Installing Fedora 7 and the IBM SDK 3.0 on PlayStation 3

These are the quick and dirty instructions. If these don't make sense, take a look Installing Fedora Core 6 on the PlayStation 3 for additional background.

You'll want to have a USB/RF keyboard attached to the PS3 at this point.

Installation Instructions

  • Burn the ISO's to disc (do this for both files downloaded above)
    • In Linux: cdrecord --device=<cdwriter-device> -tao -eject <image-file.iso>
    • Or use whatever DVD/CD burning tool you prefer (k3b is nice under KDE)
  • Update the firmware on your PS3 to the latest (2.00 as of the time this was written).
  • Format your PS3's harddrive (this will erase all data on the entire drive)
    • There are four options for a 60 GB harddrive:
      1. All to PS3
      2. All to Other OS
      3. 10 GB to Other OS and rest to PS3
      4. 10 GB to PS3 and rest to Other OS
    • choose either option 2 or 4.
    • In the XMB menum, go to Settings --> System Settings --> Format Utility
      • Be sure to select Quick format (10 seconds) or you'll be waiting 3.5 hours.

  • Install the Linux boot loader
    • Insert the CELL-Linux-CL_20071023-ADDON CD into the PS3
    • In XMB navigate to Settings --> System Settings --> Install Other OS
      • The console should automatically detect the necessary files on the CD
      • Follow the prompts to install the bootloader onto the hard drive
  • Change default OS to Other OS
    • Insert the FC-7-ppc DVD into the PS3. Then,
    • Settings --> System Settings --> Default System: change from PS3 to Other OS
    • If everything is working, you'll see a kboot prompt.
  • At the kboot command prompt, enter:
    • cd //mnt/root/ppc/ppc64 # Note two leading slashes
    • kexec -f --initrd=ramdisk.image.gz --command-line="video=720p" vmlinuz
  • Answer anaconda's questions
    • Select your keyboard and language preference
    • When it says it can't find your media
      • Press "Select Driver", and scroll down to PlayStation 3 (ps3_storage)
    • When asked about partitioning, select custom partiotioning and create a ext3 partition as the / partition and then a swap.
      • LVM doesn't seem to work with the kernel and that is on the addon cd (at least 20071023)
      • The same applies also to ext2
    • When you get to the part about what packages to install, select only Software Development and Customize Later
  • Wait... a while. The PS3 looks frozen for a bit, then it will start installing files. This process takes 4 - 5 hours.
  • It will eventually eject the DVD, say that it's rebooting, and hang ;)
    • Press and hold the power button until it beeps the second time (about 7 seconds), then release
    • Press it again. It'll boot the new system.
  • Answer the first boot questions: set root passwd, create regular user, etc...
    • It will hang again on reboot, so hold power button again
  • Install the updated kernel and goodies
    • Insert the ADDON CD
    • cd /media/<don't remember>/target
    • rpm -ihv --force *.rpm
    • Edit /etc/yaboot.conf so that it'll boot the new kernel 
      # yaboot.conf generated by anaconda

boot=/dev/sda
init-message=Welcome to Fedora!\nHit <TAB> for boot options

partition=1
timeout=80
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
delay=10
enablecdboot
enableofboot
enablenetboot
nonvram
mntpoint=/boot/yaboot
usemount

image=/boot/vmlinux-2.6.23
        label=linux-23
        read-only
        initrd=/boot/initrd.img-2.6.23
        append="video=720p rhgb quiet root=LABEL=/1"

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7
        label=linux-21
        read-only
        initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7.img
        append="video=720p rhgb quiet root=LABEL=/1"
  • Reboot system (it'll hang the first time. Do the hold the button trick)
    • (the 2.6.23 kernel you just installed knows how to shutdown and reboot the PS3 properly)
  • Apply any updates (except kernel updates) that are available
  • To reduce memory consumption make the following changes:
    • edit /etc/inittab and change id:5:initdefault to id:3:initdefault (disables X-server and graphical login)
    • disable non-essential services. E.g., sendmail, cups, anything else you can live without.
  • Start hacking

Installation of GNU Radio on F7 on the PS3

  • Do NOT enable the development repositories for Yum
    • In /etc/yum.repos.d/ edit fedora-development.repo and enable all repositories by setting enabled to 0
    • In /etc/yum.repos.d/ edit fedora-extras-development.repo and enable all repositories by setting enabled to 0

These are the rawhide directories and are inconsistent with the use of SDK 3.0

  • Install prerequisites 
$ sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
$ sudo yum install fftw-devel cppunit-devel libusb-devel guile boost-devel alsa-lib-devel numpy swig sdcc
  • SDCC is installed in a slightly strange way here, so fix some of the links:

Some of the names of the binaries in sdcc are very generic, and they have therefore been moved to /usr/libexec/sdcc on Fedora, and symlinks prefixed with sdcc- have been created in /usr/bin. This might be a problem for existing programs, but the solution is simply to add /usr/libexec/sdcc to your PATH before building GNU Radio: 

$ export PATH=/usr/libexec/sdcc:$PATH
  • Get the GNU Radio installation from Subversion and install it 
svn co http://gnuradio.org/svn/gnuradio/trunk
cd trunk
./bootstrap
./configure
make
sudo make install
  • Set PYTHONPATH to point to the default /usr/local installation directory:
    • export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/
    • Set this in your login script ~/.bashrc to automatically load on login
  • Add USRP udev rule:

Using GNU Radio

FIXME update this

Installing the IBM Cell SDK version 3.0

Follow the download and installation instructions here.

You'll need to create an IBM ID if you don't already have one.

Note, the IBM SDK contains both free and non-free software. We're only using the free stuff, and it should be possible to get the free stuff without agreeing to IBM's non-free licenses. Perhaps somebody with some time can sort this out.

Hint: They install this repo file in /etc/yum.repos.d/cellsdk-Fedora.repo

I think all the free stuff is in the CellSDK-Open-Fedora-* repository at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.