Blackrhino USB install with Kernelloader

[QUOTE=dlanor;457511]Why not ?

To most other homebrews there is virtually no difference between coding for a slim or a fat console, except that you can't use IDE HDD on most slims. I don't see why there should be any extra difficulty for Linux-related stuff, unless someone copied the USB-bug of CodeBreaker (the only major issue I'm aware of for the slim models).
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This is MegaMan's kernelloader webpage:
http://kernelloader.sourceforge.net/linux.html
Browse down to "Hardware Compatibility" for a quick table of tested PS2 platforms, unfortunately the v15 Slim is the most difficult, as Mega Man has to recode the network driver to get it to work. The v12 slim PS2 is better off, but a different kernel and pivot root are needed to get it working. That is why I state that FAT PS2 is working better with PS2-Linux. More on this topic may be found in this forum thread - http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.p...23589a0e45da25
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But isn't that's exactly the same linux distro found by both links, except that the first one also contains lots of other packages ?
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Yes, sorry for the duplicate link.
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Sounds good.

I'm not sure what package update you're speaking of here. A completely new distro, or just some patch for the web-browser. Please clarify.
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Just the browser installation package dillo-2.1.1-ps2.tar.bz2 is referenced. The files in the 4shared directory are pre-compiled, and in many cases I've had to change the source code to make it compile using the older compilers available in PS2-Linux. This was the case with dillo-2.1.1. As noted in the comment file, these files are installed by using tar and bzip2. "tar jxvf dillo-2.1.1-ps2.tar.bz2" will install the source, pre-compiled binaries in a directory. "cd dillo-2.1.1;su;make install" will install the new dillo over the older version included with the ps2linux-usrlocal.tar.bz2 package.
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Anyway, I just downloaded the main archives you mentioned (base & usrlocal) as well as the comment files stored in the same folder, but reading those files left me a bit wondering, as their initial text lines were these:
To summarize what I find objectionable about this, you apparently assume that everyone who will want to install this OS for a PS2 is already running some version of Linux, either on the PS2 or on a PC, which I find absurd. Surely you must be aware that the vast majority of computer users are running some variant of Windows, and we are not about to change that just to manage an installation for the PS2. And as for requiring Linux already working on the PS2, that is even worse, since the whole point was to get started with Linux on the console.
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You're right, my main assumption is that all people installing the distro are using kernelloader as the only other current way to install ps2-linux is with the original sony kit. I am also assuming, but should probably clarify in the documentation that Mega Man's instructions are followed for installing PS2-Linux - http://kernelloader.sourceforge.net/...talllinux.html
steps 12-15 - my distro is merely a much modified BlackRhino distro with extra packages which were compiled from scratch and much configuration/tweaking. The main problem folks might encounter is that I use bzip2 to unpack instead of the gzip on the initrd which comes with kernelloader.
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I obviously have no problem with the unpacking (using WinRAR) and other obvious tasks, such as using a normal Windows text editor instead of 'vi', but it is still unclear to me if some of the stuff described in that text really requires Linux components or if those things also can be done using normal Windows tools.
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The unpacking must occur during during steps 12-15 in from Mega Man's instructions to install properly.
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If you want a wider range of users to be able to use Linux on their PS2 consoles, as seems apparent from some of the things you said in those comment files, then you need to write new documentation telling those users (even somewhat noobier ones than I) how to accomplish the installation using a normal PC running a standard Windows OS. And then how to launch their new PS2 OS without previous experience of any Linux tools on the PS2 or their specific usage.
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I wouldn't know where to begin to tell users how to install PS2-Linux on the hdd from a Windows OS. I realize you can do this with HDLOADER games using Winhiip, but I don't think there is a tool available to do this. In fact, in my comments file, I note that ps2fdisk has to be used to install a PS2-Linux partition alongside the HDLOADER games without conflict (and it must be installed in the first 128GB (or 137GB, not 48-bit compatible PS2-Linux). I am only able to install PS2-Linux using the sony kit or using Mega Man's kernelloader. Sorry.
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The most confusing entry of all in those text files is probably this one:

Here you seem to assume that the user already has, and knows how to use, a kernel loader which you do not even clearly describe whether it is included in your distro or where else to get it if not.

For someone like me, who has seldom dabbled with Linux at all, and then only for very brief tests, this all seems very confusing. And that's for me, with many years of computing experience. I can only guess at how confusing it will be for most real noobies.

These are just my first impressions after downloading your distro and reading those texts. I'll be back sometime later when I've had time to try actually installing the stuff onto a USB drive.

Btw: On second thought I need to ask if the stated usage of "/dev/hda3/" really refers to a USB drive. It seems a bit odd, especially as you explicitly mention partitioning, something we do not normally do on USB drives used with a PS2. Here single-partition usage is the norm. So what gives ?
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/dev/hda3 refers to the hdd actually which typically has a boot linux partition and a swap partition, but may have more. In my distro /dev/sda1 refers to the USB device, although when booting to the ramdisk for installation it would be mounted with "mount -r /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 /usb"
Thanks for the input, I think I can put some more effort into the documentation as I think MegaMan has done some great work here and I know that the Linux learning curve may be a bit steep. After re-reading my notes I can see a few assumptions that need clearing up.

Best regards: dlanor[/QUOTE]

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Originally Posted by zin0099

any chance of useing the ps2 controller as the mouse?

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It's possible. I'm using joymouse 0.5 - simple program to emulate mouse.

----- re: current package seems aimed only at previous Linux users

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Originally Posted by deba5er

You're right, my main assumption is that all people installing the distro are using kernelloader as the only other current way to install ps2-linux is with the original sony kit.

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Ideally preparation of the Linux OS files on a USB drive should require no access to any specific OS whatever, Linux or otherwise. Any computer whatever running any OS whatever should be able to do the job. Simply storing the files on the drive should constitute all the basic installation needed, though it would obviously be necessary for the user to reconfigure a lot of things from default settings once he has booted the new OS for the first time.

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I am also assuming, but should probably clarify in the documentation that Mega Man's instructions are followed for installing PS2-Linux - http://kernelloader.sourceforge.net/...talllinux.html
steps 12-15 - my distro is merely a much modified BlackRhino distro with extra packages which were compiled from scratch and much configuration/tweaking.

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Ok, I've visited his pages and downloaded most of the stuff indicated there, except the BlackRhino base package, as that is replaced by your own then.

But somehow I don't think this will solve everything...

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The main problem folks might encounter is that I use bzip2 to unpack instead of the gzip on the initrd which comes with kernelloader.

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And what does that mean. Will the unpacking just fail ?

Because if so, then the whole package becomes useless, again requiring a full Linux OS already installed and working to install this new version. So what then is the point ?

----- re: unpacking with WinRAR
Actually I spoke too soon on this matter, as it turns out that there is lots of stuff in those archives which can not be unpacked properly under Windows. There are tons of duplicate file names differing ONLY in the upper/lower case usage (like having both "dev/ttys0" and "dev/ttyS0", which is just silly in my opinion).

But more seriously there are also what WinRAR considers to be broken symbolic links pointing to absent targets. Possibly my WinRAR version is too old to do this correctly...

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The unpacking must occur during during steps 12-15 in from Mega Man's instructions to install properly.

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Apparently, which again ties in with what I said earlier, that much of this installation requires having Linux already running in some form. Here the form achieved by loading the kernel with the proper initrd, so at least it is available though I still consider the requirement as such to be a bad thing.

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I wouldn't know where to begin to tell users how to install PS2-Linux on the hdd from a Windows OS. I realize you can do this with HDLOADER games using Winhiip, but I don't think there is a tool available to do this. In fact, in my comments file, I note that ps2fdisk has to be used to install a PS2-Linux partition alongside the HDLOADER games without conflict (and it must be installed in the first 128GB (or 137GB, not 48-bit compatible PS2-Linux). I am only able to install PS2-Linux using the sony kit or using Mega Man's kernelloader. Sorry.

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This wasn't really intended as criticism against you or any other individual, but rather against the generic isolationism of Linux development in general. I see no valid reason why Linux should be restricted to its own specific partition types etc. IMO it should be just as possible to run Linux on a FAT32 or NTFS partition. (After all, other OS can do that, so why not Linux ?) It should mostly be a matter of using different drivers and reimplementing some file access methods (write privileges etc) differently.

----- re: drive reference examples

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/dev/hda3 refers to the hdd actually which typically has a boot linux partition and a swap partition, but may have more. In my distro /dev/sda1 refers to the USB device, although when booting to the ramdisk for installation it would be mounted with "mount -r /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 /usb"

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I see. So then there is a real need for completely rewritten instructions on how to do this work for a USB drive, as that's all the users of newer consoles have, since those consoles have no IDE interface. And you can't expect noob users to adapt themselves on the fly to docs written for other hardware. Most of them are going to enter the commands exactly as written in the docs, and that is obviously not going to work.

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Thanks for the input, I think I can put some more effort into the documentation as I think MegaMan has done some great work here and I know that the Linux learning curve may be a bit steep.

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Very steep indeed, which I think is mainly due to the general attitude in the Linux community, where they seem to enjoy this steepness for its own sake, making it more of an exclusive club. Perhaps I'm wrong, and I'd really like to be, but that is how it has always seemed to me.

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After re-reading my notes I can see a few assumptions that need clearing up.

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Good.

But in order to make it possible for larger masses to use this software I think it will be necessary to make new consolidated installation packages, supplying all that is needed in a single package, instead of requiring each user to download different components separately and assemble his own jig-saw puzzle.

It should be possible to make a single package that a user can unpack to a normal FAT32 formatted partition on a USB device, and then use uLE (or whatever method) to launch a single elf file in that package, which will then handle all the rest of the bootstrapping process automatically.

Obviously the stuff 'unpacked' manually by the user should then include the *.tar.bz2 files still packed (for later automatic unpacking) as well as both the kernel and initrd files. Most of the stuff in steps 7 through 16 of the current install instructions could then be handled by a script in initrd, with the only user input needed being how much space to use for the Linux partition on the USB device. That partition should be added 'behind' the first FAT32 partition, which should be kept unchanged to allow easy file transfer between the Linux system and the other PS2 operating modes. Any additional configuration or partitioning can be done later, when the user has booted into his real Linux setup.

The major effort in making such a package work would be the design of a new kernel loader, largely based on the old one, but modified to use fixed kernel and initrd files and to use USB by default. Then all the rest can be done by a script of the initrd.

At least that is how think it needs to work, in order to allow more people to use PS2 Linux.
The current methods are just too complex for most people to bother with.


In closing I must also add that the driver problems of the kernel need to be solved in such a way that Linux, like most other homebrews, can work identically on all consoles regardless of model (except for v0). I realize that this may seem tricky when real physical interface changes have been made, as with the new network interface of most slims. But even if quite different code is needed to cope with that, the generic solution is quite obvious.

One just needs to include BOTH versions of that code in the binary, and let the driver initialization code decide which of the two versions to use. I assume this can be done very easily by reading the rom0:ROMVER file and checking the bios version, since that HAD to be updated by Sony to cope with new hardware, and then a flag can be set to indicate which of the two access methods is valid. Quite simple really...

Best regards: dlanor

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Originally Posted by dwegiel

1) Tell me the partitions to make on my USB drive, and what to do with the damned distro.
2) Kernelloader settings/args
3) Commands to type into the Linux shell
4) Imagine you were saying this to a guy who just migrated from windows to linux.

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i recommend reading this thread (or at least the last 2 pages) - http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.p...174c72de0b0b47

This thread has instructions for booting on usb, something I don't have much experience with but looks like I'll try to figure out over the next week so I can learn the exact commands and order.

for others that have a slim ps2 (i know you aren't using that here, but for others reading this) - here's whig's fixes for ps2-linux on ps2 slim usb - http://files.rillion.net/volt/

On the ps2dev forum link above, please specifically read rgrimes post from 03 Mar 2009. Post subject: Blackrhino RUNNING on USB flash on both a PS2 and PSTwo/Slim

It gives the kernelloader settings you requested.

@deba5er:
Here's a short report on my attempt last night to try out the kernel loader myself.

The final intent of this is of course to attempt installing your linux distro onto one of my USB drives, but as yet I don't even have any info on how to partition them or how to modify the installation instructions in other ways, to work on USB instead of HDD.

The step numbers below naturally relate to MegaMan's instruction page.

Step 1: Prepararation of the USB drive content
I created a "ps2linux" folder on the USB drive, and inside it I stored the following files:
kloader1.9.elf == The kernel loader, obviously :lol:
initrd.gz-ps2-20071224 == An alternate initrd for testing purposes
initrd.usb2.gz == The initrd for USB access I need to use
ps2linux-base.tar.bz2 == main package of your distro
ps2linux-usrlocal.tar.bz2 == supplementary package of your distro
vmlinux-2.4.17-ps2-20080209 == An alternate kernel for testing purposes
vmlinux-2.4.17-ps2-devfs-20080302 == The kernel for USB access I need to use

Step 2: Launching the Kernel Loader
I simply booted into uLE as always and then used its FileBrowser to navigate to mass: and launch the kloader1.9.elf file.

Step 3: Selecting Kernel
Here I simply used the kloader menu's "Select Kernel" command to select "vmlinux-2.4.17-ps2-devfs-20080302" on the USB drive.

Step 4: Selecting initial ramdisk
Here I simply used the kloader menu's "Select Initrd" command to select "initrd.usb2.gz" on the USB drive.

Step 5: Disable "dmarelay.irx"
This step seems no longer relevant, since that setting was already done by default in the new kloader (several versions newer than the instructions). There also seemed to be lots of new configuration options, but since none were mentioned in the instructions I had no choice but to leave their default settings unchanged.

Step 6: Boot Linux
Here I simply used the kloader menu's "Boot Current Config" command, as instructed, which led to a ton of progress messages including recognition of my USB devices (drive, hub, keyboard, mouse). Some oddities here include the fact that the drive was recognized before the hub it is connected through, and the fact that the hub was erroneously detected as having 4 ports, when in fact it has 7 ports. All of that is irrelevant though since the boot attempt crashed a bit later, and this was also the result in a later attempt without using any hub and with the USB device alone connected to the console (no hub, mouse or keyboard to complicate matters).

For both cases the crash was identical, with the following messages displayed:

Code:

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mounting /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 on /newroot
changing root.
sbin/init: line 45: umount: command not found
starting init.
sbin/init: line 48: /sbin/init: No such file or directory
sbin/init: line 48: exec: /sbin/init: cannot execute: No such file or directory
kernel panic: Áttempted to kill init!

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After that no further messages were displayed.

NB: Due to the nonstandard video format used, some of the initial characters of those text lines are guesswork, since it is impossible to display those characters on a normal unmodified TV set. Please tell me now if that video mode is mandatory for this linux version, so that I can opt out early and stop wasting time on something completely unusable.

At this point the system does respond to input, but does not seem to do anything sensible.
I can enter text as on a primitive terminal, but it doesn't seem to do anything if I enter a standard command like "ls" or similar. No listing whatsoever is displayed.

Btw: During the writing of this post I discovered that this initrd setup apparently considers a few minutes to be a suitable screen saver activation delay (completely insane IMO) so I definitely suggest increasing that to something a little more meaningful.

In any case, I don't know how to boot this kernel+initrd combo correctly without crashing and even if I did I would still have no idea how to actually make the system use USB for the real distro.

Just for a test I tried booting with the other initrd selected, and this did complete booting without errors. I could then use ls and other normal commands. But since it gave no access to USB it was still worthless for my purposes.

These experiments were all made on my fat v7 console, to avoid the 'slim' complications.

About those 'slim' complications:
I noticed that there was a special kernel patch selectable for slim consoles in the kloader configuration menu, but I must say that even if that works it is NOT acceptable. An installed Linux system on a USB drive should be fully portable. And between fat consoles this can obviously work, or between slim consoles, so it is simply not acceptable that there should be some 'barrier' preventing it from being moved from a slim to a fat console or vice versa. The kernel itself needs to be modified so as to take the console type into consideration at each boot time, more or less like I described in an earlier post.

Btw2:
Inspecting the USB drive after these attempts I find that a new folder named "oldroot" has been created on it, but since that folder is empty I have no real idea what its purpose is.

Best regards: dlanor

@dlanor - Read Mega Man's May 12 post here - http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.p...512fddfed86f65

He notes that PAL/NTSC is wrong and that he set crtmode=NTSC for his TV which supports both. He seems to have fixed this but hasn't released this version of kernelloader yet.

He also notes that he may have a solution to the usb recognition problem, also not released. However, another ps2dev forum member, whig, may have a solution with pivot root - http://files.rillion.net/volt/

Edit - Forgot to note the instructions on sourceforge for kernelloader use of initrd for usb - http://sourceforge.net/project/shown...ease_id=610717

0.0.... Wow, my thread seems to grow and grow. But I still barely understand anything. Nonetheless, thanks for your help. I'll try to do this tomorrow morning or afternoon (CST). I'll report back on my progress. If all goes as planned, I will write a tutorial for how to this, the easy way. It should freakin' exist somewhere. People should deserve to run linux on their fat/slim even if they don't know anything about it.

Updates/goals so far:
Get Ubuntu:√
Edit:Burn to CD:√
Copy both systems to flashdrive #1:√
Format flashdrive #2 with 150MB FAT32:√
-1.5GB Ext2:X
-128MB Swap:X
Insert 2 system combo onto Ext2:X
Get new memcard dedicated to files:X
Attempt to boot up Linux:X
Get somewhere with INITRD:X
Start installing:X
Finish install:X
Configure correctly for normal boot:X
Boot into Xwindows/Fluxbox:X
Configure internet connection:X
Browse a website:X
Make a post on this forum from the PS2 :wow::X

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Originally Posted by dwegiel

0.0.... Wow, my thread seems to grow and grow. But I still barely understand anything. Nonetheless, thanks for your help. I'll try to do this tomorrow morning or afternoon (CST). I'll report back on my progress. If all goes as planned, I will write a tutorial for how to this, the easy way. It should freakin' exist somewhere. People should deserve to run linux on their fat/slim even if they don't know anything about it.

Updates/goals so far:
Get Ubuntu:√

I used a live boot puppylinux. Ubuntu should work the same. The ps2linux-distro 2 large .bz2 files are stored on the Windows drive, and when you live boot you can click to mount the windows partition (ntfs in my case) and the usb flash drive (you can format as you stated below with vfat /dev/sda1, ext2 /dev/sda2, and swap /dev/sda3). Once mounted you can go to the shell prompt (terminal) and "cd /mnt/sdb2" (mount point of ext2 root partition on flash drive);"tar jxvf /mnt/sda1/ps2linux-base.tar.bz2;tar jxvf /mnt/sda1/ps2linux-usrlocal.tar.bz2". I am testing on a ps2-slim tonight so I am using http://files.rillion.net/volt/ (kernel, initrd, and kernelparameter). When using this, I have to keep the flash drive unplugged until it reaches the press enter message, drop to the shell with <enter> s <enter>; mount my root partition - "mount /dev/sda2 /real-root", "cp /real-root/usr/sbin/chroot /real-root/sbin" (whig's script insists on this location). Then <ctrl>-D and b <enter> to boot.

Burn to CD:X
Copy both systems to flashdrive #1:√
Format flashdrive #2 with 150MB FAT32:√
-1.4GB Ext2:X
-300MB Swap:X

300MB is probably too big for swap for a machine with 32MB RAM, 128MB should be sufficient.

Insert 2 system combo onto Ext2:X
Get new memcard dedicated to files:X
Attempt to boot up Linux:X
Get somewhere with INITRD:X
Start installing:X
Finish install:X

When I did the above, there were no further installation steps, however the ps2-slim doesn't have working network. The usb didn't umount cleanly in my attempts, I killed the syslogd and klogd pids (use ps -ef to see) and the "/etc/init.d/umountfs" command ran finally and I then shutdown with "shutdown -h now".

Configure correctly for normal boot:X
Boot into Xwindows/Fluxbox:X
Configure internet connection:X
Browse a website:X
Make a post on this forum from the PS2 :wow::X

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I'll be trying on a fat-ps2 later this week since I have the ps2-slim working tonight, to see if network works fine, and see what kernel/initrd combo is needed. The root-pivot work by whig seems necessary though, so I'll use his work as a starting point. Good luck, sorry I haven't been much use on the usb-ps2-linux, as I've been focused on the hdd exclusively until now.

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Originally Posted by deba5er

@dlanor - Read Mega Man's May 12 post here - http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.p...512fddfed86f65

He notes that PAL/NTSC is wrong and that he set crtmode=NTSC for his TV which supports both. He seems to have fixed this but hasn't released this version of kernelloader yet.

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That is not a problem for me as both my TV sets support both NTSC and PAL. And since I ran the installation on a fat PS2 the detection problem did not exist anyway.

I'm well familiar with the problem as I had to fix this in the uLE source earlier, which was easily done by reading rom0:ROMVER which includes NTSC/PAL recognition in its fifth character which will be "E" for Europe==PAL, "A" for USA/Canada == NTSC-U/C, and "J" (or possibly "I", not sure) for Japan == NTSC-J.

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He also notes that he may have a solution to the usb recognition problem, also not released.

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That I did not find. I only saw his statement that the problem exists, but without mention of any solution already existing (released or not).

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However, another ps2dev forum member, whig, may have a solution with pivot root - http://files.rillion.net/volt/

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The total lack of detailed information on that page makes it impossible to know whether those kernel and initrd files are at all appropriate for USB installation, and if so what console types they will work on.

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Edit - Forgot to note the instructions on sourceforge for kernelloader use of initrd for usb - http://sourceforge.net/project/shown...ease_id=610717

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Thanks, that certainly cleared up some of the question-mark-fog, but unfortunately a lot still remains.

Also, if I understand you correctly it is still impossible to make a fully working setup for the slim PS2, which I find absurd. MegaMan mentioned in one of his posts at ps2dev.org that this was due to the fact that the RPC function calls used by all other homebrews would invoke the scheduler which is not acceptable for the Linux kernel. But that is still no acceptable excuse.

The proper thing to do for such cases is what I already described earlier:
For anything that differs between the two main console model groups (pre-750xx VS 750xx and later) the binary needs to contain two different branches for the routines that differ, using one simple flag test in each such system function to choose which of the two branches to use. And that flag can then be set by testing the file rom0:ROMVER early in the kernel initialization, so that the methods used for it can even break normal kernel rules if needed, as that will be fixed up later in the init, leaving the post-boot linux system unaffected.

Anyway, it is clear from the discussion so far that at present it is not possible to install a fully working linux setup for a slim console, and that a 'noob' user will most likely not be able to achieve even partial functionality this way.

As for doing it on a fat console, that seems possible only for non-USB installs, since the USB install fails completely as described in my earlier post. The new instructions you linked to for the initrd and its usage change nothing, since they do not include any new info on how to set things up in kernel loader before giving it the boot command. Since that boot command then leads to a crash it is not possible to input any further commands manually to fix anything, which is all that the new initrd instructions describe.

Please read my previous test report again, and this time repeat the simple test I made, using a linux-free setup from scratch, so you can see for yourself that an install from USB using that kernel+initrd combo CRASHES.

It does not matter what console type you are using. This crashes on a v7 fat console too.
Possibly you do other things, having some top-secret non-default settings for kloader or whatever, which makes it work better for you.

But anyone who just starts from scratch and only follows available instructions will CRASH.

Unless new info is revealed for some method that really works I'm now going to drop these linux installation attempts for a while, as I don't think they're going to lead anywhere useful anytime soon.

Btw: I do know that installation to IDE HDD should work, but I have absolutely no interest in that. Not when I read that the linux HDD drivers involved still have the same limitations as the original Sony drivers. Until someone reimplements the improved homebrew drivers for linux use, that OS is banned from accessing my PS2 HDDs.

Best regards: dlanor