Welcome to my website of Linux on PSP. This website is dedicated to a small project I did recently for fun, in which I ported a uClinux of version 2.6 on to PSP. You will find some useful information and interesting stuff here if you are also fascinated by the potential of developing software on PSP as well as other embedded systems.
 
Enjoy! -- Jackson Mo

News

 
 
Features
 
A) uClinux kernel 2.6.22-uc1. There have been substantial improvements from kernel 2.4 to 2.6 (one of which is the preemptible kernel that performs low latency operations). However, MIPS machines with no mmu (like Allegrex) are not yet official supported by the latest uClinux distribution. Therefore the kernel needs some serious patch up before it can be loaded on PSP.
 
B) A configurable loader. The loader's behavior is controllable through a config file, similar to vivi or uboot. However, it only runs on the 1.5 kernel/firmware thus users may experience problems with firmware 3.71 m33 or higher without applying the 1.5 kernel patch (3.71 m33-2).
 
C) Busybox 1.7 armed with loads of utilities running on linux. Again, the original version needs to be patched up before it can run on PSP.
 
D) A serial driver controlling UART3 (the remote control port on fat PSP) allowing you to open a SIO console on the PSP or to use any terminal program on your PC to act as an emulate keyboard when you are using virtual terminal. Up to 6 virtual terminals are available on PSP. Use +/- buttons to switch between terminals.
 
E) A simple Framebuffer driver enabling virtual terminals to be displayed on PSP's LCD screen.
 
F) A new block device driver giving you accessibility to the Memory Stick (Cool!). By default, disk ms0 will be mounted to /ms0 after system startup, and there could be ms1 or more had you Memory Stick been divided into multiple partitions.
 
G) A joypad driver allowing linux applications to acquire input from PSP buttons.
 
H) An On-Screen Keyboard facilitating fast input in the linux environment, and also serving as an example of how to use the joypad driver.
 
I) A patched mips toolchain capable of building both the uClinux kernel and other applications running on PSP.
 
 
Installation
 
Download the latest pre-compiled package here. Extract the package and copy the entire folder of uClinux/ folder to PSP/GAME and run the loader from XMB.
 
Though unsatisfactory but it seems true that the old loader that runs on 150 firmware does deliver more stable performance than the new slim-compatible loader. Thus, if the new loader doesn't work for your PSP and you still have the 150 add-ons, try the old one by replacing the EBOOT.PBP with the on in FW150/, and moving the whole uClinux/ folder to PSP/GAME150 as well.
 
Build the Toolchain
 
Unlike the previous one, a new MIPS(el) toolchain with the gcc 4.2.1 and uClibc 0.9.29 is now in place capable of building both the kernel and other apps. To construct or customize your own toolchain, recommend you to use buildroot (20071216 or any version close to it) available at http://buildroot.uclibc.org/. More details can be found in the following section:
 

 
 
Build PSPBoot
 
PSPBoot (latest version 0.22 now supporting 2.0+ firmware and slim PSP) is PBP program just like other PSP homebrews. To compile it, you need to install the PSPSDK which is available at http://ps2dev.org/. Download the source here, unpack it and run the following command under the directory you extract the package to:

make INSTALL_DIR="your_desired_location" install

 
To build the version that runs in 150 firmware, use the following command instead:

make INSTALL_DIR="your_desired_location" FW150=1 install

 
 
Build the Kernel
 
With the new toolchain, build the kernel is easy. Just unpack the tarball of the kernel source of version 2.6.22-uc1 (or versions close to it) and apply this new patch, then run the following commands to start the build:
 

make ARCH=mips menuconfig (or simply copy my config file to overwrite the .config file of the kernel)

make ARCH=mips CROSS_COMPILE=mipsel-linux- vmlinux.bin

 
And then compress the image with gzip and modify the bootload script accordingly.
 
NOTE: Since the new toolchain has changed some code related to argument passing to conform to the standard MIPS ABI, the kernel/executable built by this new toolchain is not binary compatible with the executable/kernel built by the old toolchain.
 
 
Build Busybox
 
Unpack the tarball of busybox which is available at http://busybox.net/, and apply this new patch before running the following command:
 

make CROSS_COMPILE=mipsel-linux- LDFLAGS="-static -Wl,-elf2flt" CFLAGS="-fno-jump-tables" menuconfig (or simply copy my config file to overwrite the .config file of busybox)

make CROSS_COMPILE=mipsel-linux- LDFLAGS="-static -Wl,-elf2flt" CFLAGS="-fno-jump-tables" install

 
After that, all the content will be installed in the $YOUR_BUSYBOX_DIR/_install folder. To embed busybox inside the kernel as an initramfs for system init (which is not the only way of booting the kernel as some may favor constructing the rootfs on other storage, like ms0), you may need to pack the _install folder into a cpio package and specify its location during kernel compilation. If you are not familiar with this, google "initramfs" for more technical details.
 
 
Build Your Own Application
 
With the new toolchain installed, building your own application to run on PSP is almost as easy as building one for your desktop pc, except that there are a few details you need to pay attention to. Here is an example of build a hello world program:
 

mipsel-linux-gcc -static -Wl,-elf2flt -fno-jump-tables hello.c -o hello

Here, -static is needed because no share library is supported in nommu systems. -Wl,-elf2flt tells the linker to convert the ELF image into a FLAT executable at the final phase of linking. And -fno-jump-tables is essential too as it tells gcc not to generate relocation entries of GPREL32 frequently used in jump tables. Others are just regular stuff.
 
 
Download
 
Buildroot patch 0.22 to create the unified toolchain: buildroot_patches-0.22.tar.bz2
 
uClinux on PSP-0.22 pre-built: uclinux_on_psp-0.22.zip
Prebuilt unified toolchain for uClinux on PSP: toolchain-uclinux_on_psp-0.22.tar.bz2
 
Kernel-0.22 config file: kernel-0.22.config.gz
Kernel-0.22 patch: kernel-0.22.patch.gz
 
Kernel-0.20 pre-built: uClinux.zip
Kernel config file: kernel.config.gz
Kernel-0.21 patch: kernel-0.21.patch.gz
 
Busybox-0.22 config file: busybox-0.22.config.gz
Busybox-0.21 config file: busybox.config.gz
Busybox-0.21 patch: busybox-0.21.patch.gz
 
PSPBoot-0.22 source: pspboot-0.22.tar.bz2
PSPBoot-0.22 pre-built: pspboot-0.22-prebuilt.zip (obsolete)
 
PSP OSK2.2 source: psposk2.2.tar.bz2
PSP OSK2.1 source: psposk2.1.tar.bz2
 
PSP Mouse Daemon 0.1 source: pspmd-0.1.tar.bz2
 
The old mips-toolchain pre-built: toolchain-mips.tar.bz2
The old mips-toolchain patch: toolchain-mips.patch.gz
 
Other Downloads:
(Many thanks to danzel again for the porting)
danzel's port of PSPBoot pre-built: http://localhost.geek.nz/psplinux/ucboot340.tar.bz2
danzel's port of PSPBoot source: http://localhost.geek.nz/psplinux/ucboot340_src.tar.bz2
 
 
 
Links
 
http://uclibc.org/
http://ps2dev.org/
http://www.uclinux.org/
http://www.psp-linux.org/
http://www.hitmen-console.org/
...