This guide is based on this article.
Open http://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/terms.html and download otheros.self, if you agree with the terms and conditions.
Choose a Gentoo mirror near you and look in experimental/ppc64/livecd, e.g. http://gentoo.osuosl.org/experimental/ppc64/livecd/
Note: if you have an other OS already installed, delete it first, e.g. with Gentoo by executing fdisk and deleting the partitions.
PS3/otheros/otheros.self PS3/otheros/otheros.bld
At the kboot prompt choose the right resolution by pressing tab. X will start. Now you can play with Linux. To install it on your hard disc, follow the rest of this guide.
Start a terminal with Applications→Accessories→Terminal. Switch to root user with
sudo su
Then partition your Linux disk with fdisk. Do this for two partions: one partition for Linux and 512 MB swap. You can choose different layouts, if you want. For the 2 partitions enter these commands. After every line press “enter”. Comments are in parantheses.
fdisk /dev/sda n (new partition) p (primary) 1 (first partition number) 1 (first cylinder) 512 (last cylinder) t (change the type) 82 (Linux swap) n (new partition) p (primary) 2 (second partition number) (press enter twice for the first and last cylinder to allocate the rest of the harddisk for this partition) a (toggle bootable flag) 2 (second partition) w (write changes to disk)
Create the filesystems and install the rest:
mkfs.ext3 -j /dev/sda2 mkswap /dev/sda1 swapon /dev/sda1 mkdir /mnt/gentoo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/gentoo cd /mnt/gentoo wget http://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo/experimental/ppc64/stages/stage4-ppc64-ps3_64ul.tar.bz2 ### choose a Gentoo mirror near you instead of above address, or copy over from memory stick tar -xjvf stage4-ppc64-ps3_64ul.tar.bz2 mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc chroot /mnt/gentoo/ /bin/bash env-update source /etc/profile emerge --sync ### above command needs many hours cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT /etc/localtime ### use your timezone instead of GMT e2label /dev/sda2 / cp /etc/kboot.conf.example /etc/kboot.conf vim /etc/kboot.conf ###see below vim /etc/fstab ###see below passwd exit cd /mnt mkdir ms mkdir sd mkdir cf umount gentoo/proc gentoo/dev gentoo reboot
kboot.conf:
default=gentoo timeout=20 gentoo='sda2:/boot/kernel initrd=sda2:/boot/initrd root=/dev/ram0 real_root=/dev/sda2 init=/linuxrc video=ps3fb:mode:1 rhgb'
fstab:
/dev/sda1 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/sda2 / ext3 noatime 0 1 /dev/sdc1 /mnt/ms auto noauto 0 0 /dev/sdd1 /mnt/sd auto noauto 0 0 /dev/sde1 /mnt/cf auto noauto 0 0 /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 shm /dev/shm tmpfs nodev,nosuid,noexec 0 0 none /spu spufs defaults 0 0
If the last reboot command doesn’t work, hold down the power key on the PS3 until it powers down. Then power on again and eject the CD before booting. After some time you can login with root and your password.
Now you can continue to install other things, like on every Gentoo system, e.g. KDE:
emerge kde
You can start it with startx.
If you have a 1080p display, you can change the mode by executing this command:
ps3videomode -v 5
See http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=7209 for a sample application and how to compile it.
If you are using Windows as your development platform, you may want to install Samba.
emerge samba /etc/init.d/samba start /etc/init.d/samba restart cd /etc cd samba wget http://www.luaplayer.org/ps3/smb.conf -O smb.conf smbpasswd -a root /etc/init.d/samba restart rc-update add samba default
This installs samba (needs some hours for compiling), downloads a configuration file and installs it as a service. From Windows you can connect a network drive. Login with your root account (for security reasons you may want to create a normal user on the PS3 and login with this account). Enter “ifconfig eth0” to see which address your Playstation 3 has and use this for connecting to it from the Windows Explorer, e.g. “\\192.168.1.123\root”.
Another useful tool for Windows is PuTTY. You can open a terminal session to your PS3 from your Windows computer, which makes it easier to develop graphical applications, because you have the terminal access, even if the display is overwritten by your application.
If you are tired of playing with Linux, you can type “boot-game-os” at the “kboot:” prompt before it starts booting Gentoo, or from a shell after booting, to boot the Playstation 3 Game OS. In the settings menu you can change it to Linux again.