Install Slackintosh On PS3

From PlaySlack

Installing Slackintosh Linux on PS3, err......right, manually!

1 Intro
2 Raw
3 Hardz
4 Sequences
5 Missing
6 FIN

Intro

I am a hardcore Slackware fan boy, I think that once you got fall in love with Slackware, you won't suffer any other distro. Nowadays on PlayStation 3, even there are lot of distros working with it just out-of-box, all you need to do are to download an ISO, burn and feed it into that magic bluray drive, then everything is done with a shiny GUI installation system, but still this is not the way a slacker likes. In this tutorial, you could find a geek's best friend: console.

If you are new to Slackware, or its port, I should let you know that the exact phrase "Slackware" only means Slackware(R) Linux(R) distribution on x86/i386 architect, and it has only one official port to IBM System 390 called "Slack/390". But as loving of Slackware spreads, people are moving it to broader arch like PPC/ARM/Sparc, with a limitation which is the new port can not have the same name "Slackware". That's why our project is called "PlaySlack". Then Slackintosh (originally means Slackware + Machintosh) is the name of the PowerPC port of Slackware, and it is binary compatible with your PS3's Cell CPU. If you want to learn more about PS3's CPU arch, please refer our Precious Reference.

[edit]

Raw

Let me make first things first. In this tutorial, I would like to share with you the experience that I install Slackintosh on my PlayStation 3. Steps will be given in order, but each step's operation has no warranty of correctness. This is because it's the first time ever I write a tutorial about Linux OS, and I didn't take notes about all these keyboard commands during my operations. Frankly I am just going to give you some tips, because the audience of this article might be true console-freak, really you only need a few tips then everything will be solved by yourself. For impatient guys, I would like to complete this PlaySlack project with a working out-of-box ISO to make Slackware available on your PlayStation 3 in near future. Just stay tuned.

[edit]

Hardz

A Sony PlayStation 3, mine is a 20GB model purchased from Hong Kong, Firmware V1.93.
CAUTION: Almost 6 months ago, I tried almost the same method but failed with installation process hang randomly, but this time it didn't happen. So I believe this is because I was using a firmware V1.3 at that time. Then you are strongly recommended to upgrade your PS3's firmware to latest version.

A Laptop/Desktop, with a working Linux. (What? You run Ubuntu,FC,RH,SUSE,Debian...? Get your PC a Slackware then come back!)

USB thumb drive, size over 32MB

Slackintosh 12 ISO, burn it/them with DVD/CD blanks. Download at here

CELL-Linux-CL_20070831-ADDON.iso, can be obtained here, no need to burn if you had installed "Other OS" in XMB already. Also this utilities require your PS3's firmware upgraded to V1.8 or higher.

[edit]

Sequences

And they are...

On your PC, mount cell-addon.iso at /mnt/cell, Slackintosh ISO at /mnt/slk, usb thumb drive at /mnt/usb.
Copy /mnt/cell/boot/vmlinux to /mnt/usb.
Copy /mnt/slk/boot/initrd to /mnt/usb.
Mount /mnt/usb/initrd (the one we copied from Slackintosh ISO) to /mnt/initrd, with -o loop. Most initrd images are made by cpio, but this Slackintosh initrd is made as a flat image, so just mount it with “-o loop” will be OK. But remember do not mount as read-only, we need to modify it later.
Search on Internet or download the missing_file_one (read below), then replace /mnt/initrd/sbin/fdisk with this one.
Search on Internet or download the missing_file_two (read below), then copy it to /mnt/usb/ naming it “initrd.slk” .
Modify two scripts: one is /mnt/initrd/sbin/modprobe, replace line 29 from “/dev/sda” to “/dev/ps3da”; the other is /mnt/initrd/usr/lib/setup/setup, in line 52 and 53, replace “Linux native” with “Linux”, it means just remove the space and “native”.
Now plug your USB thumb drive into your PlayStation 3, and turn it on. In case it boots to XMB, please find some docs on Internet about “How to boot other OS”.
When prompted “kboot:”, type below(in case sda1 is your USB thumb drive name) and fire.
sda1:/vmlinux initrd=sda1:/initrd root=/dev/ram0
If all above 9 steps are done correct, and hopefully I gave you right the description at first, then probably you could get a very smooth traditional Slackware/Slackintosh installation process, except for some tiny error report which could be ignored.
After a successful installation of Slackintosh finish, you have to put /mnt/usb/vmlinux and missing_file_two to /dev/ps3da1/boot (in case you install your Slackintosh to /dev/ps3da1 in step 10), then reboot.
When rebooted after step 11, you will be prompted “kboot:”, type below (in case you install it in ps3da1) and fire.
ps3da1:/boot/vmlinux initrd=ps3da1:/boot/initrd.slk root=/dev/ps3da1
Make a file /etc/kboot.conf, with contents:
default=linux timeout=10 root=/dev/ps3da1 linux="/boot/vmlinux initrd=/boot/initrd.slk" root=/dev/ps3da1
. Then you could boot into Slackintosh on your PS3 every time without doing step 12. If you want to find how this works, please refer docs on the cell-addon.iso.

OK, now you will be lead to your brand new Slackintosh. Unluckily there is only one issue still left: you could get some udev error report during boot. I will make a fix on this in very near future.

[edit]

Missing

I forgot one important fact that actually I installed a Fedora Core 7 in PS3 before my try on Slackintosh. And during Slackintosh installation, I used two files from FC7. But in this tutorial, I found its a huge waste of time to install a whole Fedora for just these two files. Now I will name them, and you could download them here here.