PS3 How do I install Linux?

PanMann

PanMann

Member
I'm trying to install Fedora 12 on my PS3 PHAT that has the firmware of 2.01 and whenever I try to select the option "Install Other OS" with the flashdrive with the installer on there it says "No applicable installer found" or something similar to that and I have 0 idea why

If anything, is there a proper Linux distro for the PS3 that I could use?
 
Bootloader is mandatory. And You installing it from USB or CD, or DVD, or BD. But before that, You must format HDD and set capacity for OtherOS partition (even if You will not plan using internal HDD for Linux :P). You have choice between 10GiB for OOS and rest for so called GameOS or vice versa.

OtherOS exist up and include 3.16. So 2.01 have it too. And doesn't matter of this is CEX or DEX. But why don't You install eg. 3.15? What keeps You on 2.01?
https://www.google.com/search?q=ps3+firmware+f4c191ffba72e008bc750b091219e1f6

On firmwares above 3.16, You need CFW for OOS (because it was last fw with OOS, Sony removed it in 3.21 and all newer).
 
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Berion said:
Bootloader is mandatory. And You installing it from USB or CD, or DVD, or BD. But before that, You must format HDD and set capacity for OtherOS partition (even if You will not plan using internal HDD for Linux :P). You have choice between 10GiB for OOS and rest for so called GameOS or vice versa.

OtherOS exist up and include 3.16. So 2.01 have it too. And doesn't matter of this is CEX or DEX. But why don't You install eg. 3.15? What keeps You on 2.01?
https://www.google.com/search?q=ps3+firmware+f4c191ffba72e008bc750b091219e1f6

On firmwares above 3.16, You need CFW for OOS (because it was last fw with OOS, Sony removed it in 3.21 and all newer).
Click to expand...

Hm, when I got the Ubuntu 9.04 installer I was able to install it via that option but then it went

"mount: mounting none on /dev/pts failed
/init /init:923: dropbear: not found
Ubuntu Ps3 KBoot Loader.
No defualt root fs was found, or one was found and it didn't containg a message = congig file.
If no rootfs was found. you can enter the shell here with 'sh'. Exiting will return you to this promt. In the shell you can mount your rootfs as
/mnt/root/.
Reasons this may have happened include:
-No drive with a rootfs was actually found.
-your rootfs does not have the correct volume label of "/"
-Your rootfs is corrupt (use the rescue cd to fix this)."

Also, I used Ubuntu cause I had no other way of getting Fedora 12 to be detected (nor did I find any kboot/petitboot files that I didn't need to compile cause I dont know I need to do during those situations)

Also, i'm on 2.01 cause I wanted it to be on that version (and it also has the OtherOS option +the PS3 I have supports it), and I wanna keep it on that version until I want to install a newer version out of pure boredom ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: Used a CD, says something along the lines of /casper/vmlinux: Permission denied
 
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Since i'm using a CD since I took out my old macbook, I was able to burn a Ubuntu 7.10 image as a test, but now I cant even install it cause I get constant Buffer I/O error on device sr0 logical block, SQUASHFS error: sb_bread failed reading block and after some minutes I got the run-init: /sbin/ini: I/O error, maybe the disk a bit too scratched up?
 
You cannot use any Linux, it must be dedicated one with kernel with PS3 drivers, prepred initrd and in PPC architecture because Cell is PPC CPU.
 
Berion said:
So it should be fine.
Click to expand...
Can you help out?

Whenever I try to install Fedora 12 and I get to the installer, it tells me /dev/ps3da needs to be reinitialized, once I do reinitialize it and go to the partitions part of the installation, it doesn't show any partition that already exists on the drive and labels it as "Unknown", forcing me to make new partitions which have a consequence of formatting the entire drive, causing GameOS to be erased mid-way, resulting in the installer failing due to, you know, GameOS and petitboot being removed

It's the 29th attempt already and i'm on the verge of giving up
 
I tried only Red Ribbon, it has successfully installed on internal HDD but couldn't run it. :D

Errors from Your quote telling user that's hardware is unknown and cannot even mount squashfs.

OtherOS don't have access to entire drive (at least on OFW 3.16 and lower), only to this specific region (in BSD naming convention, it is literally a partition) which is treating as device. So what You saying is... strange.
 
Berion said:
I tried only Red Ribbon, it has successfully installed on internal HDD but couldn't run it. :D

Errors from Your quote telling user that's hardware is unknown and cannot even mount squashfs.

OtherOS don't have access to entire drive (at least on OFW 3.16 and lower), only to this specific region (in BSD naming convention, it is literally a partition) which is treating as device. So what You saying is... strange.
Click to expand...
The entire SQUASHFS thing was probably from due to the amount of scratches the CD disk got

The OtherOS thing related to installing Fedora 12 is still a mystery to me, I formatted the drive for use with OtherOS, installed petit boot and chose to install Fedora 12 via NFS and what I don't understand is why it doesn't detect any type of Partition on the drive, it just initialized the entire drive and marks it as Unknown and Unformatted, I sadly don't have any way to go around this as I'm not a Linux nerd, I'm an all-time Windows user

I'm gonna record a video related to the entire thing just so there's more context
 
I see that You don't get it. But its ok, it is twisted shit.

HV will not allow to see by OtherOS entire disk drive logic, at least not without hacking. So what you see as blank disk is partition used as disk. Imagine it like as BSD nested partitions example or so called extended partition in MBR. You will end with partition, on which will be partition table for disk which is in reality a partition. :D
 
Hello everyone, this is a pretty interesting thread.
So it sounds like the OP has been able to get his PS3 formatted/partitioned for OtherOS (via GameOS options), and has been able to successfully install petitboot thru the "Install OtherOS" option. Awesome!
Furthermore it sounds like he has successfully initiated Fedora 12 installation and gotten up to the hard drive partitioning part of the install. At this point, here's some things you should know...
Nothing you do here to your PS3's HDD device /dev/ps3da will affect the GameOS portion of the PS3. You can go ahead and partition/format the device however you like, and you will still be able to boot back into GameOS at any time.
Fun fact: ALL Linux access to the HDD from OtherOS environment is done thru the PS3's hypervisor (this is necessary for the PS3's HDD encryption). So even when it looks like Linux is in control, the HV is actually always running too :-)
Fun fact 2: The PS3 HV runs on its own SPU core in the Cell/B.E. in a thing called Isolation Mode which (ideally) protects its memory from access by the rest of the system... even the Linux kernel!

Anyway, hope some of that info will be of some use; will keep following this thread :-)
Also, thanx bucanero for the shout-out to my website/youtube above; thats so awesome!
If anyones interested I recently added some new content under http://www.ps3linux.net/development.html and http://www.ps3linux.net/emulation.html
Happy SPUing :-)
 
Fun fact 2: The PS3 HV runs on its own SPU core in the Cell/B.E. in a thing called Isolation Mode which (ideally) protects its memory from access by the rest of the system... even the Linux kernel!
Click to expand...

The hypervisor runs on the ppu. When looking at the elf header for lv1, i.e. the hypervisor, the processor type is 0x15 [ppc]. The elf header for any of the loaders specifies processor type is 0x17 [spu]. Also, looking at the size of lv1, it will not fit into a 256kb local store. The public bootloader exploit which was widely published, appears to contain a kernel module for peek and poke of lv1.
 
gshel054 said:
Hello everyone, this is a pretty interesting thread.
So it sounds like the OP has been able to get his PS3 formatted/partitioned for OtherOS (via GameOS options), and has been able to successfully install petitboot thru the "Install OtherOS" option. Awesome!
Furthermore it sounds like he has successfully initiated Fedora 12 installation and gotten up to the hard drive partitioning part of the install. At this point, here's some things you should know...
Nothing you do here to your PS3's HDD device /dev/ps3da will affect the GameOS portion of the PS3. You can go ahead and partition/format the device however you like, and you will still be able to boot back into GameOS at any time.
Fun fact: ALL Linux access to the HDD from OtherOS environment is done thru the PS3's hypervisor (this is necessary for the PS3's HDD encryption). So even when it looks like Linux is in control, the HV is actually always running too :)
Fun fact 2: The PS3 HV runs on its own SPU core in the Cell/B.E. in a thing called Isolation Mode which (ideally) protects its memory from access by the rest of the system... even the Linux kernel!

Anyway, hope some of that info will be of some use; will keep following this thread :)
Also, thanx bucanero for the shout-out to my website/youtube above; thats so awesome!
If anyones interested I recently added some new content under http://www.ps3linux.net/development.html and http://www.ps3linux.net/emulation.html
Happy SPUing :)
Click to expand...

Oh hey! It's you, I am that annoying commenter that posted 8 comments on the YouTube video, sorry for annoying you back there

I actually cannot continue anything after pressing the "format" button or whatever it is, I haven't tried it out in 5 days cause I genuinely gave up on that, it was unable to detect the partitions, even after formatting the entire drive via the "Full" option and waiting 9 hours for it to do so.

I'll try to get the video about what I mean tomorrow, currently having issues with getting the NFS server to work on my PC(I'm using WinNFSd since I don't know any alterinatives), maybe even 3-5 days if I'm unlucky, a pack of DVD-RW disks that I ordered might arrive between that timeframe.
 
Hey :-) Yeah it suxx that you're still having issues with the install... The only similar issue I've seen on my machine is that sometimes (with certain hard drives) the formatting procedure will fail if I try to use the ext4 file system. Then I have to shut down, re-start the install, and select ext3 instead. Currently I'm using a Samsung SSD and it works great, tho. If you have any spare laptop drives laying around, you may want to try swapping out the PS3's HDD for one of those. If you do, make sure you have a USB ready with your firmware on it cuz the PS3 will need it to initialize the new drive. Beyond that, you can also try some alternative distros like Yellow Dog or T2 or even an earlier Fedora (I think the Fedoras are PS3 compatible going all the way back to release 9 or so). All of which will install without having to use VNC to get the GUI (only Fedora 12 requires that). Check my website under "Extras" if you need the install ISOs (and check my Youtube for a video on installing T2). Last but not least I wonder if it might help if you upgrade your firmware a bit. FW 2.01 is way older than anything I've ever used for OtherOS/Linux and I can't really think of a good reason to stay on such a low version. Theoretically you should be able to upgrade all the way to FW 3.16 and still be able to install Linux. If you do want to experiment with installing later firmwares, my favorite place do download them is here: https://archive.midnightchannel.net/SonyPS/Firmware/

Anyway, hope that gave u some ideas to try. Hit me up on IRC if u like. I'm often on LiberaChat and my nick is CellBE_Boy :-)
Also, if you're having trouble with NFS, don't forget to open the ports in your firewall, or simply shut it down while doing the install. Thats what I do.
 
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