Intrepid Release Notes For Ubuntu On PS3

These release notes document PS3 specific known issues for the Intrepid 8.10 release of Ubuntu. For the general release notes see:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810∞

Installation

Only the 'alternate' installation disk will be available for installing Intrepid. The graphical 'desktop' flavour is broken and there was insufficient time to fix it before release.

Instructions on how to install Ubuntu on the PS3 are available here:

http://psubuntu.com/wiki/InstallationInstructions/∞

Installer Issues

Users should be aware of two issues with the alternate disk which, although look bad, do not prevent successful installation:

After the boot prompt you may see the following error message repeated in the console

end_request: I/O error, dev sr0, sector 1303088

Installation will proceed successfully after a few seconds.

Once you get to the "Selecting and installing software" section, be aware it may, depending on your installation method, appear to hang at 6% for about 25 minutes. This is nothing to be concerned about. In the background it is loading all the packages for the entire Ubuntu distribution onto the hard-drive ready to begin installing. Unfortunately there are no progress bar updates during this process.

Upgrading

The graphical boot splash (usplash) is disabled for the PS3 as it mysteriously stopped working shortly before the Intrepid Release Candidate milestone and now hangs the system. See bug #285218∞.

PS3 users upgrading from Hardy MUST edit their /etc/kboot.conf and change all occurrences of the "splash" boot parameter to "nosplash", otherwise it will be much more difficult (but not impossible) getting it to boot post upgrade. Users doing a fresh install will not need to change anything.

Other Known Issues

The live list of PS3 "known issues" is maintained on our project bug tracker here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-ps3-port/+bugs∞

Below are the major issues noted in the final release.

Returning to the Playstation 3

To get back to the Sony Playstation 3 XMB operating system from the boot prompt users need to type "game" and press the Return key. If this is for some reason not possible, carrying out a hard-reset (see PS3 instruction manual) will make it boot to the XMB next time it is switched on.

Intermittent Shutdown Hang

Users may occasionally see an intermittent shutdown hang with a message like "IRQ 50: nobody cared". according to the custom papers∞. The problem has been reported upstream. Press and hold the PS3 power button until you hear 2 beeps to force power-off. The system will boot normally on the next run. See bug #220370∞.

Wireless Issues

NetworkManager does not currently list available wireless networks. However it is possible to connect to a wireless network with a known SSID using the 'connect to hidden wireless network' option. See bug #289977∞.

Also, NetworkManager fails to connect to WPA/WPA2 wireless networks. However connecting to WEP encrypted networks works successfully. See bug #289982∞.

Kernel Version

The PS3 uses the community supported linux-ports kernel sources which are maintained separately to the official Ubuntu kernel sources for i386 and amd64. Although the official kernel is based on 2.6.27 the ports sources remained on 2.6.25 for this release. Consequently features such as Wake-On-Lan support, which was added in 2.6.26, are not available.

Also, "cubic" TCP congestion control isn't enabled for PowerPC and PS3. The ports kernels weren't updated when bug 278801∞ was fixed. This option should provide a little improvement in network performance, particularly for wireless. Hopefully this will be fixed in a post-release update.

In Jaunty we hope to keep the ports kernels closely synchronised with the official version.

Sixaxis

The Sixaxis controller is not supported in any useful way this time around.

Fixing Black Borders/Overscan

Depending on what TV/monitor you are using with your PS3, you may find the full-screen version of the video mode you need to use causes your picture to exceed the bounds of the monitor (overscan), and if you do not use full-screen you have large black borders around the picture.

A solution to this problem has been documented on the forums here:

http://psubuntu.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=225∞

Development

In previous releases the Cell SDK was packaged to support development of software using the advanced multi-processing features of the Cell Broadband Engine processor. These packages should now be considered deprecated in favour of the default gcc and binutils packages for PPU development and gcc-spu and binutils-spu to create binaries for the SPUs.

GCC 4.3, which is the default compiler for Intrepid, now officially includes the patches and improvements from the Cell SDK branch, so it is no longer necessary to maintain the separate Cell SDK sources.

Reporting Bugs

The Ubuntu PS3 Project is a community supported effort and has it's own project and bug tracking pages on Launchpad. Bugs found in Ubuntu on PS3 should be reported as normal for the official release in the "ubuntu" project. However if you feel an issue is PS3 specific or should be actioned by the PS3 team please select the "Also affects project" option and specify "ubuntu-ps3-port" so the bug is visible to the PS3 port maintainers.

Report Ubuntu bugs here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu∞

Please check for or report PS3 specific issues here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-ps3-port∞