Graf Chokolo and Marcan Working on Bringing PS3 OtherOS Back

119w ago - Another update from graf_chokolo and Marcan42 who are working to bring OtherOS back to PS3, to quote:

I managed to boot an unencrpyted LV2 kernel from VFLASH. The decrypted LV2 kernel from Service JIG just made some strange sounds for several seconds and then did shutdown Normal unencrypted LV2 kernels boot normally. We could kick out lv2ldr from HV completely and boot enencrypted LV2 kernel always Working now on Linux bootloader. Stay tuned.

I didn’t use default.spp to boot decrypted LV2. I patched HV process which loads LV2 kernel, kicked out lv2ldr, replaced the function which loads lv2_kernel.self with my own code which loads just any OS from a VFLASH region It can be either petitboot, LV2 kernel or something else And dual boot is also possible with this approach. We could store several kernels on VFLASH and decide at boot time which one to boot.

And yesterday i found also out how to enable all debug and log messages in HV and HV procs and actually see these log messages Expect more soon. And greetings to SONY I will try today to boot decrypted 3.56 LV2 on my 3.41 PS3

If you could upload a binary image of AsbestOS for me please, i could test booting it today from VFLASH. Thanks.

Guys, i would be greatful if someone could upload me decrypted 3.56 lv2 kernel. Thanks.

If i got the right version then i just booted decrypted lv2 kernel 3.56 from VFLASH

Thanks for the images. Just booted your tftp image from VFLASH And i see UDP packets coming from PS3

From marcan42: twitter.com/marcan42

Don't confuse AsbestOS itself (a Linux bootloader) with the way you launch it: USB exploit, lv2 payload, lv2 replacement, or (now) OtherOS++

In other words, there's absolutely no reason why you couldn't use AsbestOS with his "OtherOS++"; in fact, you should! (once it's done)

Graf_chokolo doesn't seem to "get" AsbestOS. It isn't mutually exclusive with GameOS; AsbestOS built as otheros.bld is still a good idea.

graf_chokolo, I don’t think you “get” AsbestOS. It’s just a linux bootloader, in fact it would work great as otheros.bld or any other way of running it as an lv2 binary, and it’s more robust than petitboot (and smaller and easier to modify).

OtherOS + extra rights isn’t a replacement for AsbestOS, it’s an alternative to our original approach of replacing lv2 with AsbestOS. There’s already one released way to boot AsbestOS (USB exploit, which isn’t very clean/handy), Hermes is working on a runtime lv2 bootstrap for it (also not very clean but handy for people who like CFWs), there’s the lv2 replacement that we demoed but which isn’t out yet (which is clean, though can’t dual-boot GameOS yet), and once you release what you’re working on you will be able to just boot AsbestOS with it. Of course you could just run petitboot too, but where’s the fun in that? (we could’ve just used petitboot as a lv2 kernel for the 27c3 demo too, but AsbestOS is just much easier to make work and I already have a working new boot ABI using the devtree to pass the region1 allocation to Linux and patches that make it work regardless of whether the bootmem split is 128/128 or 16/240).

This isn’t a competition, I see no reason why AsbestOS can’t work great with whatever you’re getting ready

Btw, re: disk encryption, they use the same key and a NULL IV (can’t remember if all 00 or all ff) for every sector. It’s a very stupid/insecure block encryption scheme. There are flags for the sector read commands to toggle encryption on and off, that’s what we used to boot Linux off of a raw, totally DOS formatted disk with no encryption or lv1 regions.

Also, we thought about booting an unencrypted lv2 kernel too (I assume you’re messing with default.spp?) but we were very short on time and self was easier. Of course, you know a lot more about lv1 than we do

I think this blog is eating my comments if they have URLs…

Here are three binaries (compiled off of the public git, it’s just stage2_native.bin) with three different boot modes (config.h settings):

.http://marcansoft.com/transf/asbestos-20110203-hdd.bin
.http://marcansoft.com/transf/asbestos-20110203-tftp.bin
.http://marcansoft.com/transf/asbestos-20110203-netrpc.bin

-hdd boots from a raw DOS formatted HDD (first partition must be FAT and contain a kboot.conf, same as we used at 27c3), -tftp boots from DHCP/TFTP (bootfile should be a kboot.conf), and -netrpc sets up a server that lets you read/write memory and issue hypercalls from a client on your PC, for experiments (see netrpc scripts in asbestos.git). See the AsbestOS readme for info on how to boot kernels with it (you need my ps3-linux.git patches). Git is at git.marcansoft.com.

You should run dbgcli on your PC on the same network as the PS3 to watch the debug output (even if you don’t set up the kernel/kboot.conf, if you get that it means it’s working). You can compile it from git, or here are two Linux binaries (64/32bit):

.http://marcansoft.com/transf/dbgcli
.http://marcansoft.com/transf/dbgcli32

Have fun