is the volume group table, which contains all the partitions on the disc. Wii discs generally contain several partitions: at least one for the game and one containing the system upgrades. Each of these partitions have a type: 0 is a data partition, 1 is a system upgrade partition. We'll only look at the data partition, I'm not interested in the system upgrade files. The data partition starts with another header containing informations needed to decrypt the partition data. All of the data on a Wii disc are encrypted using the AES algorithm, with a 128 bytes key.

Let's start by importing useful modules and opening our disc image:

Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Dec 20 2010, 11:54:29) 
[GCC 4.5.1 20101125 (prerelease)] on linux2
>>> from collections import namedtuple
>>> from struct import unpack as up
>>> from Crypto.Cipher import AES
>>> fp = open('tos-2.img', 'rb')

We'll read the disc header at offset 0x0 using struct.unpack. It's really easy: the header has a fixed size and fixed size fields.

>>> DiscHeader = namedtuple('DiscHeader',
...     'disc_id game_code region_code maker_code disc_number disc_version '
...     'audio_streaming stream_bufsize wii_magic gc_magic title'
... )
>>> disc_hdr = DiscHeader(*up('>c2sc2sBBBB14xLL64s', fp.read(96)))
>>> disc_hdr
DiscHeader(disc_id='R', game_code='T4', region_code='P', maker_code='AF',
           disc_number=0, disc_version=0, audio_streaming=0,
           stream_bufsize=0, wii_magic=1562156707, gc_magic=0,
           title='Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World' + n*'\x00')

The game metadata are all contained in this header: game ID (RT4PAF, separated into disc_id, game_code, region_code and maker_code), game title (zero terminated), and a magic number, 0x5d1c9ea3, which confirms that this is actually a Wii disc. Next step is the volume group table. Let's see what it looks like using xxd:

$ xxd -s 0x40000 -l 48 tos-2.img
0040000: 0000 0002 0001 0008 0000 0000 0000 0000  ................

There are 4 volume groups containing multiple partitions. That means a partition is identified by its VG id and its partition ID. The VG table we just dumped contains for each VG two 32 bytes words: the first one is the number of partitions in that VG, and the second one is the offset to the partition table (the offset is in block of 4 bytes, so we must multiply it by 4 to get an offset in bytes). Here, we have the first VG containing 2 partitions, and its partition table is at offset 0x10008 * 4, which is 0x40020. Let's use xxd again:

$ xxd -s 0x40020 -l 16 tos-2.img
0040020: 0001 4000 0000 0001 03e0 0000 0000 0000  ..@.............

Each entry in this table contains first the offset to the partition (again, in block of 4 bytes), but also the type of the partition. As said above, type 1 = system upgrade partition and type 0 = game data. Here, we have an update partition at offset 0x14000 * 4 and a game data partition at offset 0x3e00000 * 4. Using Python, we can dump all of the VG entries and all of the partitions in an easy to read format:

>>> PartEntry = namedtuple('PartEntry', 'offset type')
>>> def read_part_entry(offset):
...     fp.seek(offset)
...     (data_offset, type) = up('>LL', fp.read(8))
...     data_offset *= 4
...     return PartEntry(data_offset, type)
>>> read_part_entry(0x40020)
PartEntry(offset=327680, type=1)
>>> read_part_entry(0x40028)
PartEntry(offset=260046848, type=0)
>>> VGEntry = namedtuple('VGEntry', 'part_count table_offset')
>>> def read_vg_entry(offset):
...     fp.seek(offset)
...     (part_count, table_offset) = up('>LL', fp.read(8))
...     table_offset *= 4
...     return VGEntry(part_count, table_offset)
>>> read_vg_entry(0x40000)
VGEntry(part_count=2, table_offset=262176)
>>> read_vg_entry(0x40008)
VGEntry(part_count=0, table_offset=0)
>>> def read_part_table():
...     base_off = 0x40000
...     vgs = {}
...     for vg_num in xrange(4):
...         vg_ent = read_vg_entry(base_off + 8 * vg_num)
...         if vg_ent.part_count == 0:
...             continue
...         vgs[vg_num] = {}
...         for part_num in xrange(vg_ent.part_count):
...             off = vg_ent.table_offset + 8 * part_num
...             part = read_part_entry(off)
...             vgs[vg_num][part_num] = part
...     return vgs
>>> read_part_table()
{0: {0: PartEntry(offset=327680, type=1),
     1: PartEntry(offset=260046848, type=0)}}

The game data partition is encrypted using AES in CBC mode with a key stored in the partition header. This key is itself encrypted using a master key, which is the same on every Wii console, and is stored in One Time Programmable memory inside the Wii CPU at manufacturing time. This key has been known for a long time and can be found for example in the Dolphin code. AES CBC needs a key and an IV (Initial Vector) to proceed. The IV is also stored in the partition header: it is part of the title ID which uniquely identifies a game and is for example used to know where a game stores its data on the console NAND. We have all the informations we need to recover the game specific key (aka. title key), let's start by parsing the ticket, which is the data structure containing all the keys and infos we need about a title:

>>> Ticket = namedtuple('Ticket',
...     'enc_tit_key tit_id data_off data_len'
... )
>>> part = read_part_table()[0][1]
>>> fp.seek(part.offset)
>>> ticket = Ticket(*up('>447x16s13x16s204xLL', fp.read(704)))

For a reason I don't know, Nintendo did not use the whole title ID as the IV but only the first 8 bytes. The 8 other bytes are filled with 0. Let's decrypt the title key!

>>> master_key = '\xeb\xe4\x2a\x22\x5e\x85\x93\xe4'
>>> master_key += '\x48\xd9\xc5\x45\x73\x81\xaa\xf7'
>>> iv = ticket.tit_id[:8] + '\x00' * 8
>>> aes = AES.new(master_key, AES.MODE_CBC, iv)
>>> key = aes.decrypt(ticket.enc_tit_key)
>>> key

With that, we are now able to decrypt the partition contents. Data are stored at an offset found in the ticket (data_off in the ticket parsing code above). From that offset, data is organized in clusters of 0x8000 bytes. These clusters contain each 0x400 bytes of hashing informations to validate data integrity, and 0x7C00 bytes of encrypted data. To decrypt the data, we use the title key, and the IV is stored in the first 0x400 bytes of the cluster, at offset 0x3D0:

>>> def read_cluster(idx):
...     data_offset = part.offset + ticket.data_off * 4
...     cluster_offset = data_offset + idx * 0x8000
...     fp.seek(cluster_offset)
...     data_enc = fp.read(0x8000)
...     iv = data_enc[0x3D0:0x3E0]
...     aes = AES.new(key, AES.MODE_CBC, iv)
...     return aes.decrypt(data_enc[0x400:])

Let's test that by decoding the first 20 clusters and looking at their content:

>>> for i in xrange(20):
...     open('/tmp/cluster%d' % i, 'wb').write(read_cluster(i))

$ strings /tmp/cluster* | less
This Apploader built %s %s for RVL
APPLOADER WARNING >>> Use v1.07 or later.
APPLOADER ERROR >>> FSTLength(%d) in BB2 is greater than FSTMaxLength(%d)
APPLOADER ERROR >>> Debug monitor size (%d) should be a multiple of 32
APPLOADER ERROR >>> Simulated memory size (%d) should be a multiple of 32

Success! Data seems to have been read and decrypted correctly from the partition (if it's working for the first 20 clusters, we can certainly assume that it will work for the rest of the partition). Let's end this part by dumping the entire partition to be able to analyze the filesystem easily later. The partition size is stored in the ticket, let's go!

>>> nclusters = ticket.data_len * 4 / 0x8000
>>> out_fp = open('/path/to/tos-2-dumped.img', 'wb')
>>> for i in xrange(nclusters):
...     print '%f%%' % (i * 100.0 / nclusters)
...     out_fp.write(read_cluster(i))

We now have a tos-2-dumped.img file containing the raw partition data, with the filesystem and the game data on it.

Parsing the filesystem

On the partition we just dumped, there are three main parts to analyze:

  • The apploader, which is a small stub of code identical on each game and distributed in the Nintendo Wii SDK, whose role is to load the game executable in memory
  • The game executable, whose sections are not stored linearly. I won't spend a lot of time on how it is stored, but if I remember correctly each section contains the offset to the next section, and you can easily recreate a DOL executable (the format of most Wii/GC executables) which can be converted to an ELF
  • The filesystem, where all of the images, textures, sounds, musics, 3D models, animation data, scripts, etc. are stored for a game. Nintendo provides an API to access the filesystem so everyone uses the same format. That's what we are going to talk about here

The structure of a Wii filesystem is really simple: it is a fully read only filesystem optimized to avoid seeking (slow on an optical disc) so there are no things to handle like data fragmentation. First of all, all of the metadata are stored in the same place, called the FST (FileSystem Table). These metadata are actually only the name of the file, its size and where it is stored on the disc. We can find the FST by looking at offset 0x424 on the partition, which contains the 4 bytes offset to the FST (which means we need to multiply it by 4 to get an offset in bytes).

A filesystem is hierarchical: it is a tree of directories containing leaves which are the regular files. However, the FST is a linear structure (a table). To represent the hierarchy, a directory descriptor uses its size field to store the index of the first descriptor which is not their child. For example, if the root directory contains only 3 files, its size field will contain the value 4 (descriptor 0 is the root directory, 1/2/3 are the files, so 4 is the first which is not a child of the root directory). A little example in ASCII art:

| Directory 1         |
|   size = 7          |
    | File 1              |
    |   size = 42         |
    | Directory 2         |
    |   size = 6          |
        | File 2              |
        |   size = 1337       |
        | File 3              |
        |   size = 1234       |
        | File 4              |
        |   size = 4321       |
    | File 5              |
    |   size = 101010     |

After the last descriptor comes the string table containing all the file names. In a file descriptor, the file name is stored as an offset (in bytes this time... consistency!) from the beginning of this string table. To find the offset to this string table, we can use the fact that the first descriptor size is also the total number of descriptors in the FST. And that's all there is to know about a Wii disc filesystem! Quite simple, isn't it?

Let's start writing a bit of code. First, let's import the modules we need and open the image we dumped at the end of the first part of this article:

[GCC 4.5.1 20101125 (prerelease)] on linux2
>>> from collections import namedtuple
>>> from struct import unpack as up
>>> fp = open('tos-2-dumped.img', 'rb')

Then, let's define a useful function which reads data at a specific offset in the file (basically, seek then read):

>>> def read_at(off, len):
...     fp.seek(off)
...     return fp.read(len)

We're all set! First step, let's get the FST offset and multiply it by 4 to get it in bytes:

>>> fst_off = up('>L', read_at(0x424, 4))[0] * 4

Next, the string table offset. We take the FST offset, reads the size of the first descriptor, multiply it by 0xC which is the size of a descriptor, and adds those two to get the offset we need:

>>> str_off = fst_off + up('>8xL', read_at(fst_off, 0xC))[0] * 0xC

Filenames are stored as zero terminated strings of at most 256 characters. Python has nothing standard to read that in the struct module, we will need a small function which reads 256 bytes and cut at the first \0 encountered:

>>> def read_filename(off):
...     s = read_at(str_off + off, 256)
...     return s[:s.index('\0')]
>>> read_filename(0)
>>> read_filename(7)
>>> read_filename(10)

Now comes the interesting code: the function which reads a file descriptor and all its children recursively to build the filesystem tree. This is not easy to understand with a single reading of the function, I'll explain it just after:

>>> def read_descr(idx):
...     descr = read_at(fst_off + 12 * idx, 12)
...     (name_off, data_off, size) = up('>LLL', descr)
...     data_off *= 4
...     is_dir = bool(name_off & 0xFF000000)
...     name_off &= ~0xFF000000
...     name = read_filename(name_off) if idx else ''
...     if not is_dir:
...         return idx + 1, name, (data_off, size)
...     else:
...         children = {}
...         idx += 1
...         while idx < size:
...             idx, child_name, child = read_descr(idx)
...             children[child_name] = child
...         return idx, name, children

First, let's identify what this function is returning: three values, the first one if the index of the first descriptor which has not yet been handled (makes the recursion easier), the name of the file or directory described by the descriptor we just read, and finally, depending on the file type (regular or directory), the children or the data offset. How this function does that is actually not that difficult: first, we read the 12 bytes of the descriptor from its index. Then, to check if it is a regular file or a directory, we check if one of the top 8 bits of the name is set: if there is at least one, this is a directory. We then read the name. If it is a regular file, we just end there saying that the first non handled descriptor is the one just after us. If it is a directory, we loop while the non handled offset is smaller than our last child and we insert the parsed descriptor into our children. That's all!

To conclude this part, let's dump all of the files and directories in a local directory on our PC. We just have to walk the tree returned by read_descr(0):

>>> from os.path import exists, join
>>> from os import mkdir
>>> def dump(name, data, where):
...     print 'dumping', name, 'to', where
...     if isinstance(data, dict): # directory
...         path = join(where, name)
...         if not exists(path):
...             mkdir(path)
...         for name, data in data.iteritems():
...             dump(name, data, path)
...     else:
...         print data[0], data[1]
...         data = read_at(data[0], data[1])
...         open(join(where, name), 'wb').write(data)

Here we go! We just extracted all the files and directories from a Wii disc onto our computer with just a Python shell. The last step is to make something usable from all of these informations.

Creating a FUSE filesystem for Wii discs

This last part of the article will talk about how to make a usable filesystem from all of that. Indeed, writing code snippets in a Python shell is far from clean, even though it is useful for hacking around.

The result is named wiiodfs, which stands for Wii Optical Disc FileSystem. It is an application able to mount a Wii disc image on Linux, but also a library that people who need to access Wii discs from their software can use. There is still a bit of work to do on it but 99% of the code is done and working.

The first difference of importance when comparing to the two previous parts is that we can not afford to dump the whole parition in a temporary file or dump all the files in a directory. It's ugly, slow and of little interest. The whole decyphering and data access in wiiodfs is done on the fly, when needed. The library is designed with that need in mind.

wiiodfs has a 4-layer design. The n-th layer can access every lower layers. Here is a detailed explanation of the different layers:

  • Raw access to the disc image, metadata, and to the volume groups table. Quite straightforward: no decyphering, no filesystem support, only what is necessary to read the image from a location to another and to recover informations on the disc partitions.
  • Raw access to decyphered partition data. It is almost certainly the most interesting part therefore I will describe it further later, but to sum up, it reads raw data off the partition, decyphers it and returns it to the user.
  • Access to the partition files with an easy-to-use API: Filesystem.open returns an object behaving like a Python file, on which we can call methods like read or seek. There are also methods to list files in a directory, checking if a file exists, etc.
  • Finally, an interface to use our filesystem with Pyfilesystem, a library which aims to define a common interface for all file systems in order to use them in a uniform way.

As I said before, I think the most interesting part in all of this is the second layer, handling the partition decyphering. Indeed, decrypting blocs of 0x8000 bytes is quite slow and some kind of caching is needed to avoid decrypting the same cluster 20 times in a row. I implemented a simple LRU cache to solve this problem. LRU caches are the most simple caches you can think of: they keep a certain number of values sorted by their last use time. That way, the most recently used values will be kept in the cache, and the least recently used values will slowly be replaced by other values which are more used. There are probably a lot of way to cache clusters more efficiently but this was not the goal of this project, and this LRU cache is enough to get a good throughput.

wiiodfs is distributed with a script named wiiodmount which mounts a Wii disc image on a local filesystem folder. To do this, we simply use a feature of Pyfilesystem, called expose.fuse. It's magic and there is almost nothing to do on my side to handle that.

Wrapping up

I knew almost nothing about the Wii when I started writing this article at the beginning of January 2011. This was a really interesting adventure, and I know now in detail how Nintendo decided to store data on their optical discs (at least on the logical layer, I don't know anything about how Wii discs are physically different from classic DVDs). wiiodfs is almost certainly incomplete and buggy, but it is a really simple implementation of the Wii Filesystem and it is as far as I know the only one able to use FUSE to mount the disc on a local folder.

I hope you liked this article 🙂 Let's end that with links and thanks to the projects and people who helped me:

  • Wiiodfs, Mercurial repository of the project
  • Wiibrew, a great Wiki about Wii homebrew, with a lot of technical informations
  • Dolphin, the best Wii/GC emulator, which is licensed under the GPL license
  • Thanks to kalenz who helped me translate this long article to English

4 comments so far

Add Your Comment
  1. Good thing wii.py has been out for ages. 😉

    Nice articles on the wii. Very well written

  2. This is great. It reminds me when I read/wrote the partition on my ps2 harddrive using perl, in order to fix some corruption that occured.

  3. Just FYI, Wiimm’s ISO Tools contain wfuse (a Wii disc fuse driver) since a while already. (Also WDF is a great format for managing Wii disc images.)

  4. Thanks a lot for this post. I was going nuts trying to read a Gamecube disk filesystem… I’d been misled by a certain Gamecube documentation that a directory’s “next offset” pointed to the next item that *did* belong to it (so you can skip past the subdirectories), and seeing two directories both claiming to contain the same file had me completely baffled, until I read your post and realized it’s really telling where the directory *ends*.