Brent Baude

Greetings,

I have added a new ps3-sources-2.6.24 ebuild to the cell overlay. It's based on vanilla-sources with a diff of the latest Sony distribution kit, as well as the squashfs patch. There is also a 2.6.24 default config in the files dir of the overlay.

And for those who do not like to compile their own kernels or are incapable of doing so, I added a ps3-kernel-bin into the cell overlay as well. This ebuild will install a precompiled binary kernel, initrd (ramdisk), System.map, and modules. It's based on the new aforementioned sources.

While providing a binary kernel for anything Gentoo is admittedly contrary to the real or perceived Gentoo philosophy, it is probably the right thing to do for the ps3 user-base. Many of the ps3 users are either new to Linux or new to Gentoo. Kernel compilation has been difficult for some of them. Furthermore, compilation of the kernel takes time. With the PPU speed and small RAM footprint, I'm starting to develop an adhoc belief that the PS3 with Gentoo could be a bit like embedded Linux. Binaries, in this case, are OK. The console is perfect for running Linux, especially with a snappy window manager, and SPU compilations.

So your feedback on the new approach is welcome. I'm interested if this works well for users. Let's consider this a probationary period.

Happy Hunting.

Kristian Jerpetjøn aka "unsolo" on #gentoo-ppc64 has created binary builds of the PS3 SPU toolchain. This will significantly reduce confusion and compilation effort for those unfamiliar with cross-dev environments. This is a big deal for those of you new to SPUs or new to Linux.

The instructions can be found at http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/binary and we are accepting feedback and comments on IRC (#gentoo-ppc64).

As a side note, Kristian is currently working on getting his Gentoo developer status. Let's all wish him the best of luck. I personally am looking forward to him joining the ppc64 herd.

Stay warm.

With the help of phreak, a fellow Gentoo developer, we now have a new kernel sources ebuild in the Cell overlay. I was having trouble with the kernel eclass, patching, and portage together with revisions. So when a new patch came out, I was adding it to the current one and users had trouble keeping the revisions straight. This is where phreak's ebuild foo was strong. Thanks again.

To our PS3 users, I will now rev bump the ebuilds when a new patch is applied to our sources.

Peace

There are new PS3 stages, a minimal cd, and a livecd on the Gentoo mirrors. This hopefully brings a close to the firmware upgrade fiasco. Good luck

If you are an avid PS3 Gentoo user, you know now that Sony's latest 2.10 firmware breaks Gentoo and some other Linux distributions as well. There was a small bug in the frame-buffer code that caused this failure. The conspiracy theorists read more into it but I frankly felt like it was a simple code regression.

If you are unlucky enough to have run into this problem and your Gentoo install does not work, I have authored a short document on how to recover your install. Please visit http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/Rescue for this information.

One of the downsides of this issue is that it rendered the media and stages I created just a few days ago completely useless. They are no longer on the mirrors. I'm rebuilding all the media as this is being written. The stages and livecd should be available tomorrow at the latest (the minimal cd referenced in the rescue document was mirrored today).

I'll post when the new media begins to hit the mirrors. As always, if you have questions, come hang out with us on #gentoo-ppc64 on irc.freenode.net. If you have questions about recovering your install, please ask there. If you have suggestions and improvements for the rescue document, please send them to me. Don't you dare write a bugzilla entry!

Although it was tested, I wrote it hastily and my tester is quite the experienced Linux user so we admittedly do not make the best testing subjects.

Happy Holidays.

Brent

I have resolved the PS3 GRP build problems with some help from the fine folks in #gentoo-desktop. The 32bit GRP is already on the mirrors and the 64bit GRP is being uploaded and should be available within the next few hours.

As a note, XFCE4 and some other packages like subversion, have been removed from the GRP builds because they are shipping as part of the stage4.

Instructions on how to install GRP for the PS3 can be found at http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/InstallGentooOnPS3

Happy Hunting

As I type this, a new set of stages, a new liveCD, and a new minimal CD are being pushed to the Gentoo mirrors. I'll detail the new media and stages below.

Stages

I have built both 64-bit and 32-bit userland-based stages. Both run a 64-bit kernel. The new stages are more mature than previous ones based on user feedback. My intent was to make the stage more immediately usable for users, especially new and new-to-Linux users.

The new stages contain XFCE4, XFCE4-extras, Mozilla Firefox (Web browser), Mozilla Thunderbird (Mail), xchat (IRC client), pidgin (Instant Messenger) and Audacious (music). It also includes many of the basic applications for the development environment, like subversion, cross-dev, and so forth.

Once the new stage is extracted, configured, and reboot, your PS3 will load up into GDM and you can login and begin using your PS3 immediately.

Be certain you are following the instructions located at http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/InstallGentooOnPS3 .

Install Media

I have remade the popular PS3 LiveCd with few a few changes, which is a usable Gentoo graphical environment on CD/DVD media. When I released the new stages in November, I did not rebuild the LiveCD because of portage tree instability. This latest LiveCD is based on 2.6.23 and contains updated XFCE and other desktop applications. It is also noticeably larger and requires that you burn it as a DVD or run it off USB. Directions for the latter can be found at http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/BootLiveCDfromUSB .

The minimal installcd has also been updated. Because the prior minimal installcd was based on 2.6.23, this new version only has updated packages but is otherwise largely the same.

GRP

Building GRP still remains a problem. I'll continue to work on it. I'm currently trying to work out a problem building Gnome where it fails with various XML problems. It seems that building GRP is a continuous problem and I am contemplating dropping support for GRP.

What's Next

I would like think this is the last set of stages I would need to build without some improvement in other things. For example, I think I will begin to invest my time into created both cell and cell/ps3 profiles in the portage tree to ease the release engineering aspect of these builds. I also want to build a set of stages based on gcc-4.3 so we can begin to bring in a number of cell-based optimizations.

Thanks and best of luck. Please provide feedback as appropriate. Join us on IRC at #gentoo-ppc64.

Happy Holidays, Peace on Earth and all that stuff,

Brent aka Ranger

Folks,

I've just put out new stages for the PS3 onto the Gentoo mirrors under the experimental directories. For example, http://gentoo.osuosl.org/experimental/ppc64/stages. There is also a new minimal install-cd. This marks the first release of new stages since June for me. There are a bunch of new changes, some of which I will call out:

• The new stages are built on 2.6.23 mainline with several PS3 specific patches. The ebuild for these sources is in the Cell overlay.
• New ps3pfutils is in both the overlay and stages.
• An otheros.bld provided by Sony is provided on the minimal install-cd. You must use this version of otheros for the new media and stages or you will not be able to boot either. 2.6.23 has different devices names several devices including disk. The device names for sda are now ps3da. If you are upgrading, be sure to fix fstab and kboot.conf at a minimum.
• I was only able to build 32bit userland GRP. I'm running into a compilation problem for Gnome on 64bit. I will continue to work on it.
• No LiveCD has been built with the new kernel. I'll generate and test this over the course of the next week or so.
• Updated instructions for the install are located at: http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/InstallGentooOnPS3

As always, you can find many of us hanging out on IRC on the #gentoo-ppc64 channel.

Happy Hunting!

Brent

We learned that the 2007.0 media was built with a kernel version new enough that it should work with POWER6 systems. We were then lucky enough to get a report from someone that it did in fact boot fine on POWER6. That said, if anyone is lucky enough to have one of those machines and has more feedback, it would be welcome.

I also checked POWER6 profiles into the tree last week with the idea to create stages. Unfortunately it seems we have a compilation issue with the power6 optimizations. I'm getting an illegal instruction problem with awk in the stage building.

There should be new 32-bit and 64-bit userland stages available for PS3s on the Gentoo mirrors now (http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml). The main change is basically that the stages are built upon newer packages.

I have also pushed the corresponding GRP packages to the GRP mirror as well

Please be sure to check out the PS3 suppport on the wiki at http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki . There you can find documentation among other things.

Good luck.

Wireless support

Well, a bit of good news! We now have a working PS3 wireless driver. To take advantage of it, you will need to have updated your PS3 firmware to the latest driver (~1.70) and grab the new new media and stages. The kernel being used is still a heavily patched version of 2.6.16. We'll move to 2.6.2x as things firm up.

If you are an existing user, just checkout the cell overlay, emerge ps3-sources, grab the kernel.config from the files dir, and rebuild the kernel. Don't forget to emerge wireless-tools

New Media

I have rebuilt the minimal install cd to support wireless. If you want to use wireless, here's how it works. The wired and wireless share the same network devices (eth0) for now. So when you boot the PS3, be sure to have the Ethernet wire unplugged. The CD will make an automatic attempt to configure networking. I f (and likely when) that does not work, simply use the linux tools provided to configure your wireless connection.

You can use a command called net-setup or do a iwconfig eth0 params and then dhcpcd -d eth0.

A word of warning

The new media (iso image) has a known networking bug. There seems to be something busted between a few components where dhcpcd is not being called against network devices. You will have to run dhcpcd against the network device to force autoconfiguration. Or you can run net-setup.

New stages

I have released new 32-bit and 64-bit userland stages. One of the key components of these new stages is they are based on our 2007.0 profiles. In fact it is a based on our 2007.0/32|64bit-userland/desktop/970 profile, which should fit the use of the PS3s a little better.

As always, use the documentation found at http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell .

New GRP

When I drop new stages, I always try to update the GRP repository. This should contain a whole bunch of updated userland applications like KDE, Gnome, gaim, xchat, editors, browsers, mail-clients. Have fun!

Get involved

Remember Gentoo is a community effort. We are still looking for developers who want to join our ppc64 team and be a part of supporting the architecture. You can find us at #gentoo-ppc64 on Freenode.

I've just released a new LiveCD for PS3. Unlike the previous LiveCD, this one does not support the PowerMacs--only the PS3. Also, this LiveCD is based on the window manager XFCE4 (the prior LiveCD used Gnome). I felt like a lighter, faster window manager would be worth trying and I am definitely looking for feedback from users.

This version of the LiveCD contains Mozilla-Firefox-2, Mozilla-Thunderbird-2 (beta), koffice, xchat-2, Gaim, Audacious, among others.

The LiveCD can be found on the Gentoo mirrors in experimental/ppc64/livecd/. To find the Gentoo mirror nearest you, check out:

http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml

I have also been experimenting with putting the contents of the LiveCD onto a USB memory stick. This works fairly well with the exception of some kboot shortcomings related to how kboot searches for its configuration files. This process should be more like udev or perhaps using the busybux mdev. I need to talk with the Gentoo-relengs to see how they do this with their own install-cds, and then maybe adapt kboot to follow suit. The net of this is that I have put together a short how-to for running the LiveCD from USB storage. It can be found on the the wiki at:

http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell

A few days ago, I announced new stages had been pushed to the Gentoo mirrors. Shortly thereafter, mtb and I had a conversation on IRC where he was asking about the default set of CFLAGS in make.conf. After some short investigation, it appears that the PS3 stages were not getting the desired CFLAGS with things like altivec send to them when being built. I must thank mtb for bringing this up.

The good news is that I have corrected the problem in the build process and now stages are getting the CFLAGS consistent with the 970 profile:

CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -mcpu=970 -mtune=970 -mabi=altivec"

I have rebuilt the stages and GRP and they are already on the mirrors.

http://gentoo.osuosl.org/experimental/ppc64/stages/

Remember the installation instructions can be found at:

http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/InstallGentooOnPS3

As I mentioned in my last blog, I am still working on a new livecd which should include an updated version of Firefox and a working version of Thunderbird.

Enjoy!

Updated stage4s for the PS3 have been making their way around to the Gentoo mirrors overnight and are now fully populated. These new stages are based on the previous specifications but includ updated packages. Remember, these stages can be found on the Gentoo mirrors. An example would be:

http://gentoo.osuosl.org/experimental/ppc64/stages/

You can also find the snapshot that these were build on at:

http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/gentoo-ps3/snapshots/

In addition, I have updated the GRP repository (http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/gentoo-ps3/) based on these stages. You will notice some changes in the GRP packages. For example, Gnome for the 64ul did not build and neither did Firefox. We are actively working on solving the problem and are very close. When these wrinkles are ironed out, I will update the GRP repositories with the new packages. It is worth mentioning that the these stages and GRP are based on the active portage tree. So from time to time, errors induced by package conflicts and different environments will happen. Please drop us a line should you feel you found a problem somewhere.

I have also been asked to update the PS3 LiveCD (http://gentoo.osuosl.org/experimental/ppc64/livecd/). I’m currently working on that as well and perhaps I will have something to release by the end of the week. I’m holding out on the hopes of getting a working version of Thunderbird on the CD.

After these releases, I will be focusing on creating the real PPC64 64ul and 32ul stages for follow-on Gentoo releases.

The PPC64 team is always looking for folks who want to get involved in either testing or working directly with the team. Please drop by our irc channel (#gentoo-ppc64) to learn about us.

Happy hunting…

There are new stage 4’s available on the Gentoo mirrors today. These stages include updated packages and are built against a newer snapshot of the portage tree. I have also built new GRP packages and those are working their way out to the GRP repository as OpenOffice compiles.

I have also decided to begin posting the snapshot I used to build the stage4 repository. This will be in a similar location as the GRP packages. For example, the snapshot used to build the current stages can be found at http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/gentoo-ps3/snapshots/ and I will update the install instructions (http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/InstallGentooOnPS3).

I’m still getting positive feedback about the stages and install instructions. If you are using the stages, feedback is appreciated. I use the feedback to improve both the documentation and stages. Best way to get me is on IRC as I can generally work through the feedback pretty quickly.

Well after a battle for the ages, I have now released the 64bit-userland stage4 for PS3. You can find the stage in the experimental section on the Gentoo mirros such as:

http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/InstallGentooOnPS3

This stage has glibc-2.5, gcc-4.1.1-r1, and binutils-2.17; all very new toolchain components for ppc64 on Gentoo. And like the 32bit-userland stage4, it has X, vim, and fluxbox already compiled and ready to go.

The instructions for installing the stage can be found at:

http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/InstallGentooOnPS3

I'll be updating the instructions with some additional information and user feedback over the course of the weekend.

32bit and 64-bit userlands

Let me also take a moment to discuss the general difference between 32bit-userland and 64bit-userland as this has seemed to cause confusion with some of our new users and those not familiar with ppc64 proper. Both the 32bit and 64bit-userlands run a 64bit-kernel and kernel modules. In the case of the 32bit-userland, the user-space applications (an example of which could be X, Gnome, Firefox) are 32bit. The 32bit-userland does has enough of a toolchain to create 64bit kernels however. In the case of the 64bit-userland, the kernel and all userland applications are 64bit.

The next question we are getting is which userland is better? I'd be foolish to say anything other than “it just depends....” It depends on what you are doing with it, how much memory you have available, whether you need what 64bit applications offer weighed against 32bit, are the applications you want 64bit stable, and so on. If there was a clear-cut answer on the matter we would only be creating one userland.

What is next

I'm working on updating both the 32 & 64 bit repositories. That will likely be the premise of my next blog post.

I've been working fairly steadily on creating the 64bit stage4 tarball I previously mentioned. I won't be buying any lottery tickets soon as it seems my luck is on the downslope. I have hit a number of unique, obscure bugs; many of which are in core packages. If I was simply trying to hack together a stage, it could be done by now but I'm making every effort to turn out quality stages; and stages that can be rebuilt without significant hackage.

So for those who are chomping at the bit for these 64bit stages, know that I am working hard to get them out; that it has been frustrating; and that when it does come out, the quality will be worth the wait.

In the meantime, please keep trying the 32bit-userland stage and provide feedback. A number of folks have given great feedback on the stage and I was able to immediately incorporate their comments into a fix in the stage or a fix in the documentation. That reminds me, check the documentation for the install out at -> http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/InstallGentooOnPS3 .

I have also rebuilt the GRP packages numerous times. As of this writing, the 32bit GRP contains 445 pre-built binaries totaling almost 626 MB. Recent additions include things like tightvnc, OpenOffice, and Gnumeric among others. I am also actively soliciting people for packages they would like added to the repository, so your feedback on that topic is welcome too.

As we speak, a 32bit-userland stage4 tarball is working its way through the Gentoo mirrors. The stage4 contains a ready to go operating system and kernel for the PS3 along with X and the fluxbox window manager. The instructions for installing from a stage4 can be found on the Cell wiki at:

http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/InstallGentooOnPS3

Special thanks to the OSUOSL crew! They have provided us with space to host our GRP packages. This means that after you complete your stage4 install, you will be able to add-on things like Gnome, GAIM, audacious, KDE, etc without having to actually compile the packages. Packages for these applications have already been posted and I will continue to add new ones as they turn up or people request them. Instructions for installing from this GRP repository will be posted at the aforementioned URL when I complete this entry.

The 64bit-userland is still a work in progress but it is IN progress. I'll post when the tarball and 64bit GRP are ready as well. In the meantime, give it a whirl and give us feedback.

-Ranger

As I write this, the OSUOSL mirror now has a BETA version of the minimal install CD for PS3s on it. For those of you who are experienced Gentoo users, this is the minimal CD you know and love. For those who are unfamiliar with minimal install CDs, this CD will boot up to a fairly full-featured commandline interface where you can install Gentoo on the PS3. As with the LiveCD, it contains the ps3pfutils too.

I had hoped to release stage4 tarballs in both 32-bit and 64-bit userlands at the same time, but PPC64 has some problems in its profiles that are breaking the builds for public consumption. I'll need to convince a fellow dev to clean the profiles up as I generally avoid them.

I'll also tip my cards as for the future of PS3 on Gentoo and what we plan to release in support of it. We now have a beta LiveCD, beta InstallCD, and the soon-to-be-released aforementioned stage4's. The stage4s contain everything in a stage3 (os, tools, compilers, etc) but also libspe packages, ps3pfutils, X, fluxbox, some required utilities, hacked fstab, bootloader examples, and a prebuilt kernel. The idea here is to reduce the amount of compilation done on the PS3 given the shortage of RAM.

After the stage4's are out, we'll turn our attention to releasing a bunch of GRP (pre-built binary packages). Things like KDE, open-office, Gnome, XFCE4, Firefox, Thunderbird, and so on would be candidates. The idea here is that a user could emerge these packages, preferably over the network, and have Gnome (or whatever) installed in very little time. I have done this with my PS3 here at home and can have a full system with Gnome installed in just about 15 minutes. Optimally we would like to host these via http somewhere but it does not look like Gentoo mirrors are going to be a possibility. If you are interested in hosting or mirroring these GRP packages, please let me/us know.

The entire team and I have been posting content as quickly as we can at http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki. Check it out...

Happy New Year,

Ranger

I finally was able to find a PS3 in my neck of the woods and snapped it up. Two other Gentoo devs, tgall and dostrow, got one too. All of this LiveCD work thus far had been done on speculation and with generous folks testing for me. It was quite a process and moving iso images around was terribly time consuming. The Gentoo end of development on the PS3 should therefore pickup.

I also have a real handle on the kboot bootloader now and am to build my own from source. The work will likely pay off. I have even built a safe-mode image in case you blow up the kboot file on your hard-drive.

I also spent the best part of the day trying to understand the video behind this PS3 and what its requirements were. With only old composite TVs in-house, I was really struggling with making this thing useful in a Linux way. I bought a HDMI to DVI adapter hoping to get it to work on my LCD, but it didn't. It seems you need a hdcp capable LCD if you go that route. Grr... I bought a Gateway monitor that was hdcp capable. So far, so good. I had my eyes on a Samsung LCD HDTV with PC input, and hdcp-capable DVI but they are on their way out.

Well best of luck to you fellow PS3 Linux gearheads. We have a couple of very interesting projects in mind and could always use another set of hands.

Peace,

Ranger