PS3 gets its front door kicked in!

General Discussions
#1

As most of you have probably heard, the PS3’s root key has been cracked. This means that any code can be signed and run on the PS3 now and its probably unfixable.

It should be a pretty cool time for Homebrew software on the console now. Wonder if it’ll be legal to sign and sell games for it? Also be cool if the JVM could be made to run on it, there are already a few emulators that run on the PS3 using the built in BluRay JVM so not impossible.

Looking forward to see where this might go, although pretty bad news for Sony and PS3 developers.

#2

technically - openjdk could be ported. It would be a shitload of work - but possible :slight_smile:

#3

It might, uhh, already have been done. But iced.

Cas :slight_smile:

#4

You still NDA’d?

#5

Probably.

Cas :slight_smile:

#6

Could XMLVM be useful to port Java games on PS3?

#7

This will be a boom for the adult gaming industry.

#8

is it still possible to get linux on the ps3? then all you would have to do is install openjdk or Oracle java.

#9

its still early days for this, the first firmware was just released. So likely linux support will be available soon.

However running something like OpenJDK/JDK on it isn’t as straightforward as just compiling it for the arch, it will likely require some platform specific code. Something like project zero might help here though. Alternatively GCC (GCJ) might be a good way to go too.

#10

getting a vm running - with shark/zero should be “easy”. The problem is the graphical stuff like awt and swing.

#11

Ideally it would be nice to implement Java Applets in a PS3 based browser and also have support for Webstart. However Sony could blacklist such an App in a firmware update, so there could end up being an arms race.

Is the private key implemented in hardware or firmware? If firmware, then Sony could add an additional new private key, while whitelisting the current backcatalogue allowing specified programs to run with the old key. Not sure whether that’s doable, but maybe they could make things more difficult, although closing the door entirely might be difficult.

Ok, so I buy a second PS3. I assume there is a PC based cross-compiler out there somewhere for the cell processor, so I could hack up a boot loader. To get linux on board, I’d need to write a bunch of low level drivers for hardware for which I haven’t any documentation, which feels too hard, although I guess it will be done by better informed people. Maybe the original sony linux distro could be made to work again?

Edit: Ok - There are Linux distros out there, but I assume the Sony hypervisor software is required to get them to run

#12

The native windowing system of LWJGL and NEWT (JOGL) does not need AWT, do they?

[quote=“Alan_W,post:11,topic:36140”]
I can tell you that Sony cannot change this key otherwise existing games won’t work.

#13

But they can make list of all so far used individual keys and put them into a whitelist. But I haven’t read the details if there are also other reasons preventing change of root key.

#14

problem with using a whitelist and switching to a new root key is there’s nothing stopping the hackers using the same technique to crack the new root key, not to forget the problems with actually verifying that whitelisted content hasn’t been modified. Once the custom firmware cycle has begun its basically a losing battle against the hackers.

#15

2 questions. why did sony disable the “run other OS” feature anyways? and would it be possible to use this firmware to re-enable it. maybe find a non-updated ps3 and get the bootloader off of that,sign it, and use it?

#16

No, but then you’d be limited to only using LWJGL/JOGAMP - and they’d have to rewrite their input and windowing backend as well as re-implement the “GL” parts to match psgl.

#17

OtherOS was disabled from slim because it made their support for it easier to handle. It was actively removed from the Fat models due to Geohotz linux based hacks.

You can easily re-enable it, however it would require you to either add the feature to a newer version of the firmware or downgrade your PS3 - which means you can’t run newer games.

Anyhow, they have linux running as GameOS now - so mission accomplished :slight_smile:

#18

I looked at the AsbestOS boot loader, which uses exploit code to load a bootloader under gameOS. That loader then shuts down gameOS and loads linux over the top. The interesting bit is that you get access to the 3D hardware, although noone seems to know how it works yet.

I imagine that having the root key should mean that the loader could be modified to load as a normal game, since it can now be signed. Would that make it possible to make a linux boot CD, rather than using a microcontroller USB device and then doing a network boot of linux. If so, one could then write games under linux and then have them auto-start after kernel boot, which would essentially allow you to create your own game discs. And with full access to all 7 RSX when someone figures out how the 3D stuff works. A LWJGL based solution (full screen) would be fine, so we could dump all the AWT stuff and just get the OGL related stuff going. Main hitch at the moment appears to be the lack of information publicly available on the 7th RSX.

Or I could be completely wrong ;D

#19

I don’t understand… On one hand, LWJGL and JOGL 2.0 beta already support OpenGL ES and PSGL is very close to OpenGL ES as far as I know. On the other hand, JInput has an AWT plug-in but it can work without it. Which part of the windowing backend would have to be modified? There are already some RSX drivers :smiley:

#20

LWJGL doesn’t use JInput for mouse/keyboard, and it uses it’s own native code for window management, I’m guessing that would need some work, JInput would probably need work too, I was asked to look at this some time ago when the JDK for the PS3 wasn’t being worked on :persecutioncomplex:

Endolf