PS3 Bootloaders doesn't see USB and DVD

Thanks for posting diagram, I couldn't get it to post.

in petitboot shell using command:
ps3-flash-util -s
gives this output:
Code: 
ps3-flash-util (ps3-utils) 11.05.27-ga7ed3bb
 header :1: h.magic_num:  'cell_ext_os_area'
 header :1: h.hdr_version:  1
 header :1: h.db_area_offset:  2
 header :1: h.ldr_area_offset: 4
 header :1: h.ldr_format:  0 (raw)
 header :1: h.ldr_size:  9772164 (951c84h)
 param  :2: p.boot_flag:  1 (other-os)
 param  :2: p.num_params:  1591318794
 param  :2: p.rtc_diff  3974531833251177397
 param  :2: p.av_multi_out  2
 param  :2: p.ctrl_button:  233
 param  :2: p.static_ip_addr:  135.59.189.201
 param  :2: p.network_mask:  174.213.37.172
 param  :2: p.default_gateway: 120.222.25.162
 param  :2: p.dns_primary:  238.186.162.99
 param  :2: p.dns_secondary:  4.29.224.90
 db  :3: db.magic_num:  '-db-'
 db  :3: db.version:  1
 db  :3: db.index_64:  24
 db  :3: db.count_64:  57
 db  :3: db.index_32:  544
 db  :3: db.count_32:  57
 db  :3: db.index_16:  836
 db  :3: db.count_16:  57
I believe it is possible to use ps3-flash-util to update the petitboot image.
I noticed the first four db values mixed up match the results of fdisk -l
Code: 
Disk /dev/ps3nflashb: 15 MB, 15724544 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc0034ec3
specifically the 15724544

I also dumped the image using ps3-dump-bootldr to double check my petitiboot.
It matches the dtbImage.ps3 which can be found on github:
https://github.com/nevik-xx/dtbImage.ps3
https://github.com/2xsaiko/PS3-OtherOS
 
ps3-flash-util reading from VFLASH/eFlash region 5. "/dev/ps3nflashb" is region 1 of VFLASH (maybe the same with NANDs eFlash) which is kind a backup of NOR, ps3nflashf should be the place where BLD is stored.
 
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Thanks, I didn't notice before that ps3flash is just a link to ps3vflashf:
Code: 
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root  root  10 Jan  1 00:01 ps3flash -> ps3vflashf

I don't know if this is any help, but here is a dump of the first few sectors of ps3vflashf with headers and first several bytes of petitboot.

Also, exactly which kboot/otheros.bld did you use, from what site and from what name of iso?

thanks
 

Attachments

Ok, I found some time so I going back to the stuff. ^^

@bleepbleep
I don't have fdisk in busybox, not in "/bin" either. mount showing me strange mount point to USB, but indeed it is mounted, and as read only:
Code: 
/tmp/tmp/mnt/sda1
identified as "msdos" not as "vfat" (which is strange BTW, it is MBR created by GParted and the only one partition on it with FAT32). So, maybe that's the reason Petitboot not finding boot stuuf?

So I've "cd" path to
Code: 
/tmp/tmp/mnt/sda1/ppc/ppc64
and type "kexec -e vlinux". But I've got black screen.
 

Attachments

Berion said:
Ok, I found some time so I going back to the stuff. ^^

@bleepbleep
I don't have fdisk in busybox, not in "/bin" either. mount showing me strange mount point to USB, but indeed it is mounted, and as read only:
Code: 
/tmp/tmp/mnt/sda1
identified as "msdos" not as "vfat" (which is strange BTW, it is MBR created by GParted and the only one partition on it with FAT32). So, maybe that's the reason Petitboot not finding boot stuuf?

So I've "cd" path to
Code: 
/tmp/tmp/mnt/sda1/ppc/ppc64
and type "kexec -e vlinux". But I've got black screen.
Click to expand...
Normally petitboot mounts all devices to /tmp/petitboot/mnt/DEVICE
 
I'm using Petitboot from brewlogy (maybe it mounts in different places?) because it is the only one which is small enough, except original one from 2009 which maybe I will try too. But for now I feel that I missing something not really related to Linux or Petitboot itself. :/
 
Also do you have a nand or nor models because there is some homebrew allowing you to resize vflash region 5 for otheros
 
I have CECHL04 which is fat with NOR. But my goal is to make environment with boundaries of OFW 3.15/3.16, like in ancient times. So I don't want change anything. It is not that I'm interesting in using Linux on PS3 (I'm using it daily on PC, love my Mint ;p), I'm interesting in installing it only and analyse logic structure to add OtherOS support in my toolkit for HDD decryption. After that, I will check Glevand/Rebug 3.55-4.86 way with OOS++, and at the end Evilnat 4.90, to compare. So last two will demand from me messing with region5 resizing script and I will get freedom of installing any available bootloader. But for now, I need follow the steps of those for who OOS was only option with original Sony limitations.
 
Berion said:
I have CECHL04 which is fat with NOR. But my goal is to make environment with boundaries of OFW 3.15/3.16, like in ancient times. So I don't want change anything. It is not that I'm interesting in using Linux on PS3 (I'm using it daily on PC, love my Mint ;p), I'm interesting in installing it only and analyse logic structure to add OtherOS support in my toolkit for HDD decryption. After that, I will check Glevand/Rebug 3.55-4.86 way with OOS++, and at the end Evilnat 4.90, to compare. So last two will demand from me messing with region5 resizing script and I will get freedom of installing any available bootloader. But for now, I need follow the steps of those for who OOS was only option with original Sony limitations.
Click to expand...
Weel, that complicates things...
 
Indeed but look, somehow those people must using it. I need to follow their steps to make fully valid environment without any hacks. That's why I choose YellowDog and kboot or Petitboot.

Just didn't expected problems in finding and loading kernel, not to mention that my console acting weird (i.e I cannot shutdown PS3 from kboot or Petitboot level, only reboot works and watchdog by pressing long enough to force her to shutdown, and boots to black screen if otheros is set up in vflash flag if I disconnect her from wall (dead CMOS)).
 
Berion said:
Indeed but look, somehow those people must using it. I need to follow their steps to make fully valid environment without any hacks. That's why I choose YellowDog and kboot or Petitboot.

Just didn't expected problems in finding and loading kernel, not to mention that my console acting weird (i.e I cannot shutdown PS3 from kboot or Petitboot level, only reboot works and watchdog by pressing long enough to force her to shutdown, and boots to black screen if otheros is set up in vflash flag if I disconnect her from wall (dead CMOS)).
Click to expand...
Maybe the guy from PS3LINUX.net knows more, hes also using the official otheros with his fedora installation
 
  • I was thinking that something is wrong with 3.16 so I go back to 3.15. The same results.
  • I was thinking then, maybe RTC somehow introducing such strange bug. But no.
  • So then I was thinking that maybe it will not see MBR so I removed it and perform mkfs.vfat on device (BTW what is surprising CellOS see on it updates packages and otheros.bld).
  • So I have changed Petitboot from brewlogy build to original build linked by @bleepbleep (https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/geoff/cell/ps3-petitboot/) and this one works fine! Automatically found Red Ribbon on USB so no voodoo needed with hand writing books in shell, and now I'm just installing it. Fingers crossed. ;] Later I will try YellowDog but for now, I'm testing RR because it is smaller and my USB is slow as turtle.
  • Before that I checked mount points and they are as You saying.
So in summary, DON'T use this build: https://www.brewology.com/downloads/download.php?id=10333
It is broken somehow, at least on CECHL04 on CEX OFW 3.15 and 3.16.
 
thanks for posting the filelist. I did not realize otheros.bld was on the disc, fedora 12.does not include it. Instead people were supposed to download the addons iso which contains it.

just in case, here's a link for the addon iso:
https://ia903408.us.archive.org/24/items/ibm-cell-sdk-and-linux/CELL-Linux-CL_20080609-ADDON.iso

I'm sure you already know this site, but there's a bunch here:
http://ps3linux.net/
on this page following the hyperlink: ps3-distro-kits

addon:
CELL-Linux-CL_20080609-ADDON.iso\PS3\otheros\otheros.bld
CELL-Linux-CL_20080609-ADDON.iso\etc\kboot.conf

other addon iso:
CELL-Linux-CL_20061110-ADDON.iso\kboot\otheros.bld
CELL-Linux-CL_20061110-ADDON.iso\etc\kboot.conf

fedora 12 iso:
Fedora-12-ppc-DVD.iso\etc\yaboot.conf
Fedora-12-ppc-DVD.iso\ppc\ppc64\yaboot.conf vmlinuz 18mb ramdisk.image.gz 26mb

I'm glad you got it working. Given the error message and the booting problem I was afraid there was some corruption on your flash, glad it's ok.

edit:
had forgot to add filename to path CELL-Linux-CL_20061110-ADDON.iso\kboot\
 
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I'm not full happy, let's say half satisfied, because ultimately my mission failed. :( Got Linux on it but...

Sub-partition with BLD turned to be encrypted 3rd time (first layer by ATA key because whole disk is encrypted by it, second time by ENCDEC key because whole VFLASH partition is encrypted by this key, and "region 5" turned to be encrypted once more) in unknown way, and partition with OOS/OOS++ is also encrypted, 2nd time (first layer by ATA, second by unknown key and/or unknown way). I have tried different known seeds, different length, different IV/no IV, and different algos known they are in use in PS3 and older devices. Few hours goes to hell for nothing. For a moment I was thinking that I deceived myself thinking about those encryption and auto-suggesting, so knowing that many junk accessing to disk by fixed size or arbitrary fixed size to so called regions, I have checked if there is any encryption at all because so far I worked on mappers. So I calculated LBA for ps3vflash5 and ps3hdd4 (because we cannot get physical address from mappers), expecting that data isn't encrypted at all but no, unfortunately there is garbage there too (i.e no partition table in case of oos partition and no similar header stuff from Your dump attached and Sony docs - only "random data" literally from start to end, and to be sure, before I overwritten all sectors by zeroes). This proves that both are encrypted and we don't know yet how and by what. Very disappointing journey and disappointment of myself because I'm not been able to reverse LV1 stuff to solve this mystery and Glevand is retired for many years (I doubt magician from T2 Linux is interested in lower levels than Linux itself). Why for the f*ck sake it is cascade encryption? Controller is slow enough to be any reason making it slower more by another encryption layer, especially that Linux heavily loads I/O by thousands of files access.

But hey, I've learned few cool things about PS3. Where and how bootloader is stored, how kernel and initrd are seeking, where oos going and in how this partition looks like from inside. Not much, but still worth some time.
 
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Thanks for update on your situation.

I forgot to show the simple command to make ps3flash_dump200.bin posted above:
dd if=/dev/ps3flash count=200 of=ps3flash_dump200.bin
run on petitboot from directory on usb stick, default dd block size=512. Petitboot starts at 0x800 in that file.

fdisk is in /sbin
ps3-flash-util, ps3-dump-bootloader, and ps3-boot-game-os are in /usr/sbin
note the extra hyphen, no wonder ps3-boot-gameos doesn't do anything.

That is ironic about the possible extra encryption in flash, I was going to warn you about Fedora encrypting the hdd it is installed to and was going to suggest to disable that option during installation. However, I don't know what version that started.

This page:
https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Mounting_HDD_on_PC

says:
We don't have to decrypt VFLASH, only HDD, because cell_ext_os_area is NOT encrypted with
VFLASH key, only with HDD key.
Click to expand...
Obviously, I don't know if that is accurate, and it's unclear if this is in the same context as him discussing above, using ata keys and endec keys for vflash.
 
@bleepbleep Some users said it is not encrypted but they have 25xx Slims, produced beyond out of OOS support so maybe that's the case? I dunno, Sony using different key generation methods and different algos across Fat NANDs, Fat NORs, Slims (and probably Super Slims too with NOR/eMMC but we don't know that as we don't know how to hack LV1 on them). So maybe it is possible that my CECHL04 which is Fat NOR, encrypting stuff while newer doesn't.

That's information on wiki is at best partially true. Judging by my case.

I have CECH-2504 too, so I will try later OOS+ on it too see if my results covering other people results. For now I'm feeling tired of this and leave it for some time. ^^"

But thank You all for comments, help, time and efforts.
 
Forgot to reply:

Indeed OtherOS area is not encrypted, both, in VFLASH sub-partition (region) and OOS region. My error based on false assumption that whole HDD is encrypted by ATA Key and since VFLASH is additionally encrypted, that OOS region on it must be too. It looks like that fw encrypting only selected LBAs, and diagram for whole HDD, You can find >>here<<.

Oh, and RedRibbon doesn't work on 3.15/3.16 but newer. ;]
 
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