This article describes some pitfalls I have encountered while installing Fedora 7 (PAL Mode, Kernel Problems, …) on my PS3 and their workarounds.

An excellent guide on how to install Fedora 7 on PS3 can be found at http://www.gnuradio.org/trac/wiki/PS3FC7Install.

However, if you have a standard PAL TV with no 60hz support, you won’t see much of what is happening. Trying to do the setup “blind” isn’t fun, believe me, I tried.

To force the PS3 intro 50hz PAL Mode on setup:

At the kboot: prompt, with your fedora 7 dvd inserted, type:

cd //mnt/root/ppc/ppc64 kexec -f --initrd=ramdisk.image.gz --command-line="video=ps3fb:mode:2214" vmlinuz

Yes, that’s two leading slashes before mnt. The command-line switch on kexec will force the PS3 to go in 576i 50hz fullscreen dithered mode, if that doesn’t work for you, try 38 instead of 2214, for non-fullscreen mode.

As for the kernel that comes with FC7, it is out of date, and even doesn’t know how to shutdown and reboot the PS3 properly. You can however compile a new kernel. Simply copying the 2.6.23-rc* Kernel on the Cell Add-On CD like described on the Install Guide mentioned above won’t do. It’ lacks of lvm support, which is default on Fedora 7.

Either, you can try to setup Fedora 7 without lvm, or you can follow this thread.

More to come. Stay tuned.

Update:

The recommended way of enabling 50hz support is setting video=576i instead of ps3fb:mode:2214 in the command line switch.

The Cell-Linux Add-On ISO has been updated to v1.5.

Mirror #1: ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/Sony-PS3/CELL-Linux-CL_20071023-ADDON.iso
Mirror #2: http://ftp.uk.linux.org/pub/linux/Sony-PS3/CELL-Linux-CL_20071023-ADDON.iso