Re: Getting kernel 4.14 to run on PS3

[Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org>]

On 12/08/17 09:37, Geoff Levand wrote:
> Hi Sascha,
>
> On 12/08/2017 01:24 AM, Sascha Schroeder wrote:
>> I yesterday tried to compile the newest kernel 4.14 for my PS3 running
>> OtherOS++ and "Red Ribbon GNU Linux" from 2014. I even succeeded and
>> created the three *.deb files and installed them afterwards.
>>
>> Unfortunately, my machine did not boot.
>>
>> As far as I read in very old sources, this could be that my machine is
>> using OtherOS++ on firmware 3.55.2 and not the Sony OtherOS prior
>> firmware 3.2x.
>>
>> I'm in contact with the creator from "Red Ribbon" and he mentioned we
>> have to manually patch PS3 linux kernel.
>>
>> So, my question 1 would be: which patches would I need to get the newest
>> kernel 4.14 running on my PS3 machine?
> I don't know about your machine with OtherOS++ on firmware 3.55.2,
> but for FAT and DECR-1400 models with firmware 3.15 or lower the
> otheros.bld built from the latest ps3-queue-v4.14 branch of my
> ps3-linux repo using either ps3_petitboot_defconfig or
> ps3_petitboot_nfs_defconfig will boot if written to flash memory
> using ps3-flash-util or the XMB [Install Other OS].
>
>    https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/geoff/ps3-linux.git
>
> Be aware that there was a kernel ABI breakage effecting kexec and
> that the ps3-petitboot-09.11.30 I released cannot boot kernels newer
> than linux-v3.15. See:
>
>    https://www.mail-archive.com/linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org/msg126348.html (Boot new kernel on PS3)
>    https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-powerpc@lists.debian.org/msg66884.html (PS3?)

I submitted patches to libfdt that resolve this particular ABI breakage 
yesterday. If the patch gets merged, newer kernels should become 
bootable again.
-Nathan