Is it possible to create a symbolic link on the PS3 drive?

[McHaggis]

I was thinking about the current limitation with the dev_bdvd to dev_hdd0 eboot.elf hex editing. As you know, the structure of the discs follows the format:

/dev_bdvd/PS3_GAME

Whereas PSN games are stored at:

/dev_hdd0/game/bces00000

... which is 6 bytes larger. This means that people have to be a little creative and place files and folders closer to the root with no real organization to the structure. I'm wondering if it would be possible to create a symbolic link (much like /app_home/) that will allow us to keep the original structure.

For example, if we created a symbolic link called /game/ which maps to /dev_hdd0/game/ we would be able to write /game/bces00000, allowing us to keep the same structure as the PSN downloaded games.

Just a theory, maybe a developer could put it into practice? Better idea, perhaps symlink creation could be built into the file managers?

[stoker25]

Might be possible with PL3...
https://github.com/kakaroto/PL3/blob.../payload_dev.S

At the end are 2 strings, /app_home and /dev_usb000/PS3/HOMEBREW/APP_HOME, this maps the folder on the usb to the /app_home path for making testing SELFs easier, maybe changing /app_home to /game and /dev_usb000... to /dev_hdd0/game would work?

edit: forgot to say, PL3 lets you do this with syscall 35 also

[Derr]

Might be possible with PL3...
https://github.com/kakaroto/PL3/blob.../payload_dev.S

At the end are 2 strings, /app_home and /dev_usb000/PS3/HOMEBREW/APP_HOME, this maps the folder on the usb to the /app_home path for making testing SELFs easier, maybe changing /app_home to /game and /dev_usb000... to /dev_hdd0/game would work?

edit: forgot to say, PL3 lets you do this with syscall 35 also

I'm pretty sure the whole point of this is to run backups without syscalls/payloads.

[[C*]]

I believe Dean is working on getting such a feature into MultiMan.

[chesh]

Multiman is doing symlinks as of yesterday. Take a look at his thread.

[McHaggis]

Ah, so it looks like I might have been pre-empted. I'll take a look at the new Multi-man and check it out then.

EDIT: it appears that it's not as straightforward as what I'm suggesting here - you have to create a symlink, for each game, to somewhere in /dev_hdd0/. I did think that creating a symbolic link in / would require a firmware modification, anyway.

[Frullo]

Wow, that's cool

I wonder which applications will this feature have, regarding diskless playing.

I don't think this will solve the problems with the checks the games do with the bluray (not sure about it) but a symbolic link is a step further

[dts]

Hi guys, sorry to jump into your thread McHaggis.
I have a question and it relates to the subject off symlinks but if you feel i'm trying to jack your thread i'll edit it out.

For games with files larger than 4gb, Killzone 3 for example...
Would it be possible to only copy the large files to dev_hdd0 and place a sybolic link in it's place on dev_usb*** so the game could be played from the external drive?

[Kayot]

You can't set a Symbolic link on a Fat16/32 partition. Bummer really...

[konetix]

How do I manually create a symbolic link from a file on the PS3 to another file on the ps3?

In this case, I want to use the link for .pkg method Catherine install --my original file is at

dev_hdd0\game\BLJM60215\USRDIR\data.cpk

and i want to symbolic link it to the "installed" file at

dev_hdd0\game\BLJM60215DATA\USRDIR\data.cpk

in order to save space (it's the exact same file, just copied).


edit: trying it via multiman and temporarily moving the rest of the contents of the real folder while i link it.
edit2: SUCCESS! Just saved myself ~2.7gb of HDD space via symbolic link