[Cbe-oss-dev] /dev/psflash problem on PS3 Firmware 3.15

[Geoff Levand]

Hi,

On Mon, 2015-11-30 at 20:48 +0000, Declan Malone wrote:
> I mentioned before that I was seeing problems with the ps3-utils
> programs. They were failing to find the required magic signatures in
> the flash. I still have the same problems even after the rebuild.

The header signature 'cell_ext_os_area' should be set to flash by
the GameOS 'Install Other OS' as described here:

  https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/geoff/cell/ps3-openplatform/manual.html


> I installed your petitboot-based bootloader and copied the contents of
> the /dev/psflash device. What I discovered is that the bulk of the
> memory is actually reading as blank. In fact, the entire range from
> 0x40000 to 0xefffff is just zeros.

That could be OK.  The layout is documented in Figure 3 of

  https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/geoff/cell/ps3-linux-docs/BootLinuxAndInstallation.html


> That obviously explains why your tool is failing to find the magic
> signature. But the question is, "why are these areas reading as
> blank?". Do you have any idea?

Where data is depends on the offsets in the header.

> ps3_system_bus_match:354: dev=6(sb_02), drv=6(ps3disk): match
>  -> ps3_system_bus_probe:365: sb_02
>  -> dma_sb_region_create:656:
> ps3disk sb_02: ps3stor_probe_access:70: 4 accessible regions found.
> Only the first one will be used
> ps3disk sb_02: First accessible region has index 0 start 0 size 1953525168
> ps3disk sb_02: ps3da is a TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 (953869 MiB total, 953869
> MiB for OtherOS)
>  ps3da: unknown partition table

It seems you can boot Linux, so there must be something in the Other OS
flash.  Maybe your ps3-utils is the problem.  Or, maybe you can
manually set the 'cell_ext_os_area' data to the flash header to get ps3
-flash-util to work.

-Geoff