After installing Linux with fdisk: How to create APA-Partition?

[siyman]

Hey guys,

After installing deba5er's blackrhino distribution which is working flawlesly now and after finding out that Time Crisis II has the beloved LIBSD .IRX and SDRDRV .IRX modules for giving sound output to the 50004 PAL PS2 I want to get to the next level - using backups instead of my game discs. I was running into trouble installing linux because I had to use fdisk instead of ps2fdisk. Now neither HDLoader nor HDD format (uLaunchELF) can read the internal HDD. They tell me that I have to format it. I know that I have to create some sort of APA-like partition but am aware of how to do that correctly. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

[deba5er]

I only know how to make HDLOADER and PS2-Linux work on the same HDD by following these steps - (1) format HDD with HDLOADER (you don't have to store any backups at this time, just format), and (2) run ps2fdisk (not fdisk) to create the Linux partitions (this is part of my installer which it seems you were unable to get to work for you). ps2fdisk is required because it "understands" APA partitioning. Keep any Linux partitions within the first 137GB. HDLOADER 48-bit can go beyond 137GB (up to 1TB).

I do not know how to get from where you are to where you need to be without following the above steps. That does not mean it is impossible, it just means I don't know how.

[siyman]

Hey deba5er,

you are right. I was not able to format the hda from Mega Man's LiveDVD, so I used your initrd and made the partitions through fdisk. What I missed was a try to make this with ps2fdisk out of your ramdisk. I think I have to check this. I'll give you a status update once it's over. But kind question: Why is there nothing like fdisk in your ps2_linux archives but in your initrd?

[deba5er]

@siyman

You are right, ps2fdisk used to be available on this site which was retired - PlayStation2-Linux.com Fortunately some of this website was saved so you can find ps2fdisk_0.9-3.gz on Linux for PlayStation 2 Community: Project Filelist

A BIG THANKS to danielb for saving all of these useful files and putting them on his site.

[siyman]

Thanks for that link. Unfortunately it's currently in something like a downtime. Hopefully it will be back online soon. (This domain is a DNS to a private inhouse server, isn't it?)
Edit: There is a mirror on the japanese sourceforce. Because of not havin' written at least 30 posts I have to castrate the link:
http ://en .sourceforge .jp/projects/sfnet_kernelloader/downloads/Sony%20Linux%20Toolkit/Package%20Update%20Files/apa/ps2fdisk_0 .9-3 .gz/

Yesterday I tried to format my hdd through HDLoader. This worked well as usual except that within Mega Man's LiveDVD I wasn't able to create usable partitions. ps2fdisk recognizes a partition table which is something like 2 GB and is neither mounted nor has any type of mount point ('------'). When I created a new partition called /dev/hda1 as swap it's working, also /dev/hda2 as linux does. ps2fdisk is telling me after write-command that the discs are synced. When I tried now to mkswap hda1 and mke2fs hda2 I only get errors. mkswap says the partition has no space left and mke2fs give's me something like the same error but more convenient. When I run partprobe it's telling me that there is overlapping diskusage.
Because of all these errors I went to fdisk the hdd last time, but actually then HDLoader won't have access to my harddrive. This makes me kinda crazy
Edit: With the new ps2fdisk from the japanese sourceforge mirror ps2fdisk creates useable partitions. I think this error comes from an old ps2fdisk version wich is delivered within Mega Man's LiveDVD. I'll try an installation now.


And another question: Is there some destabilization through using DTV2 in crtmode? All the time I run either the LiveDVD or your usbimage with DTV2 it get's stuck. Using PAL with the LiveDVD I don't have any output but can see X when it's started. (Using kloader 2.3)
Edit: Everythinks works now! Through the updated ps2fdisk I could create correctly my partitions and was installing deba$er's blackrhino. Additionally, I added the new apt-source from patriciawindt .dyndns .org and found out that there is some quite old but cool software in the repositories like gimp, wmaker etc. I didn't try to install a game via HDLoader, but though uLaunchELF recognizes my disk HDLoader should do it as well.
Btw DTV2 doesn't work for me, system hangs randomly after Init starts. I have to use DTV with a pixel margin. Also I have another question: Why can I use DTV,720p as xmode but not DTV,1080i - syntax error? X tells me to use "DTV [,xD],[,480p],[,720p],[1080i]". Until 1080 there is overall a komma ','. Can this be the reason? Shall I try it without?

[deba5er]

@siyman

The ps2linux.no-ip.info • PlayStation 2 Linux site was setup by danielb - it is up right now, and you can save the latest version of ps2fdisk from it (just tested). Sorry you had such a bad time with it. My installer was supposed to handle the ps2fdisk portion automatically, apparently it is not working for some.

I don't know about the video modes as I don't have any HDTV to test with. It should be supported, but maybe is not. I have tested with NTSC and VESA modes successfully. Does your HDTV support VESA modes (like VGA input)? You might try VESA to get higher resolution. Not related, but there are newer versions of kernelloader available. In fact, version 2.5 was released today and I am going to test with it some.

[deba5er]

@siyman

I finally got a used HDTV that does 720p and 1080i. The 720p works perfectly (dtv2 setting). Remember to check out /usr/local/bin/setx_margins and make sure that the TV_MARGIN_X and TV_MARGIN_Y are set equal to 0 as this should be the setting for HDTVs. The 1080i would not work with this version of Xgsx (/usr/bin/X11/Xgsx) however after backing up the current version, and copying Xgsx.orig to Xgsx, the dtv,1080i mode worked but it looked horrible. There was ghosting on my HDTV (double image) and I found no way to get rid of it. I had to comment out the XInput section of /etc/XGSConfig to make it start, if you want to experiment with it more. However, for me, 720p (dtv2) is where I will stay. The setcrtmode to dtv1 setting (1080i) worked fine without hanging for me though. I just had problems with X-Windows/fluxbox. Note that 720p is 24 bit color depth, where 1080i is 16 bit color depth. I am interested in knowing if you get ghosting on a different HDTV with the above settings for 1080i. Maybe it is just my LCD TV?

[SkyNet]

Actually I remember once tried 720p in SMS(Simle Media System) on PS2 and it looked awesome. Films looked amazing in 720p. But I tried it on computer monitor though.
Actually i think that "component cable(Y Pb Pr)" for PS2 is the best connection possible. VGA is not native for PS2, BIOS does not have support for it, and we have to use software like GSM to enable it----and it not so comfortable. Component (Y Pb Pr)can show any type of picture---interlace--progressive.

And also if to compare component(Y Pb Pr) with VGA----componenet is better.
VGA can output 1024*768@75HZ. I tried to turn on 1280*1024 and it didnt work. The resolution was still 1024*768 in BlackRhino Linux.
Component outputs 1280*720p or 1366*720p---it is bigger than 1024*768.
So Component(Y Pb Pr) wins this battle.

Actually maybe the problem is that native resolution of your HDTV is 1280*720p?
I think someone has to test it on HDTV with native resolution 1920*1080p, and to write here about results. I am very interested to find out if PS2 can output 1080i in Linux.
I know that in SMS 1080i mode is supported.
Megaman do you know if PS2 can output 1080i in Linux?

[siyman]

Sorry, vBulletin is driving me nuts with it's 30 posts minimum automatic link recognition which is some sort of useless and crappy! That's why these cut off quotes.

Well, approved, but works perfectly for me means that I have two black stripes left and right besides the normal screen resolution . It seems to be that it's not set up as 16 : 9 but as 4 : 3. This is quite weird, though. Maybe I forgot to edit the setx _ margins . Will try this later.

In my case when I start with xmode = DTV , 1080i X starts but hangs up giving me the blue startup screen . Also I have kernel panic, no input works after this point . I think I won't try to patch Xgsx because it's working fine, otherwise . Sorry, that's why I'm not willing to experiment whether 720p would work as expected.

Please describe exaclty what you mean with dtv2 and dtv1 . xmode is makin' a difference between these two? I found some information about it in the installation documentation from Mega Man's LiveDVD but this was only for the kloader, not within the running system. Also I need quite an idea about the concept of 'ghosting' .

SkyNet:
I have a native 1080p Samsung LCD-TV and 1080i is not working for me. Maybe I could test a bit but have no clue about patching/ upgrading Xgsx like deba5er did. Off topic: how to get SMS playing in 720p 1080i? I've never seen any possibility to edit the SMS configuration.

[Mega Man]

At the release time I didn't had a tv set for testing dtv at all. It is switching to 1080i, but there seems to be kernel bug which stops the system.
@deba5er: Did you enable a swap partition? Maybe it is not Xgsx.orig which works, but the swap partition which helps?