[Cbe-oss-dev] Looking for people interested in the Sony PS3 and Linux

[Stefan Assmann]

Geoff Levand wrote:
> Hi John,
> 
> John Lange wrote:
>> I would like to make contact with others who have done work getting the
>> PS3 to run Linux.
> 
> OK, that is accomplished.  I recommend you also try via IRC:
> 
>   #cell on irc.oftc.net
>   #ps3dev on frenode
> 
>> Specifically I have been spending a significant amount of time recently
>> trying to get things working smoothly on the PS3 under OpenSuSE 11 and
>> I'm hoping this list might be a good place to ask some questions.
>>
>> As far as I can tell there is no "OpenSuSE / PS3" specific community or
>> mailing list so is this list the best place?
> 
> This ML is OK for PS3 specifics, but you may do better using OpenSuse
> or PowerPC forums for non-PS3 specifics.
> 
>> I've been trying to add as much information as possible to the OpenSUSE
>> PS3 web site http://en.opensuse.org/PS3 but this is strictly a one-way
>> thing.
>>
>> Under the assumption that this is the best place, here are a couple of
>> starter questions.
>>
>> - Since the PS3 has limited resources compared with a full-blown PC,
>> does it not make sense to have a PS3 specific kernel that contains only
>> the things that the PS3 needs?
> 
> In general, distributors want a single kernel that runs on all
> platforms.  In the case of PS3, that would be the OpenSuSE 64 bit
> powerpc kernel.

Agreed.

> 
>> There is already a kernel-ps3 for suse but its for the "otheros" boot
>> process only. However, as far as I can see this bare-bones ps3 kernel is
>> missing very little (for example sound support) to make it a fully
>> functional runtime kernel.
>>
>> Is this not a good idea?
> 
> Sorry, I don't quite understand what your idea is.
> 
> I think it is not good to have an OpenSuSE specific bootloader
> though.  I am working to get the OpenSuSE installer support
> into my petitboot releases.  I have some of the patches from
> Stefan Assmann merged in, but have not released a build yet.
> Those are here:
> 
>   http://git.infradead.org/ps3/petitboot-patches.git
> 
> From what I understand, the OpenSuse powerpc installer cannot be
> run using kexec, so something different is needed to get it loaded
> and running.  I will talk with Stefan next week at LPC about the
> details.

This is correct. I think we can work out something to support this
in petitboot. Basically kernel, initrd, etc. are just stored in
different elf sections in the inst64 file to provide an easy
way to do network installations.

> 
>> - Speaking of sound support, so far I haven't been able to get my PS3 to
>> make a peep. The OS seems to recognize the sound device but no audio
>> comes out. Could this be dependant on the way the PS3 is connected? I
>> have mine connected via the optical output.
>>
>> Any help debugging this would be appreciated.
> 
> I recommend you check the archives of this mail list.  There ave been
> several discussions about it.  For my OpenSuse installation (11.0) I just
> needed to add myself to the audio group.  As a start, try:
> 
> 	su -c 'speaker-test -c2'

Last time I tested sound support it worked out of the box. If it doesn't
just enter a bug report at https://bugzilla.novell.com and I'll see for
that. It is supposed to work without any user involvement of course.

As a short term solution adding yourself to the audio group does the trick.
You can do that with Yast.

> 
> -Geoff
> 
> _______________________________________________
> cbe-oss-dev mailing list
> cbe-oss-dev at ozlabs.org
> https://ozlabs.org/mailman/listinfo/cbe-oss-dev

  Stefan

-- 
Stefan Assmann          | SUSE LINUX Products GmbH
Software Engineer       | Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg
Mail : sassmann at suse.de | GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg)