Since I don't have a DVD burner, I was interested in trying out Gentoo on my PS3. I also have never used Gentoo before, so it's a learning experience for sure.

I THINK I'm almost there, minus a problem I had today with "emerge sytstem -e" after upgrading (and switching) to gcc 4.1.1 last night.

The only thing I'm having difficulty with is how to configure kboot to boot my system. I mean, it's all in RAM once you get to kboot, so you can't just edit /etc/kboot.conf or whatever....can you? I tried to mimic the kexec commands in the instal-fc5 script, but that didn't work since I didn't have kexec installed in my Gentoo chroot (IF that's how you're supposed to do it) and I couldn't figure out (until last night) how to emerge packages that were masked.

So, I guess the point in this rambling post is to find out how to manipulate kboot to boot my new kernel off the HDD.

Looking forward to learning!

First something sure since it has been done many (3 to my knowledge) times already:

http://whitesanjuro.googlepages.com/

Now something I'm writing but I hadn't tested myself

- the kboot stuff should reside in a partition so you should be able to write it.

- the kboot system will let you run any command, type sh and you'll have the standard busybox shell.

- the kernel present in the sony cd is the only one known to have a correct default config (and should be ok since the later ones have almost just fixes SPU related)

Now some useful items:

+ you may come speak to us (gentoo-ppc64 devs and maybe
other fellow ps3 owners) on
irc://irc.freenode.net/#gentoo-ppc64

+ I'm trying to keep some notes here http://overlays.gentoo.org/dev/lu_zero/ ... ationNotes



I hope it helps =)

I'm an impatient person, so I decided to blow off Gentoo (for now) and go with the FC6 distribution. I just wanted to get a system up and running that I could tinker with a bit.

After I figure out how to get the wireless card working and how to get kboot to boot my rescue CD so I can partimage backup the drive, I will look at trying to get Gentoo running.

I think I was pretty close...probably just needed to play with the kboot/kexec stuff some more.

Thanks for your suggestions!

if you could post some useful stuff like

cat /proc/cpuinfo

cat /proc/meminfo

lspci

I think many would be interested

Sure! Sorry for the delayed response...I guess I need to turn on e-mail notifications ;)

These are from Fedora Core 6...I may try Gentoo again since I found a fuller step-by-step last night...I was so close winging it, but just missed a couple ;)

cpuinfo:

processor : 0
cpu : Cell Broadband Engine, altivec supported
clock : 3192.000000MHz
revision : 5.1 (pvr 0070 0501)

processor : 1
cpu : Cell Broadband Engine, altivec supported
clock : 3192.000000MHz
revision : 5.1 (pvr 0070 0501)

timebase : 79800000
machine : PS3PF

meminfo:

MemTotal: 202148 kB
MemFree: 129644 kB
Buffers: 4204 kB
Cached: 41560 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 27280 kB
Inactive: 28660 kB
HighTotal: 0 kB
HighFree: 0 kB
LowTotal: 202148 kB
LowFree: 129644 kB
SwapTotal: 524280 kB
SwapFree: 524280 kB
Dirty: 20 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
Mapped: 17004 kB
Slab: 13032 kB
CommitLimit: 625352 kB
Committed_AS: 18272 kB
PageTables: 632 kB
VmallocTotal: 8589934592 kB
VmallocUsed: 1884 kB
VmallocChunk: 8589929860 kB

lspci:

00:01.0 USB Controller: Toshiba America Unknown device 01b6 (rev 01)
00:01.1 USB Controller: Toshiba America Unknown device 01b5 (rev 01)
00:02.0 USB Controller: Toshiba America Unknown device 01b6 (rev 01)
00:02.1 USB Controller: Toshiba America Unknown device 01b5 (rev 01)

just in case

http://www.daniel.jp/joomla/info/ps3/in ... e-ps3.html

I love my users =)