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genuine curiosity: why would you need an SSH server on a gaming console?
by kmlx 4y ago
genuine curiosity: why would you need an SSH server on a gaming console?
- tenebrisalietum 4y agoIf it can run an SSH server, it doesn't just have to be a gaming console.
- roblabla 4y agoModding comes to mind. By having an ssh connection, you can potentially do remote debugging of a mod, among other fun stuff.
- LeoNatan25 4y agoThe better question is why not. As for why, here is one example: backing up and restoring saves and other game data.
- deelowe 4y agoThe deck has a suite of apps that will install and configure whatever emulator you'd like. Then, you simply scp over roms and it'll also automatically add the relevant game entries to the steam library. That's why...
- jasonlotito 4y agoIt's not a gaming console. It's a portable PC. That's the design philosophy behind Steam Deck. It's even marketed that way: "All-in-one portable PC gaming" https://www.steamdeck.com/en/ https://www.steamdeck.com/en/ There is a great interview with one of the designers of the Steam Deck here that covers this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdX11KOP2tg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdX11KOP2tg Seems pedantic, but I think it's important to the discussion in the way we think about the Steam Deck.
- capitainenemo 4y agoI'm not sure why you're being down voted because that was exactly what drew me to the Deck. I use their client, I buy their games, but I also have a work environment setup on the desktop side, and I can still play the games I bought off GOG. I also bought a pass-through power USB3 hub off of Anker's store on Newegg to use as a dock that fits nicely in the case.
- jrm4 4y agoSure, but also, I'd love to get regular people buying these things, which is why I think "gaming console" is important. Let's see if we can get back to good computing and gaming, where you give up a little convenience for a ton of power and possibility.
- jasonlotito 4y agoI'm sorry, but this doesn't make sense within the context of "why do you need an SSH server" on a computer? > Let's see if we can get back to good computing and gaming, where you give up a little convenience for a ton of power and possibility. This doesn't make any sense to me. Please explain.
- jrm4 4y agoI'm very old. So good gaming/computing means devices that are very open by default. "SSH server" can kind of be shorthand for "I can get in the guts of the thing and do whatever I want to it"
- Narishma 4y agoConsoles have never been open by default.
- capitainenemo 4y agoYup, thus the PS5 jailbreak being a cool thing. However, the steam deck is open by default, which is a much bigger deal in the console world and far more exciting IMO.
- furyofantares 4y agoWell the other day my 6yo daughter was playing on the Deck and I SSH'd in from my phone, installed espeak, and started making a voice of god say whatever I wanted as she played.
- bombcar 4y agoReminds me of remotely connecting to my friend's Mac and using 'say' to say things. And then eject the CD-ROM drive.
- techdragon 4y agoI remember working out how to do this over the network with some combination of the utilities on the windows install when I was a student at school, I forget which windows exactly given it could have been any of the outdated 9x sort or even 2k at high school… Anyway the fun thing was combining it with the (surprisingly not locked down) netsend command, so my little remote execution script would pop the cd drive tray open, and then they would get an “alert” from netsend saying “Feed Me!!!” I wasn’t the sort of kid that pulled a prank like that on a teacher or the whole class, but it did get some laughs with the small circle of fellow computer nerds that would spend lunch or afternoons in the library using the computers to fool around learning Visual Basic, or play 90s online games, or for the few that new me… play proper LAN games… since I was the gatekeeper of by way of my perpetual habit of trying to lift the hood and work out how everything was setup, so I found all the fun network admin failures like group policy mistakes that left the empty second hard drive on a batch of computers as public read/write for anyone with local admin permissions on any computer on the network, or setting a local machine folder I had sufficient permissions to, to be network accessible if you had the machine IP, or telling them which computers I had left the burned cd copies of the games in (which were fully portable!, bless the pre-network connected DRM days) Ahh youthful fun!
- CoastalCoder 4y ago> And then eject the CD-ROM drive. The whole drive??? Man, you guys played hardball.
- lostgame 4y ago
- dfxm12 4y agoIf the console is properly designed, it's more of a want than a need. Even if the focus here is more on startups, this website is called hacker news after all.
- crote 4y agoBecause you can. By not forbidding things like this, it can become more than just a gaming console. For example, you might end up buying one second-hand with a broken screen and using it as a home server - it even comes with its own UPS battery!
- nonrandomstring 4y ago> it can become more than just a gaming console First thing I thought reading this headline... "That's a few thousand metric tons of e-waste that won't be going into a landfill soon". I've little interest in gaming or PS5 hardware TBH. But the entire conceit of locked-down appliances that could be reused as general purpose devices, but are deliberately hobbled, is abhorrent to me. IN 2022, with what we know about climate change, pollution and e-waste, locking devices is simply spiteful and must be made illegal. Well done to the team that cracked PS5
- chuckSu 4y ago
- rosnd 4y ago>First thing I thought reading this headline... "That's a few thousand metric tons of e-waste that won't be going into a landfill soon". This is delusional. In the real world a jailbreak won't meaningfully extend a consoles lifetime. >But the entire conceit of locked-down appliances that could be reused as general purpose devices, but are deliberately hobbled, is abhorrent to me. People aren't going to take PS5s and reuse them as general purpose devices at any meaningful scale.
- Fargren 4y agoMaybe not in wealthy countries. In Argentina hacked PS2s are still pretty commonly used, and repair shops service them (OK, maybe not anymore? I left six years ago). Jail-breaking absolutely extends the lifetime of consoles.
- yamazakiwi 4y ago
- Bluecobra 4y agoAllowing SSH/OS access can allow fun and interesting things other than gaming. Back when you were allowed to run Linux on a PlayStation 3, you could potentially wire up bunch of these for some serious computing power (at the time). https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomput...
- rowanG077 4y agoI can think of many cases where you would want to do that. Remotely start download of a game, pull save files of it, Add a movie or series to watch, turn off remotely in case you forget and many others.
- filoleg 4y agoNot disagreeing with the overall premise that having SSH on PS5 is pretty cool, but a lot of those things you mentioned are available without SSH on it already. You can kick off download of a game through the official app. Which will also notify you when the game is ready to play and then when it is fully downloaded. You can also see which games you have installed already and free up space by deleting some of them. And the last thing, you can also use the app to download the recent screenshots and video clips you took of your gameplay on the console. All of this works from anywhere, as long as both your phone and the console have access to internet (they dont need to be on the same network though).
- rowanG077 4y agoAn app is very different from ssh. I can ssh from my laptop. From my friends laptop. Until recently I didn't even own a smartphone. Apps are a terrible way to encapsulate this in.
- filoleg 4y agoIt isn't app-only. You can also login into PSN in your web browser and trigger game downloads from there too. Iirc Steam allows it too, so you can trigger the download on the go from any web browser, and it starts downloading on your machine at home.
- opan 4y agoAllows easy file access with sftp and sshfs, can be used to kill a misbehaving program from your phone or PC if you're stuck on a black screen, can be used to monitor resource usage from another machine.
- omni 4y agoThis is very handy as someone who plays randomizer ROMs, I have a script that can generate a bunch of new Super Metroid runs for me and automatically upload them. Prior to the Deck, this process involved manually fiddling with SD cards across devices.
- jrm4 4y agoLiterally YESTERDAY used ssh to pop my favorite emulated games onto my Steam Deck from my main computer. Didn't have to touch the Deck.
- smoldesu 4y agoOn the Nintendo Switch, it allows you to mount your console as an SFTP device and wirelessly transfer your screenshots without even turning on the console. Pretty fun stuff, especially in the motley years of 2017-2019.
- mschuster91 4y agoWhat's it with Nintendo and fucking up basic use cases anyway? Seriously, are they expecting USB-based jailbreaks or why not even include something a lot of players have been shouting on the web for years now?!
- OmahaBoy69 4y ago>USB-based jailbreaks What kind of new-fangled hack is that? Here in Switch-land we just use a bit of tinfoil for our piracy needs.
- mschuster91 4y agoI thought that vulnerability was gone since at least September 2019 with the 2nd revision?
- smoldesu 4y agoIt is, but the core vulnerability of the chipset (Tegra X1) still exists AFAIK. Granted, you need to hardmod to jailbreak a Mariko model (launch models can be softmodded), but that's basically the same thing that happened with the 3DS.
- ThatPlayer 4y agoIt's a different exploit. The original exploit is an issue with the Tegra's recovery mode (RCM), requiring a USB payload to be sent to the Switch at boot every time. I believe the hardmod is a voltage glitching exploit, as described for the Vita here: https://yifan.lu/images/2019/01/Injecting_Software_Vulnerabilities_with_Voltage_Glitching.pdf https://yifan.lu/images/2019/01/Injecting_Software_Vulnerabi... . It is able to inject code through the onboard memory then load a payload from a memory card rather than USB.
- myself248 4y agoBecause I bought the hardware, end of story. I shouldn't have to justify what I do with it after that. Not to Nintendo, not to Sony, not to you, and not to a court of law. I didn't borrow it, I bought it. I pay for the power that lights it up, I pay for the network it connects to, I get to say what it does and when and how. Yes it was advertised as a gaming console, yes it came with some games installed and it's very good at that, but it's also a whole-ass computer with the potential to do whole-ass computer things. I'm offended by having a computer sitting right there that can't be used to do some task that it might otherwise be capable of. We'd never stand for arbitrary restrictions on other everyday items. Imagine if the can of soda I'm drinking could only be used as a drink. Oh you spilled some chemicals on yourself and you want to use this to rinse off quickly on your way to the shower? Sorry, drink output can only connected to mouth input, too bad about your arm. Like, what? Objects are versatile and using that versatility is the essence of humanity. It's why we have opposable thumbs. It's why we're the dominant species on the planet. Backsliding from that in the name of copyright or some shit is inane, counterproductive, and offensive to the very core of my being.
- CoastalCoder 4y ago> Because I bought the hardware, end of story. I shouldn't have to justify what I do with it after that. Not to Nintendo, not to Sony, not to you, and not to a court of law. I wonder if you misunderstood the GP's question. I don't think they were asking, "Why, as the manufacturer, should we consider your desire reasonable?". I think they were asking, "As a fellow computer user, I'd like to better understand something interesting, and it sounds like you might be up to something interesting."
- Naracion 4y agoThis is also how I interpreted it, perhaps because I am also intrigued and want to know (my Steam Deck just shipped earlier today).
- mirkules 4y agoPersonally, I use SSH to poke around. 99% of the time, I look at the directory structure, maybe learn something and then shrug with a “that was cool” and never look at it again. But there’s always that 1% where I find something truly interesting…
- ngcazz 4y agoWell, I for one want to see if I can enable a god mode for Returnal. 25 hours in I still haven't made it past the third boss!
- danjoredd 4y agoSame reason someone would install Linux on a Playstation 2 or a PS3. Sometimes its just because you can, not because its actually a good solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS
- matheusmoreira 4y agoSame reason I need a terminal on Linux: to have access to everything in the computer, not just the stuff exposed in the GUI. I can also easily transfer files between systems that way. I do this with my phone, it's so easy to connect via the network and copy files, no need to deal with USB stuff. Ever tried to transfer a video or screenshot from PS4 to any other device? Easiest method I found was making a PSN chat group, asking the other person to leave the group and then using it to share the data to myself so I can see it on my phone at a lower quality. It's so stupid.
- mattbrewsbytes 4y agoNeed is the operative word, there isn't a need, sure there are technical people that want to poke around or the "because its mine/I can" crowd but for the vast majority of console players they don't even know what SSH is. I started playing games back when you had to mess with and resolve IRQ and DMA conflicts in DOS so I love having a console I can use as an appliance. You don't need SSH on every internet connected device you own.
- eternityforest 4y agoGame consoles have a very strong case for being closed because cheating ruins their primary function. And players absolutely will cheat even if it means spending thousands. Other devices do need some level of local access because bad software is often the limiting factor of usefulness.
- alerighi 4y agoA lot of things. For example you can use it to copy files (moovies, music, etc) on the drive of the console to watch them. Or you can download data from the console itself (screenshots, video recordings, etc). You can use SSH to run commands to automatize things, for example turning off the console, launching an update, installing new software, etc, while not being in front of the TV. Finally you can use it to diagnose problems on the console, for example you can connect to run a diagnosis, from which you may find out that the hard drive is causing problems and you should replace it, or the console is overheating and thermal throttling, etc.
- Dwedit 4y agoRewrite the question as "Why would you need an SFTP server". File transfer, of course.
- seba_dos1 4y agoThat's the easiest and fastest way to copy files across computers, for example. I use it regularly between my laptops, phones and Deck. Not even talking about tinkering in general as that one should be obvious.