Introduction:
These instructions are for installing Ubuntu (Edgy Eft 6.10) on a 60GB PS3. We will install Linux on the 10GB portion of the partitioned PS3 hard drive. You may add external USB storage later to beef up your system should you prefer. This method requires the use of a Live CD but no other previous installation is required. Your PS3 will need to be connected to the internet. Please note that the wireless connection will not work so you will need to be hard wired into your network.

Please keep in mind that I am trying to write this guide in a manner that will enable a user who has never experienced Linux before to pick it up and get Ubuntu running.

You should note that if you print this document as it is shown here that you may be missing some information that is in a box that has a scrollbar. You may not notice this on a printed version so you may want to make a quick comparison after printing.

Credits/References:
All of the information was originally composed by Louis Candell and was adapted by Ciego for installing Ubuntu without having installed Fedora prior to the Ubuntu installation. You can view this document in its original form at http://www.louiscandell.com/ps3/

Credit should also be given to the Gentoo developers for creating the Live CD that makes this possible

Thank you to all of the Ubuntuforums.org users who helped us get where we are.

Thanks to "juanzone" for correcting several code errors.
Thanks to "Strydre" for correcting some code errors and for the tip about copying the modules.
A special thanks to "NobodySpecial" for correcting some code errors and showing us how to install the Ubuntu desktop (that one was giving me a headache) as well as the Java support.
Thanks to "theBishop" for showing us how to use debootstrap from the Gentoo Live CD.
Thanks to "S-Anarchy" for the tip about editing files created using notepad in windows.
Thanks to "mb26" for several contributions concerning corrections/additions including resolving the sound issue.
Thanks to "Geta-Ve" for the tip on using the Live CD for everything up to step 5.
Thanks to "joechoes" for the tip on saving files in Windows.
Thanks to "3vi1" for the tip concerning audio permissions and other code corrections/tips and also fixing the "boot-game-os" command for Kubuntu.
Thanks to "Joel1234567" for the tip concerning the xorg.conf and some errors that were showing up.

The following sites were used as additional references.

Ubuntu Installation documentation

https://help.ubuntu.com/6.10/ubuntu/...x-upgrade.html

Here is more information on kboot if you are interested:

http://kboot.sourceforge.net/

You may find more detailed instructions at the Sony site.

http://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/manual.html

01 – Collect the items that you need for the installation.

*NOTE - It is possible to do everything up to step 5 using cut/paste within the Gento Live CD desktop with the exception of burning the Gentoo iso for obvious reasons. I would recommend reading this entire document as well as the following discussions before trying this unless you have some Linux experience.

You will need a computer with an internet connection as well as a PS3 with a hard wired internet connection

*USB Mouse
*USB Keyboard
* 256MB USB Thumb drive

(Any storage device that the PS3 can handle will work. Adjust commands accordingly)

* Addon CD iso

http://dl.qj.net/dl.php?fid=11308

*Gentoo Live CD BETA for PPC iso

http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/exper...ppc64-beta.iso

*Otheros.self

http://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/terms.html

02 – Prepare your media

Burn the Gentoo iso onto a CD. Note that you cannot burn the iso as a regular file. It must be burned as a disk image. I also recommend burning important disks like this at very slow speeds. (4x or 8x if possible) Here is a link to more information regarding iso burning.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto

Plug your USB storage drive into your computer and create the directory structure

USB:\PS3\OTHEROS

In other words ... create a folder called “PS3” then create a folder inside that called “OTHEROS”

Save the Otheros.self file that you downloaded in the “OTHEROS” folder

Extract the ADDON CD iso to the root of your thumb drive using 7zip or similar program. Make sure that you extract the iso so that the contents of the “CELL-Linux-CL_20061110-ADDON” folder are in the root of the USB drive.
Here is a link to a program that will help you if you cannot extract an iso

http://www.7-zip.org/

(note that there are some helpful documents in the /doc folder)

Copy otheros.bld from the new “kboot” folder on your USB drive into the “ OTHEROS” folder that we made earlier

Create another folder in the root of your USB drive called “config”

Create a file called “fstab” and copy/paste this into it. You can use notepad if you are in Windows. (If you do it in notepad, you may need to rename it to remove the file extension, You may want/need to edit your fstab file to get rid of the Windows return line characters (^M) at the end of each line ... you can do this when you are in Linux with nano after you copy it over later in the guide. Another solution is to "save as" and type "fstab" with the quotes as the filename.)

Save your “fstab” file in the “config” folder that you made.

Create a file called “xorg.conf” and copy/paste this into it. You can use notepad if you are in Windows. (If you do it in notepad, you will need to rename it to change the file extension)
Save your “xorg.conf” file in the “config” folder that you made.

Remove the USB storage drive from your computer and plug it into your PS3.
Insert the Gento Live CD into the PS3

03 - Install kboot on the PLAYSTATION 3

If you already have data saved on the PS3 hard drive, you may back it up using the PS3 backup utility and restore the data after you format and partition the hard drive. (These instructions have already changed due to PS3 firmware updates, but you should still be able to figure out what to do)


* On the XMB go into Settings Menu > System Settings > Format Drive
* Choose 10GB for the “other OS”
* After the drive is formatted, go into Settings Menu > System Settings > Install Other OS
* Click "OK" and it will install the kboot image onto your PS3.
* Once finished, go back into Settings Menu > System Settings > Default System > Choose "Other OS"
* Restart your PS3 and you should be on the kboot prompt

Now once you are on the kboot prompt you are within a minimal Linux environment.

04 – Partition and format the “Other OS” portion of the hard drive

We will partition the 10GB portion of the hard drive as follows using fdisk.
LABEL PARTITION SIZE SYSTEM
1) boot /dev/sda1 256MB ext2
2)SWAP /dev/sda2 512MB swap
3) / /dev/sda3 the remaining space ext3

We need to boot into Gentoo to do this since the Kboot environment does not support the creation of swap partitions. (If you have some experience with Linux, you may want to take care of the root and boot partitions now and worry about the swap partition after you can chroot into Ubuntu. If so, you can do this from the kboot prompt rather than booting the Live CD)

Use the <tab> key to select your screen resolution and press <enter>. Gentoo will boot up. This takes a while since the entire operating system is booting from the CD. You should be looking at the Gentoo desktop. (Note that you may boot into the command line by adding a space and “nox” after the resolution command.) Take it for a spin if you would like. You can install Gentoo from this disk if you like it.

Open a terminal (Alternatively, you can hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get to the command line as root ... if you do this, you will not need the following two commands)
Click Applications>Terminal
You should now be looking at the command line.

At the fdisk prompt:

Create partition 1

N (new) <enter>
P (primary) <enter>
1 <enter>
(default) <enter>
256 <enter>

Create partition 2

N (new) <enter>
P (primary) <enter>
2 <enter>
(default) <enter>
769 <enter>

Create partition 3

N (new) <enter>
P (primary) <enter>
3 <enter>
(default) <enter>
(default) <enter>

Mark partition 1 with the boot flag

A <enter>
1 <enter>

Label Partition 2 as a swap file system

T <enter>
2 <enter>
82 <enter>

Write the partition table

W <enter>

This part is extremely important … reboot the PS3 at this point. I wasted about 3 hours trying to get this to work until I realized that the newly created partitions needed a reboot to be recognized.

This will shutdown Gentoo and reboot the PS3. It should automatically boot into Kboot.
<tab> to select your resolution and press <enter> to boot the Live CD again. (Remember we can type “nox” at the end to boot straight to the command line.)

Open a terminal
Click Applications>Terminal
You should now be looking at the command line again.
Now we will need to create a filesystem on our partitions and then mount them. The “-L” option adds a label to the partitions.


05 - Install Ubuntu on the PLAYSTATION 3

We need to edit debootstrap since we are running it off of a Live CD

Now you will be inside of a text editor. Use the arrow keys to go down to line 11 and over to the “/” in that line. Hit the <insert> key to go into edit mode. Add “/tmp” to the beginning of the path. Hit the <esc> key to exit editing mode. That line should look like this now.
Type “:wq” to save and quit.
You should be back at the command line now.

Run debootstrap
(If you have a slow internet connection, you can use the Ubuntu CD to install by replacing the url with “file:/mnt/cdrom/ubuntu” ... note that you will need the correct CD and have it mounted at /mnt/cdrom )

This will install your base Ubuntu system.
We still need to copy a few things from the CD onto the PS3 hard drive.

Now we can reboot the PS3 and take out the Live CD since we no longer need it.

06 - Configuring Minimal Install of Ubuntu Base System

We will have to mount the partitions manually for now.

Copy the “fstab” file from your USB drive. We have to mount the USB drive first. You can find the location of your USB drive by typing

Try to locate which one your USB drive is by the size. If it says “sdd” then your drive will be recognized as “sdd1”

CHROOT into ubuntu and install nano. (You can use nano to create your config files or you can create them on your computer to save some typing and then transfer them via the usb drive)

The above command has you in your new Ubuntu system in its infant state.

You can manually mount each filesystem once you are chrooted into your Ubuntu System, or you can automatically mount them with ...

The above game some errors, so make sure that both /proc and /sys were mounted. Check to see if they are mounted by seeing if there is anything in them:

If /proc and /sys are not mounted then you will manually mount them like this:

07 - Installing The Xubuntu / Ubuntu / Kubuntu desktop

At this stage you have a choice of installing whatever desktop you like. You can either install the Ubuntu, Xubuntu or the Kubuntu desktop. You will want to issue one of the following commands depending on what desktop you want. (The Ubuntu desktop install had too many dependencies to resolve and eventually stopped after running out of system memory in my case. You may try it, but it would not work for me. Don't worry though ... we can install the Ubuntu desktop later ... go ahead and install Kubuntu for now)

Once the above is done you are finished. You have installed Ubuntu on your PS3.

08 - More Configuration and Adding Users

We need to create a username and give the user the ability to use sudo. We will go ahead and add you to the audio, admin, and users groups now also

add this to the end of the file so that users in the admin group can use sudo

Configure the Keyboard
Configure /etc/network/interfaces

Make it look like this
configure /etc/resolv.conf

Make it look like this (just an example ... you will have to configure it for your internet connection) If you are running linux on another computer in your house, just look at the /etc/resolv.conf on that computer.
Edit your hostname (this can be whatever you want)
Edit /etc/hosts
Make it look like this
Don't leave that command line because we will be using it in the next section.

09 - Configuring /etc/X11/xorg.conf and ps3videomode.

We need to copy a few more files from our USB drive. We will also have to install alien to tranform our rmp packages into deb packages.

We need to create a kboot.conf file. It should look like this
Make sure you edit the video mode to match what you found on the chart earlier. Here is the chart for reference.

Video mode ID:
0:automode
YUV 60Hz 1:480i 2:480p 3:720p 4:1080i 5:1080p
YUV 50Hz 6:576i 7:576p 8:720p 9:1080i 10:1080p
RGB 60Hz 33:480i 34:480p 35:720p 36:1080i 37:1080p
RGB 50Hz 38:576i 39:576p 40:720p 41:1080i 42:1080p
VESA 11:WXGA 12:SXGA 13:WUXGA

full screen mode: <video mode ID> + 128
dither ON mode : <video mode ID> + 2048

Now you should be in good shape.

Make sure that you are at the actual kboot prompt and not still inside the chroot at this point. Use the exit command if you are still in the chroot.
This is the command for starting Ubuntu from kboot.
We should go ahead and reboot first just to make sure that Ubuntu will boot automatically now.

You should then be booting Ubuntu and end up at the login screen. Do not press any keys when the kboot prompt comes up. It will take 10 seconds for the command to kick in.
If all went well you should be at the login screen. Use the user name that you just created and login. You will then be prompted to setup your KDE configurations.

10 - Install the Ubuntu Desktop (this section is optional and should be used if you wanted the Ubuntu desktop and it wouldn't work during the normal installation)

If you would like to use the Ubuntu desktop rather than the Kubuntu or Xubuntu that you installed. Open up a terminal and issue the commands ...

Choose "gdm" as your desktop when the install screen pops up at the end.

When that is finished installing everything, you should reboot. (you can do this using the graphical interface or by issuing the command in the terminal)

After the system reboots, you should be looking at the Ubuntu log in screen. Go ahead and login. Open a terminal by clicking Applications>Accessories>Terminal and issue the following command to uninstall the KDE components of the desktop. (This is if you installed the KDE desktop previously)

If you ever want to get back to the PS3 XMB from the kboot prompt or from inside of Ubuntu, open a teminal and type ...

If you are using the Kubuntu desktop and issue the command "boot-game-os"... you might notice it doesn't work. The reason is that the script depends on another script, "find-other-os-flash", that uses at least one bash-ism, yet the script specifies that it should be run by sh. sh on Kubuntu will be using Dash, not Bash... so it will fail. To fix it, open up /sbin/find-other-os-flash with your favorite editor and change the first line from: "#! /bin/sh" to '#! /bin/bash".

The command "boot-game-os" should work fine after that.

Ubuntu Starter guide

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Edgy

You May want to get some restricted formats to play (MP3s, DVDs, etc.)

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

You may also want to add some additional repositories

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...EPOSITORIES%29

I am sure we will be seeing you here

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/index.php

Share your PS3 alias with us here

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=319528

Enjoy!

11 - Change Log
01/21/07 - formatting
01/22/07 - edited fstab for file system labeling, formatting, resolved sudo issues by changing the commands for adding a user, changed file labeling commands, edited kboot.conf, changed the order of commands to reduce the number of reboots needed, added configuration of network.
01/23/07 - added -f option to the visudo command to edit /etc/sudoers. (Thanks for the catch jaunzone)
01/24/07 - changed a few commands (Thanks for the catch NobodySpecial), added section 10 for installing the Ubuntu Desktop(A big thanks to NobodySpecial for this one)
01/25/07 - added some helpful links at the end of the document.
01/26/07 - changed code in section 6 and 9 correcting chroot issues, editd kboot file, added the video mode chart, added notes concerning switching from Kubuntu to Ubuntu (Thanks to Strydre for the corrections)
01/31/07 - Added note concerning editing files that were created in notepad (Thanks for the tip S-Anarchy).
02/05/07 - Removed an extra "/" that was in the command for mounting the USB drive. (Thanks again to NobodySpecial)
02/13/07 - Added some PSUbuntu.com links, added the exit command at the end of step 9 (Thanks to mb26), added note concerning using the Live CD up to step 5 (thanks to Geta-Ve), added tip for saving files in Windows, added code that will add you to the audio and users groups (Thanks to mb26 and 3vi1 for the tip), edited the xorg.conf by removing some lines that were suggested to be commented out (thanks to Joel1234567 for the tip ... also note that if you need to change this you will need to logout and log back in for it to take effect), removed the command in step 6 that tried to make a directory that is already made (thanks to 3vi1 for the tip), added tip for getting to root prompt (thanks to 3vi1), added a note about the "boot-game-os" command (thanks to 3vi1)
02/16/07 - Added a line of code that will copy the modules from the Gentoo Live CD in the section where we copy the kernel. (Thanks to DarthStrydre for the tip), added link to 1080p fullscreen HowTo.
02/20/07 - added a link to the guide for sharing a hard drive between Linux and the XMB

TO DO:
All known issues with the install resolved.
I may write more guides to add repositories, run emulators, install codecs, etc. in the near future. If so, they will be linked in this guide.

Please let me know if there are any errors that you find here. If you contribute, you will be added to the credits section.

Fantastic post - it works great! Many thanks for all your hard work, Ciego.

I couldn't get get ubuntu-desktop to install either, so I installed kubuntu-desktop.

After rebooting and logging into kubuntu, I did:

Logged out of Kubunt, then logged into Ubuntu. Then,
So now I have Ubuntu with Gnome desktop on my PS3.

I also tried this but I could not get it to work. My commands were a little bit different though. I will have to try this(with your commands) and if it works for me I will add it to the guide with credit to you. Thanks.

UPDATE: It worked ... added it to the main HOWTO. Thank you for the great tip "NobodySpecial"

thanks great guide, i will definately try it out when I get my PS3 on March 23rd
(stupid uk delay )

The delay is unfortunate ... but at least you will have Oblivion at launch. (and hopefully a better supply than us over here in the US at launch)

There appear to be a few problems in this procedure with regards to what exists and doesnt in the chrooted environment... I got through them, but an uninitiated may trip up.

In step 6, fstab is copied to the non-chroot /etc. Possible correction here:
In step 9, we are still chrooted, so /mnt/usbdrive does not exist. The path to vsync is missing an entry as well. Possible correction here:
The kboot file is missing a slash:
The video mode chart should probably be copied here since it is a new thread and it does not exist earlier.

In step 10, the apt-get remove step is only needed if kubuntu was selected, not for xubuntu, which would install other packages.

I might have some suggestions for the xorg.conf... but not done experimenting yet.

Thanks for the cookbook

- Strydre

Thank you for the input. I changed the order of the guide around and those corrections were not caught. I will make the changes.

Great HOWTO, just having one problem with kboot seemingly not mounting ubuntu on startup. I keep getting the following error: /boot/vmlinux: not found. I was able to get into ubuntu by doing the following:

I have to retype that everytime I restart if I want to get into ubuntu. I figure it's a problem with kboot.conf or fstab, but I copied them exactly how was described in the HOWTO. Any suggestions?

Well I played around and figured it out. It was in fact the kboot.conf file. I changed it around and got it to boot on its own! Here's what I have in my kboot.conf:

I don't know if anyone else has had the same problem, but it might be a possible update to the HOWTO (?).

Thanks again Ciego.

If I had to guess, I would say that your problem was with a missing "/" somewhere in there. The way that you ended up doing it is the way that I wanted to do it in the first place buy I couldn't get it to work for some reason. Either way .... the same command is being issued overall.