xbox port

Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: xbox port
started by: greenfellow

Posted by greenfellow on Feb. 11 2005,09:41

Hello I and several members of the xbox-scene community have expressed interest in a lighter distribution for the xbox. As you may know the xbox runs on a mobile celeron 733, makes use of an nforce1 chipset and 64mb of shared ram. it would take little work to port! The current linux distributions are very bulky. KDE does not run well haha, we need a nice distro that doesn't hog all of our precious 64mb!

Damn small linux would be an excelent xbox distribution and would require very little work to port. I am a novice when it comes to linux, I know people who have used it for years who still dont know much about it. I do not posess the skills or knowledge required to do the work that is needed. This would be excelent exposure for DSL....

if anybody is interested head on over to www.xbox-scene.com's forums under the linux section there is a thread waiting for you.

Posted by daveh on Feb. 11 2005,10:08

There has already been much work done for the debian distribution over at xbox-linux.org and the cvs contains all the kernal patches and modified xf86 stuff so I beleive it would be simple for you guys to port dsl to the xbox.

Posted by Max on Feb. 11 2005,18:27

I guess on the face of it, it IS in keeping with the spirit of the distro..."no machine left behind"....

Previously, many DSL threads have discussed topics realted to what software to leave in, what to leave out based on the needs of folks with machines that were older and didn't have great amounts of resources. In my mind, this theme translated to providing a distro to people or groups who did not have the financial resources to necessarily buy the hardware that is being mass marketed at any given point in time (with a $500-$2,000 price tag) and had to rely on "hand me down" desktops and notebooks.

With some recent posts on slashdot about a goal of producing $100 PC's for low income governments, the XBox might actually fit into that category. You can pick up a used Xbox on eBay for $100 any day of the week, and a new one will put you back for only $50 more.

My only concern with DSL taking this direction would be longevity. M$ obviously isn't a supportor of Linux on their product and the XBox2 will probably debut sometime this year and will probably contain new methods to circumvent the community at large from porting Linux to it. So the number of machines a port could acutally be used on may be limited.

But...like the orginal poster said...it could be a great outlet for a great distro...just think of all the "obsolete" Xbox's sitting around when the XBox2 comes out (now if we could just get those fonts bigger for TV output...

)

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Feb. 11 2005,19:19

Quote (greenfellow @ Feb. 11 2005,03:41)

it would take little work to port! .

Quote

I am a novice when it comes to linux, I know people who have used it for years who still dont know much about it.

The level of assumption... It boggles the mind!

Any port will take a substantial amout of work, perhaps the Xbox port would take less, but probably not.

And the fact that Robert does not have an Xbox doesn't help either (not sure about John, but I don't think he does either).

I do have an Xbox.

But am I willing to risk making it unusuable to port DSL to it?

No.

Besides, from what I've read, Xboxes don't like booting from a CD, they have to have Linux installed on the hdd, and DSL is a live-cd distro.

-J.P.

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 11 2005,23:41

It is possible for someone to port DSL over to an xbox, but this should not be done by the DSL team. They are busy enough as it is.

Basically, the core of DSL is a stripped down KNOPPIX, so if anyone has Knoppix working with the xbox maybe you can borrow some of their learnings.

FYI, in general the xbox does not make for a very good personal computer. It's a nice game machine or media player but you can get a cheap new PC or a higher quality used PC with more power for much less money.

Although the coolness factor for an XBOX with DSL on it would be high

Posted by DonttPanic on Feb. 12 2005,02:41

Quote (cbagger01 @ Feb. 11 2005,18:41)

Although the coolness factor for an XBOX with DSL on it would be high

How about just an XBOX case with a mini-ITX board inside? So you have a "cool" case and a decent computer.

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Feb. 12 2005,03:11

Quote

How about just an XBOX case with a mini-ITX board inside? So you have a "cool" case and a decent computer.

Why does that make me want a Mac Mini in an Xbox case for some reason...

Posted by Nebetsu on Feb. 12 2005,07:36

Quote (DonttPanic @ Feb. 11 2005,21:41)

Quote (cbagger01 @ Feb. 11 2005,18:41)

Although the coolness factor for an XBOX with DSL on it would be high

How about just an XBOX case with a mini-ITX board inside? So you have a "cool" case and a decent computer.

While you're at it, why dont you put a Mini-ITX in a Nintendo? It'll fit and it's been done before.

Posted by greenfellow on Feb. 13 2005,11:27

The xbox can boot from cd's just fine, the gentoox installer fits on a cd and runs just fine. An xbox port WOULD be easier than say recompiling everything to run on another platform remember this is x86 we're talking about with standard pc componants. As for testing there are thousands of people on the xbox-scene forum that would gladly offer up their boxes for the cause. we are tired of waiting 30 seconds for fire fox to load and crash! The source code for the bootloader is freely availible - that would be the only hard part and it's already taken care offfff. as for microsofts xbox2 it is to be backwards compatible with old xbox games meaning it will have to be x86 as well OR fugin fast and emulating an x86... honestly which is more likely? They will choose the cheapest componants to lower production price and increase profits and that means using pc componants again. as for more methods of keeping us from hacking our boxes I say bring it on. We'll have a new bios written for it within a month of it's release and modchips in production the next month. Linux will run on it as well. mark my words

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 14 2005,01:12

As I previously said,

at it's core, DSL is a stripped down KNOPPIX livecd. KNOPPIX is based on Debian.

There already is a Xebian project that brings Debian Linux to the XBOX.

So my first advice is to try installing Xebian and then stripping down the package list so that it looks like the DSL package list (apt-get remove command).

Here is the DSL package list. It is a little bit out of date and it does not list any non-Debian programs that are part of DSL:

< http://damnsmalllinux.org/packages.html >

The key to a successful Linux on an XBOX is RAM usage. This is achieved by removing all of the other crap that autoloads into memory for standard linux distributions. It is also achieved by using the Fluxbox window manager instead of bloatware like KDE or GNOME. Finally, a big assist goes to the TinyX/Kdrive/Freedesktop.org Xserver that saves memory over a full-blown XFree86 install.

You will have difficulty using these servers because 1.6 rev XBOXes use a different video interface and I doubt that they will do VESA compliant video.

You may be able to get it to work with a custom XEBIAN kernel that includes an XBOX framebuffer and then use the TinyX "Xfbdev" server.

It is not an impossible task, but it can be done and it is probably easier to tweak XEBIAN than it is to do a full port over of DSL.

Good Luck.

Posted by DakotaC on Feb. 20 2005,01:01

Might be sorta related, I am planning on using the Audio Exploit to install EvoX, and EvoX can run Linux, right? Maybe I can help out with the cause...

(Heh heh, I am making a hacked X-BOX memory card to use the Audio Exploit... with USB and ActionReplay. :laugh:

)

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 20 2005,02:58

EvoX can be used to boot linux.

My advice is to use the UDE instead of the audio exploit.

It works with a memory card and the ActionReplay software.

See below link:

< http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=227528 >

Before trying to mod your xbox, always READ THOROUGHLY through the documentation and message threads.

Otherwise you may do the wrong thing and make recovery very difficult.

The nice thing about the UDE1/UDE2 installer is that it makes the installation relatively simple and does a proper backup of your original C:\ drive and it also installs an emergency backup linux that you can use to rescue your system in case you mess it up somehow.

Even so, you should read the UDE thread and docs before doing the mod.

Posted by skellum on Mar. 10 2005,21:38

the only thing cooler would be a DSL port to xbox that allowed you to use the xbox as a carpc with gps and mp3 functionality from the start.

:-)

Posted by friedgold on Mar. 13 2005,17:26

Just a heads up to let people know that I've remastered DSL with an Xbox-linux kernel. I've made my remaster available at:

< http://x-dsl.org >

Apart from using a new kernel and including a backup.tar.gz with the settings required to boot into X Windows on the Xbox, there have been no changes to the KNOPPIX image so it should behave like pc version. Included is a virtual keyboard extension xvkbd.tar.gz for obvious reasons.

At the moment installation involves copying some files over to the Xbox harddisk (ie frugal install). But in the future I hope to support over boot methods (boot from cd etc). It would be great if any DSL expert who happen to have a modded Xbox could take a look and give their opinion.

There is also a thread at the < Xbox-scene forums > with some more info.

PS To the DSL devs:
I hope its OK making this remaster available like this. I make it clear that its all based on Damn Small Linux and give full credit for the great job you guys have done on the distribution. If you have any problems / want any notices changing let me know

edit: changed url

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 14 2005,06:05

Excellent Job!

I didn't think that it was possible to run DSL on an XBOX without recompiling all of the applications but I guess I was wrong.

I have tried it out on my XBOX and it works fine.

Here are some observations / advice:

1) Move your virtual keyboard over to the lower left corner. Fluxbox places a "Tab" on the left-hand side of every application window, so if some of the keyboard window is touching the left edge of the screen, it is possible to bring up the keyboard easily.

2) Fonts are difficult to read. A different Fluxbox font arrangement can help. Also, it is easier to read fonts in Firefox by choosing View -> Increase text size from the menu.

3) If Firefox is too slow for you, try the opera.uci extension. You will need to add /home/dsl/.opera to your filetool.lst and you will need to reorganize your toolbars to cut down on wasted space, but it works fine. You can also make it more readible by choosing View -> Zoom -> 150%

4) If you max out your RAM usage, your XBOX will crash. It is a good idea to port the "Make DOS swapfile" script into a "Make FATX swapfile" script and create a 128MB swap file on your E:\ drive.

5) Stereo audio works fine but the volume control is unresponsive, so use your television volume control instead.

6) Read the associated "info" information files that are associated with each myDSL extension before trying to install.
Your extension files are download to your /tmp folder and can be copied over to the root of E:\ drive by using Emelfm as superuser.

7) You can reduce memory usage by not autoloading some of the "slit" apps like wmix, wmnet and mount.app for example

8) Emelfm is not positioned correctly when it is lanuched. Midnight Commander works, though.

9) Right-click on the Fluxbox taskbar and choose "Always on top". This is required because you cannot use ALT-TAB if you don't have a physical keyboard.

Once again, great job! DSL is actually usable on an XBOX, unlike some other XBOX linux distros.

Posted by friedgold on Mar. 14 2005,17:08

Thanks for you suggestions cbagger01, I'm gonna use a few of your suggested configuration changes for the next version.

Quote

I didn't think that it was possible to run DSL on an XBOX without recompiling all of the applications but I guess I was wrong.

It needed remarkably few changes to get it running on the Xbox. The only changes I made to the actual KNOPPIX compressed file were to take out the modules and System.map file for the 2.4.26 kernel and replace them with the ones for the 2.4.29-xbox kernel I compiled. All the other changes are either included in the minirt.gz file or in the backup.tar.gz file

Posted by clacker on Mar. 14 2005,18:03

friedgold, I'm amazed. This looks so cool but I'm hesitant to try it on my own xbox. Does it leave anything on the xbox hard drive or void any xboxLive features? Do I need a mod chip? What kind of media do I need to burn this onto? CD, DVD?

Posted by friedgold on Mar. 14 2005,18:49

Quote

At the moment this version runs just like a frugal or poor mans install on the pc (the compressed image is stored on the xbox hardisk and settings can be backed up to Backup.tar.gz. It should be pretty easy to get it running from the a cd dvd in future, but as this is only the initial version I haven't got round to this.

The Xbox will need to be modded in some form otherwise it will refuse to run unsigned code. It is possible to mod your Xbox without installing a modchip or opening your Xbox (called softmodding). If you try and go online to Xbox live while your Xbox is modded you will be banned (although it is possible to get modchips that can be turned on and off, allowing you to go on live with the modchip off.

If you want more info I suggest you try looking < here >

Posted by AwPhuch on Mar. 16 2005,02:02

I must say that those developers at the XBOX-Scene site are abosolute geniuses...

Outfreekingstanding work!

Another step up for DSL and the community!

excellent job guys...keep it up!!!!

Wonder if Codega.DSL would work, then imagine being able to play PC games on DSL on a XBOX...hehe!

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by libretto on Mar. 24 2005,23:54

In some ways I wish I hadn't got my mini-itx system now, it would have been cheaped to use an xbox, oh well! :;):

Maybe next time....

Posted by friedgold on Mar. 28 2005,17:08

A new version of the xbox port is now available from < http://x-dsl.org > if anyone's interested. Should now be able to create a swap file on the Xbox harddisk to make up for the Xbox's lack of memory (only 64mb).