Getting kernel 4.14 to run on PS3

Sascha Schroeder sascha.schroeder at aethyx.com
Sat Dec 9 07:43:46 AEDT 2017


Hey Geoff,

thanks for your time and the clarification!

My firmware is downgradable, this should be possible because it got SS patches. Could be these are from you, so I could go back in fact to 3.15 and try the otheros.bld workaround. Thing is, I don't know if I can split my HDD to use my 110GB Linux; isn't it the case that normal OtherOS only grants you 20GB for Linux? That's the only thing that's holding me back, this way I could even use normal Debian.

I use an old and still working FAT model. The 1400 is a tool model which I don't own.

I don't like what I read about the ABI breakage stuff, to be honest. Especially the second link describes pretty well what happens on my machine. So, current status here is to upgrade to 3.15 kernels only, I think it doesn't make sense to try higher versions at the moment. Is it really "only" a kexec problem? Or something deeper, more difficult? I can try to help but I'm pretty new in this PS3 PowerPC Linux stuff. 

Using OtherOS++ was a coincidence. I found this special PUP which splits the HDD in half for Linux and GameOS. This was exactly what I wanted, so I stuck with it. :-) Finding PUPs today which provide Linux options is nearly impossible. I'm not a fan of "Rebug" either, don't want/need it. But they had one firmware with OtherOS++ support which was taken down or whatever. It's just non-existent anymore.

You don't know a community for OtherOS++ by chance? I found some forums online but most of them only care about pirated games (which doesn't interest me at this age anymore) and/or show posts which are highly outdated.

It's pretty hard today to stick with this hardware. But I'm fascinated by the Cell BE and want to learn it. It became a little obsession. So even compiling a kernel on the PS3 doesn't bother me much, I go to work and when I come home the fresh *.deb packages are ready to install. :-D But I understand what you mean of course, will check out cross-compiling. 

Geoff, thanks again for your time and wisdom! All the best, Sascha

Am 8. Dezember 2017 18:37:54 MEZ schrieb Geoff Levand <geoff at infradead.org>:
>Hi Sascha,
>
>On 12/08/2017 01:24 AM, Sascha Schroeder wrote:
>> I yesterday tried to compile the newest kernel 4.14 for my PS3
>running
>> OtherOS++ and "Red Ribbon GNU Linux" from 2014. I even succeeded and
>> created the three *.deb files and installed them afterwards.
>> 
>> Unfortunately, my machine did not boot.
>> 
>> As far as I read in very old sources, this could be that my machine
>is
>> using OtherOS++ on firmware 3.55.2 and not the Sony OtherOS prior
>> firmware 3.2x.
>> 
>> I'm in contact with the creator from "Red Ribbon" and he mentioned we
>> have to manually patch PS3 linux kernel.
>> 
>> So, my question 1 would be: which patches would I need to get the
>newest
>> kernel 4.14 running on my PS3 machine?
>
>I don't know about your machine with OtherOS++ on firmware 3.55.2,
>but for FAT and DECR-1400 models with firmware 3.15 or lower the
>otheros.bld built from the latest ps3-queue-v4.14 branch of my
>ps3-linux repo using either ps3_petitboot_defconfig or
>ps3_petitboot_nfs_defconfig will boot if written to flash memory
>using ps3-flash-util or the XMB [Install Other OS].
>
>  https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/geoff/ps3-linux.git
>
>Be aware that there was a kernel ABI breakage effecting kexec and
>that the ps3-petitboot-09.11.30 I released cannot boot kernels newer
>than linux-v3.15. See:
>
>https://www.mail-archive.com/linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org/msg126348.html
>(Boot new kernel on PS3)
>https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-powerpc@lists.debian.org/msg66884.html
>(PS3?)
>
>I'm working towards an updated petitboot release.
>
>> Question 2 would be: maybe there exists a second tree where we can
>get
>> the kernel for OtherOS++ too?
>
>Sorry, I don't know.  You'll need to ask for help in the hacker
>community for OtherOS++.
>
>> Maybe there is other stuff I am missing, but as far as I can tell the
>> sources compile beautifully on the PS3 powerpc machine. Only
>downside:
>> it takes 4-5 hours depending on what you selected in the step of
>"make
>> menuconfig"...
>
>I highly recommend you cross compile on a PC.
>
>-Geoff 
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