Progress on getting SageTV Placeshifter (Linux x86 "miniclient") working under Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) 6.1 PowerPC on the Sony Playstation(tm) 3 [PS3] Cell/Broadband Engine PPE platform. Attempt 1: Decided to use petitboot ( http://ozlabs.org/~jk/projects/petitboot/ ) given that it is more up-to-date (last modification Jan 2008) than others such as kboot (last mod Jan 2007) and yaboot (last mod Sep 2004). Plus, it's graphical in nature and is backward compatible with distributions (such as YDL). Direct download: http://ozlabs.org/~jk/projects/petitboot/downloads/ Specific version: /bin-0.2/otheros.bld Copied otheros.bld to a 32MB USB Flash disk (FAT32 formatted under Windows XP) under the directory structure E:\PS3\otheros\otheros.bld , removed and replaced the USB Flash disk into the PS3, and installed the petitboot boot-loader into the PS3's own Flash disk by using System -> System Settings -> Install OtherOS option. The PS3 correctly found the otheros.bld file under the aforementioned directory struction on the USB Flash disk and installed it. It asked me to reboot, so I obliged. petitboot came up, but of course since I have not installed Linux yet, the graphical boot menu is empty. Intelligently designed, there is a hot-key legend for standard actions at the bottom of the screen: 0=Select 1=720p 2=1080i 3=1080p DEL=GameOS I plugged in the USB BlueTooth(R) Dongle that goes with my Microsoft Wireless Entertainment 7000 Keyboard/Mouse (yah, plug away, it's an awesome kb) and it worked immediately (NOTE: it also works flawlessly in the PS3 GameOS, including the built-in track-pad and left/right mouse buttons on the keyboard). I pressed "Delete" (Backspace also works, according to the petitboot manual) to get back to the GameOS and it worked flawlessly (albeit, the first time around it took several seconds; subsequent launches between entering petitboot and returning to GameOS showed improvement with an average of about 2-3 seconds of blank screen. I chose Yellow Dog Linux for reasons already mentioned in this forum. I have a newer model 80GB PS3 (purchased in Dec 2008), and was rather happy to see that the folks at YDL are keeping up with the times. The latest ISO for YDL offered on their website shows a timestamp of Feb-16 2009 (essentially just a repack to fix a bug with the newer models not booting). Direct download: http://mirror.anl.gov/yellowdog/iso/ Specific version: yellowdog-6.1-ppc-DVD_20090201_NEW_PS3.iso NOTE: If you have an older PS3 you'll need the following Specific version: yellowdog-6.1-ppc-DVD_20081119.iso Burned the 3.7GB ISO file onto DVD-R @ 8x. Of interesting notice is that when the PS3 was under petitboot, I was unable to eject the game disc that was still in the system (Rock Band 2). No matter how long I held the eject button, it would not eject, meanwhile petitboot shows an empty graphical boot menu and a small legend on the bottom of the screen. After booting back into GameOS, I was immediately able to eject the disc. Now, with my YDL install DVD ready to go, I set out to install. Popping the disc in while still under GameOS produced "Data Disc" with a DVD icon in media lists. Then to switch over to petitboot to load YDL, we use the option System -> System Settings -> Default System -> OtherOS. As expected, petitboot read in kboot.conf on the DVD and listed all the boot labels graphically. Here are some of the ones that were available: install_1080p install_720p install_text Knowing that whatever I chose here would later be inherited by the installed distribution and yet despite knowing that going full-bore with 1080p may cause challenges with video performance, I still chose to charge head-long into YDL to see what it is capable of (I chose the install_1080p option). I did customize the installation. The default allocation (of the 10GB allocated via the hypervisor) was: 100MB on /boot 256MB on swap 8.7GB on / I changed this to the debatable but comfortable configuration below: 100MB on /boot 2.0GB on swap 7.7GB on / Here's the layout of the fully formatted and functional disk: Disk /dev/ps3da: 10.7 GB, 10737414144 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/ps3da1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux /dev/ps3da2 14 274 2096482+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/ps3da3 275 1305 8281507+ 83 Linux I won't go into detail about package customization (I *heavily* customized the packages installed, mainly disabling all unnecessary bloat-ware and enabling nearly all development tools, libraries, and headers). The install took between 30 and 60 minutes and rebooted the PS3 when done. First-boot walked me through setting up the distro. All VERY easy. It looks as though I have 215120k of usable memory (nice). Next step. Getting qEMU working. As qEMU does not provide precompiled binaries for Linux, we'll have to compile from source. Direct download: http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases-noredirect/qemu/ Specific version: qemu-0.10.1.tar.gz We hit a problem when trying to run "./configure" and get the following error: Missing KVM capability KVM_CAP_DESTROY_MEMORY_REGION_WORKS Looks like we'll need to track down and install libkvm OR simply disable this aspect of qemu. Thus far our first command (after un-packing the source) is now ./configure --disable-kvm NOTE: This will not hinder any performance and can safely be disabled. Now, despite the curious looking output (see below) the configure process was successfull and now we execute "make" (without quotes). Been compiling for almost an hour now, system is still usable and haveen't hit any errors yet.