How to update my PS3 Gentoo installation with a new Stage 4?

zetsurin · n00b Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 4

Hi all,

Just a quick question regarding how to update Gentoo. I have noticed that more optimised PS3 Stage 4 tarballs are available to be installed and I am wondering how I would be able to use them to upgrade my current setup (which is basically my media center running freevo). Are the stage 4 tarballs just all the system files minus the etc directory? Is that is the case can I just extract over the top of my existing system (perhaps I need to do it from the livecd?). I am wondering if when I update I would need to re-compile my existing installed applications?

Thanks!

Truin · n00b Joined: 05 Jul 2006 Posts: 54

Updating your Gentoo system should be as easy as running "emerge -av --update --deep --newuse world", examining the output in case you need to make any USE flag changes, and then letting it run. Follow that up with an "etc-update" or "dispatch-conf", depending on your preference, followed by an "env-update" and you should be all updated.

The "stage" builds are primarily just for initial installation. After your box is up and running, all updates are done through emerge and the portage system. There's a whole section in the Gentoo Handbook that covers working with portage, USE flags, etc.

The Gentoo Upgrade Guide, which can be found at http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-upgrading.xml says "Ideally, you install once and never bother with releases: just follow the instructions in A Portage Introduction in the Gentoo Handbook that explain how to keep your system up to date."

zetsurin · n00b Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 4

Great! Thanks very much with your post, it was very informative!

Cheers,
Zet

rangerpb · Retired Dev Joined: 19 Jan 2005 Posts: 147

Also note that the stages include some new PS3 related things as well which you cannot get through syning and emerge --update. The stages contains a new 1) ps3pfutils package and a 2) new kernel which supports wireless. You'll need to cell overlay to get them. Use layman to check out or update the cell overlay to your ps3. Then -u the ps3pfutils application. For the kernel, there is a ps3-sources ebuild (updated) that includes patches for wireless and a sample kernel config is in the files dir on the overlay.

Good luck
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zetsurin · n00b Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 4

Curiosity got the better of me so I backed up the whole of my \dev\sda using dd and then tried out ubuntu. It was very slick (well no surprise I have run it before on my desktop) but simply booting into ubuntu left the PS3 with roughly 20MB of free RAM! So I went back to restore my backup and boom something went wrong. I wasn't particularly bothered as it gave me more of a shortcut to the new wifi enabled kernel

I have all that up and running, and this time I decided to opt for a 64-bit userland (I chose the 32-bit stage 4 last time). I am having some issues rebuilding a couple of things I was able to build last time, in particular freevo and svgalib. I set the keywords up to get svgalib compiling but it fails a fair way in as it can't determine my kernel, I guess I need to grab the kernel sources. Also, with freevo I haven't bothered with it as it doesn't appear that there is an emerge available for the 1.7 version. I'm not sure what I installed last time but it didn't complain that it was blocked. I suspect I might have neglected to put the ~ppc keyword in as I have done this time though, so things are better this way anyway, provided I can work out how to go about building it from source without portage.

I have a binhost set but and I noticed it has a lot more 32bit builds compared to 64bit builds, did I make a bad move going for the 64-bit userland??

By the way running fluxbox under gentoo gives me around 120MB free RAM, much nicer than ubuntu out of the box (of course i could try to trim the fat but i would rather not have it to begin with).

Wow, lots of learning anyway. I've used FreeBSD a fair bit in the past so no major shock, this is the way things should work especially on a system with limited memory resources like the PS3.

Cheers,
Zet

rangerpb · Retired Dev Joined: 19 Jan 2005 Posts: 147

In general, the 32ul is a little better for desktop applications and 64ul for server/high-performance computing. You are right that the 32ul has more applications marked as stable but in general most stuff works for 64ul. There are some known issues with emulators and the like.

Also the 32ul will uses less memory (in general), which may be important on your 256MB PS3.

Good luck and join us on irc #gentoo-ppc64
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