Debian GNU/Linux on the PlayStation 3
=====================================

Monday 11 January 2010 17:21

I still had some original fat 60GB PlayStation 3
standing around and after some end-of-the-year
diskspace inventory I decided that for some serious
media storage a 1TB external drive or a NAS with a
couple of TB space is more future-proof than trying
to keep everything on that 60GB disk (I mean, there
are USB sticks that are larger than that). So I
moved and removed a couple of 10's of gigabytes
from the system to create some free space for
Linux. What was left could be backed up on my 16GB
USB stick, so I was ready to mess things up.

Messing things up started with a dead live cd.
Usually a live cd means you can burn the ISO to a
cd, put it in the system and boot some kind of
Linux from it. This is not how it works with the
PlayStation 3, because it doesn't just boot from
something that isn't it's own internal harddisk.
The trick is that the "Install Other OS" option in
the System Settings menu of the PlayStation also
doesn't really do what it says. What that option
does is copy a bootloader from a predetermined
folder on a USB stick to a special place on it's
internal harddisk. The bootloader might be some
kind of very small Operating System, but it's not
the motherload. With the "Other OS" installed, the
PlayStation 3 can then be set to boot that "Other
OS". Only after you have done that the PlayStation
can boot a bootloader that can give you the option
to switch to booting the real operating system that
is on the cd-rom or on a USB stick.

A user friendly bootloader should also give you the
option to boot the original PlayStation OS, but if
it doesn't do that you can always boot that by
first holding the on/off "button" untill the system
goes down after the second beep. Then hold that
"button" on the quiet system again until it beeps
for the second time while the system switches on
again. The chance of actually ruining the
PlayStation 3 in the process is much lower than
when you're working with other dual boot attempts
because the Other OS you're installing is still
running under the PlayStation's hypervisor, which
is some kind of virtual machine that won't even let
you see the disks or partitions where Sony's own
stuff is hidden. So while doing the partitioning
you will only see the 10GB that's allocated to you,
and not some PlayStation system stuff that would
brick your system should you erase it by accident.

With an otheros.bld that provided kboot I was able
to boot the live cd and install debian on the 10GB
partition made for it by the PlayStation system.
Just don't go all expert, because a lot of the
options the expert mode gives you don't work
anyway. The normal install worked fine with my
Bravia connected through HDMI, wired network with
DHCP, Apple USB keyboard and Logitech USB mouse.
And since that all was fine the next thing to do is
update everything to the latest state of lenny.

Jumping from some live cd from 2007 straight to
today's lenny will get you into some issues. Issues
that no longer boot linux. But you can always go
back to the PlayStation OS and give up, or start
all over again. I didn't give up and found out the
main issue is that you have to have both the kernel
and the system make the switch to udev at the same
time, and maybe also the bootloader needs to know
about udev. So maybe three parts of the system need
to be in sync to keep linux bootable, and that is
easy to mess up. What I ended up with was a
bootloader that didn't boot any of my kernels, or a
bootloader that could load a kernel that didn't fit
the system that was already switched over to udev.

The solution was to look at the messages on the
screen and notice that after some experiments using
petitboot /dev/sda pointed to my 16MB MemoryStick,
and not to the 10GB partition it pointed to
previously when working with the live cd and kboot.
Somehow now that partition was called /dev/ps3da1.
So in the kboot shell I mounted that partition to
edit /etc/kboot.conf and replaced every occurance
of sda with ps3da. And after that it boots again.
It even boots the latest kernel from kernel.org I
compiled on the PlayStation 3.

The other stupid thing I encountered was getting
the wireless to work. The problem is that there is
nothing wrong with the wireless. You can use
/sbin/iwlist to scan for networks, use
/sbin/ifconfig to see the interface wlan0_rename_re
is there and up, but it's unusable because it
doesn't have an ipv4 address. Combined with the
curiosity that the wired and the wireless interface
have the same MAC address it was old fashioned
debugging without an internet connection.
Everything seems to work, but dhclient doesn't see
the interface.

The solution is to drop the buggy dhclient and
install dhcpcd instead. Apparently it provides the
same functionality, but in a way that can handle
the funky way the wireless hardware is set up
through the PlayStation 3's hypervisor. Using
dhcpcd the wireless is up and running.

The system isn't perfect yet, but after those big
issues I'm happy to see things like bluetooth just
work without any hassle and I can install Opera 10
without any problems. So now I'm running Windows 95
in qemu on it and playing Solitaire on my
PlayStation 3.

by Roland van Ipenburg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ipenburg/blog/posts/dull/2010/01/11/debian-gnu-linux-on-the-playstation-3/