4 ms·

Linux on the Xbox 360

198 points by zdw 3y ago

jeroenhd 3y ago
> I couldn't do stage 2 on my laptop because that involves chrooting into the install and unfortunately my laptop isn't powerpc. For people doing similar projects, you can use qemu in user mode to work around this. I believe the relevant Debian package is qemu-user-static. With it, you can execute binaries from foreign architectures as if they're native, with software translation doing all the hard work for you. Think Rosetta (not Rosetta2) but on Linux and supporting a wide variety of hardware. Install the package, copy /usr/bin/qemu-<target architecture>-static to the /usr/bin folder in your chroot and you should be able to chroot into the foreign system! I've used this to analyze some ARM binaries pulled from a router and it works surprisingly effective. Applications may fail because of the version inconsistencies between the daemons running on your OS and the old versions the chroot expects, but for basic tools it should Just Work, really.
- jovial_cavalier 3y ago
  systemd-nspawn is also worth looking into
  - johndoe0815 3y ago
    How would that work? The problem here is that chroot needs to run using a different CPU instruction set. qemu-user is exactly the right answer here. According to e.g. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Systemd-nspawn https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Systemd-nspawn "no hardware emulation is taking place and unlike QEMU and Virtualbox non-native CPU instruction sets are not directly supported".
    - dijit 3y ago
      systemd-nspawn is still using binfmt which is how Linux tries to read ELF files, and what you really want when executing other architectures is to teach binfmt about qemu. nspawn doesn't do anything additional here, but might be easier for most new sysadmins (sorry... "devops/platform/cloud engineers"). More info (from 2016 so it could be out of date): https://blog.oddbit.com/post/2016-02-07-systemd-nspawn-for-fun-and-wel/ https://blog.oddbit.com/post/2016-02-07-systemd-nspawn-for-f...
    - jovial_cavalier 3y ago
      cd into an OS image built for arm on your x86 dev machine, and type: `systemd-nspawn -D .` and it just works. At least it's never failed for me. I believe it pulls in some kind of binfmt/qemu shim to get these binaries working. Probably qemu under the hood, but this is about as plug-n-play as it gets.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
hospitalJail 3y ago
Given the RROD, I don't think its worth putting time into Xbox360. Unless there has been some development on the 360 hardware, I doubt people will be using theirs for too long. I went through 4 RRODs before the final RROD was in 2019. I thought that xbox360 was going to be pals with my son at my parents...
- codepoet80 3y ago
  My 2016 XBox 360 still runs great. Watched a HD-DVD off it just yesterday!
  - robotnikman 3y ago
    >HD-DVD I nearly forgot how HD-DVD used to be a thing. I remember back when HD-DVD was surpassed by bluray, they had a whole shelf of those Xbox 360 HD-DVD drives on fire sale at Fry's electronics (RIP) for $10.
- linusg789 3y ago
  There are some near end-of-life Xbox 360 models that are less prone to RROD's, but i'm not sure if you could still install linux/modchips on the newer ones. I think they put more security on those.
  - IntelMiner 3y ago
    All 360 models are susceptible to the "reset glitch hack (RGH)" more commonly known as voltage spiking the CPU The 360 "Slim" units are extremely reliable, with the 360 "E" units even further die shrunk but using much cheaper components
- tslmy 3y ago
  IMHO The point of this project wasn't for practicality; it's for fun in the process. For a hacker like the author, anything is a good learning practice and thus good time spent. That being said, you have a good point -- For people really looking for a serious alternative to computers, they shouldn't look too deep into Xbox 360. Thanks for putting the warning about RROD here. You've added a valuable warning sign to the original content.
SierraOne 3y ago
[dead]
tslmy 3y ago
Hi author, I really enjoy concepts like these that scavenge the most value from obsolete items / things you can get (almost) for free. (I used to build really cheap computers for kids who can't afford them.) I also love ideas that makes a special-purpose device available for general computing. Have fun, and keep up with the good work! :D
treesciencebot 3y ago
Modern XBOX Series X and S has very nice hardware (custom AMD APUs) for a really really discounted price. I wonder when or if they can be bricked enough to be a viable linux computer that can be sold for ~250$ ish with a great performance.
- numpad0 3y ago
  This talk[1] was interesting watch wrt that. They made DRAM encrypted and Secure Boot seems to be done right too… 1: https://youtu.be/U7VwtOrwceo https://youtu.be/U7VwtOrwceo
- selectodude 3y ago
  I have an Xbox One X that would be nice as a second PC. Even if it was an irreversible process that allowed me to install Windows, it would at least keep it out of the landfill for a little while longer.
  - RajT88 3y ago
    XBoneX would make for a nice dedicated Left4Dead box. You can also stream your PC games to the Xbox: https://www.purexbox.com/news/2021/02/guide_how_to_mirror_your_pc_display_to_your_xbox_one_xbox_series_x https://www.purexbox.com/news/2021/02/guide_how_to_mirror_yo...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- stepupmakeup 3y ago
  I think a modded PS4 fits the shoe quite well, if you ignore the need to run a web browser exploit each time you want to boot Linux (like a "semi-untethered jailbreak" for the iOS nerds)
- ggm 3y ago
  This is use of the word "bricked" which is a novel inverse of my normal understanding. To me a "bricked" device has been corrupted in core boot so bad, even JTAG may not get it back. It's the unusable state. "rooted" is the more normal description of 'I got to install some code on it which the original vendor did not want me to be able to install' surely? Or has geek english moved on to invert the greybeard meaning of "bricked" ?
dotBen 3y ago
This reminds me of back in the day when the US became very worried that the 'level of sophisticated computing power' in the then-recently released PlayStation 2 could be used by Iran or North Korea to power nuclear missile guidance systems, if Linux could be installed on the box. What was especially weird was that Sony then went ahead and released Linux for the PS2 anyway which made no commercial sense anyway! At the time there were particularly tight restrictions on distribution of PS2, beyond the usual export embargo of any tech to these countries. UPDATE: If this interests you, here's a whole page explaining the weird history here: https://www.pcmag.com/news/20-years-later-how-concerns-about-weaponized-consoles-almost-sunk-the-ps2 https://www.pcmag.com/news/20-years-later-how-concerns-about...
- RajT88 3y ago
  Wasn't Linux on the PS2 some way for Sony to recruit engineers? I thought I heard something to that effect - people who bought the linux kit got headhunting calls 9-12 months later.
  - comprev 3y ago
    That's a pretty imaginative method for recruitment. If you're nerdy enough to want to install Linux on a games console, maybe you'd like to get paid for it!
  - rejectfinite 3y ago
    Also for taxes https://www.gamespot.com/articles/uk-court-ps2-is-no-computer/1100-6152983/ https://www.gamespot.com/articles/uk-court-ps2-is-no-compute...
  - MBCook 3y ago
    You may be thinking of the Net Yaroze edition of the original PS1, which was basically a lower spec dev kit for home users.
- wildzzz 3y ago
  I've always heard the PS2 Linux kit was to defeat some higher tariffs on importation of video game consoles versus the lower ones on personal computers. Some editions of the PS2 came with the network module pre-installed so maybe even without the HDD necessary, it could still loosely be defined as a PC since all that is missing is software that could easily be downloaded and installed.
1970-01-01 3y ago
>The next part will be about Linux on the PS3. Uh, that should be a link? http://ps3linux.net/ http://ps3linux.net/
Cockbrand 3y ago
Tangential: back in the day, installing a modchip in the original Xbox to boot Linux was a nice way to get a cheap Linux box. 64MB RAM were a bit tight when 256MB were pretty much the norm, but otherwise the machine was quite powerful for its price.
- xen2xen1 3y ago
  GentooX was fun. Still miss it a bit.
- znpy 3y ago
  ah, fun times. i remember interviewing the guy behind the project, a very nice person. also i remember there was a modified boot loader (chromwell, iirc?) and some person had managed to solder an additional 64mb chip to bring the total memory to a whopping 128MB.
  - IntelMiner 3y ago
    128MB RAM upgrades are quite common in the origina Xbox scene, especially these days Some mad scientists (read: enterprising individuals) have even figured out how to gain 256MB or 512MB of memory in their units
28304283409234 3y ago
That reminds me of that 200k reward for running Linux on the original XBox. https://www.theregister.com/2002/07/02/200k_prize_offered_for_getting/ https://www.theregister.com/2002/07/02/200k_prize_offered_fo...
predictabl3 3y ago
This makes me want to try my hand again at using Nix to build a full Linux disk image for the OG Xbox. I had a whole strategy planned until realizing that the OG Xbox needs an older rev of x86 than we support in nixpkgs...
WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
Re-purposing old console is a fun hobby Linux on PSVita: https://github.com/xerpi/vita-linux-loader/tree/master https://github.com/xerpi/vita-linux-loader/tree/master
b8 3y ago
Ubuntu build meant for Car's HMU might be worth trying.
stevezsa8 3y ago
I've been thinking that linux on an xbox one could be a nice way to reuse all those consoles sitting un-used as people move to Series X/S. Also made me think that there could be a market for PCs that are inbetween laptop and desktop size. So something Xbox sized that can upgrade RAM and SSD and keep everything else small like a console.

198 points by zdw 3y ago

> I couldn't do stage 2 on my laptop because that involves chrooting into the install and unfortunately my laptop isn't powerpc. For people doing similar projects, you can use qemu in user mode to work around this. I believe the relevant Debian package is qemu-user-static. With it, you can execute binaries from foreign architectures as if they're native, with software translation doing all the hard work for you. Think Rosetta (not Rosetta2) but on Linux and supporting a wide variety of hardware. Install the package, copy /usr/bin/qemu-<target architecture>-static to the /usr/bin folder in your chroot and you should be able to chroot into the foreign system! I've used this to analyze some ARM binaries pulled from a router and it works surprisingly effective. Applications may fail because of the version inconsistencies between the daemons running on your OS and the old versions the chroot expects, but for basic tools it should Just Work, really.

jovial_cavalier 3y ago
systemd-nspawn is also worth looking into
- johndoe0815 3y ago
  How would that work? The problem here is that chroot needs to run using a different CPU instruction set. qemu-user is exactly the right answer here. According to e.g. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Systemd-nspawn https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Systemd-nspawn "no hardware emulation is taking place and unlike QEMU and Virtualbox non-native CPU instruction sets are not directly supported".
  - dijit 3y ago
    systemd-nspawn is still using binfmt which is how Linux tries to read ELF files, and what you really want when executing other architectures is to teach binfmt about qemu. nspawn doesn't do anything additional here, but might be easier for most new sysadmins (sorry... "devops/platform/cloud engineers"). More info (from 2016 so it could be out of date): https://blog.oddbit.com/post/2016-02-07-systemd-nspawn-for-fun-and-wel/ https://blog.oddbit.com/post/2016-02-07-systemd-nspawn-for-f...
  - jovial_cavalier 3y ago
    cd into an OS image built for arm on your x86 dev machine, and type: `systemd-nspawn -D .` and it just works. At least it's never failed for me. I believe it pulls in some kind of binfmt/qemu shim to get these binaries working. Probably qemu under the hood, but this is about as plug-n-play as it gets.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

hospitalJail 3y ago

Given the RROD, I don't think its worth putting time into Xbox360. Unless there has been some development on the 360 hardware, I doubt people will be using theirs for too long. I went through 4 RRODs before the final RROD was in 2019. I thought that xbox360 was going to be pals with my son at my parents...

codepoet80 3y ago
My 2016 XBox 360 still runs great. Watched a HD-DVD off it just yesterday!
- robotnikman 3y ago
  >HD-DVD I nearly forgot how HD-DVD used to be a thing. I remember back when HD-DVD was surpassed by bluray, they had a whole shelf of those Xbox 360 HD-DVD drives on fire sale at Fry's electronics (RIP) for $10.
linusg789 3y ago
There are some near end-of-life Xbox 360 models that are less prone to RROD's, but i'm not sure if you could still install linux/modchips on the newer ones. I think they put more security on those.
- IntelMiner 3y ago
  All 360 models are susceptible to the "reset glitch hack (RGH)" more commonly known as voltage spiking the CPU The 360 "Slim" units are extremely reliable, with the 360 "E" units even further die shrunk but using much cheaper components
tslmy 3y ago
IMHO The point of this project wasn't for practicality; it's for fun in the process. For a hacker like the author, anything is a good learning practice and thus good time spent. That being said, you have a good point -- For people really looking for a serious alternative to computers, they shouldn't look too deep into Xbox 360. Thanks for putting the warning about RROD here. You've added a valuable warning sign to the original content.

SierraOne 3y ago

[dead]

tslmy 3y ago

Hi author, I really enjoy concepts like these that scavenge the most value from obsolete items / things you can get (almost) for free. (I used to build really cheap computers for kids who can't afford them.) I also love ideas that makes a special-purpose device available for general computing. Have fun, and keep up with the good work! :D

treesciencebot 3y ago

Modern XBOX Series X and S has very nice hardware (custom AMD APUs) for a really really discounted price. I wonder when or if they can be bricked enough to be a viable linux computer that can be sold for ~250$ ish with a great performance.

numpad0 3y ago
This talk[1] was interesting watch wrt that. They made DRAM encrypted and Secure Boot seems to be done right too… 1: https://youtu.be/U7VwtOrwceo https://youtu.be/U7VwtOrwceo
selectodude 3y ago
I have an Xbox One X that would be nice as a second PC. Even if it was an irreversible process that allowed me to install Windows, it would at least keep it out of the landfill for a little while longer.
- RajT88 3y ago
  XBoneX would make for a nice dedicated Left4Dead box. You can also stream your PC games to the Xbox: https://www.purexbox.com/news/2021/02/guide_how_to_mirror_your_pc_display_to_your_xbox_one_xbox_series_x https://www.purexbox.com/news/2021/02/guide_how_to_mirror_yo...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
stepupmakeup 3y ago
I think a modded PS4 fits the shoe quite well, if you ignore the need to run a web browser exploit each time you want to boot Linux (like a "semi-untethered jailbreak" for the iOS nerds)
ggm 3y ago
This is use of the word "bricked" which is a novel inverse of my normal understanding. To me a "bricked" device has been corrupted in core boot so bad, even JTAG may not get it back. It's the unusable state. "rooted" is the more normal description of 'I got to install some code on it which the original vendor did not want me to be able to install' surely? Or has geek english moved on to invert the greybeard meaning of "bricked" ?

dotBen 3y ago

This reminds me of back in the day when the US became very worried that the 'level of sophisticated computing power' in the then-recently released PlayStation 2 could be used by Iran or North Korea to power nuclear missile guidance systems, if Linux could be installed on the box. What was especially weird was that Sony then went ahead and released Linux for the PS2 anyway which made no commercial sense anyway! At the time there were particularly tight restrictions on distribution of PS2, beyond the usual export embargo of any tech to these countries. UPDATE: If this interests you, here's a whole page explaining the weird history here: https://www.pcmag.com/news/20-years-later-how-concerns-about-weaponized-consoles-almost-sunk-the-ps2 https://www.pcmag.com/news/20-years-later-how-concerns-about...

RajT88 3y ago
Wasn't Linux on the PS2 some way for Sony to recruit engineers? I thought I heard something to that effect - people who bought the linux kit got headhunting calls 9-12 months later.
- comprev 3y ago
  That's a pretty imaginative method for recruitment. If you're nerdy enough to want to install Linux on a games console, maybe you'd like to get paid for it!
- rejectfinite 3y ago
  Also for taxes https://www.gamespot.com/articles/uk-court-ps2-is-no-computer/1100-6152983/ https://www.gamespot.com/articles/uk-court-ps2-is-no-compute...
- MBCook 3y ago
  You may be thinking of the Net Yaroze edition of the original PS1, which was basically a lower spec dev kit for home users.
wildzzz 3y ago
I've always heard the PS2 Linux kit was to defeat some higher tariffs on importation of video game consoles versus the lower ones on personal computers. Some editions of the PS2 came with the network module pre-installed so maybe even without the HDD necessary, it could still loosely be defined as a PC since all that is missing is software that could easily be downloaded and installed.

1970-01-01 3y ago

>The next part will be about Linux on the PS3. Uh, that should be a link? http://ps3linux.net/ http://ps3linux.net/

Cockbrand 3y ago

Tangential: back in the day, installing a modchip in the original Xbox to boot Linux was a nice way to get a cheap Linux box. 64MB RAM were a bit tight when 256MB were pretty much the norm, but otherwise the machine was quite powerful for its price.

xen2xen1 3y ago
GentooX was fun. Still miss it a bit.
znpy 3y ago
ah, fun times. i remember interviewing the guy behind the project, a very nice person. also i remember there was a modified boot loader (chromwell, iirc?) and some person had managed to solder an additional 64mb chip to bring the total memory to a whopping 128MB.
- IntelMiner 3y ago
  128MB RAM upgrades are quite common in the origina Xbox scene, especially these days Some mad scientists (read: enterprising individuals) have even figured out how to gain 256MB or 512MB of memory in their units

28304283409234 3y ago

That reminds me of that 200k reward for running Linux on the original XBox. https://www.theregister.com/2002/07/02/200k_prize_offered_for_getting/ https://www.theregister.com/2002/07/02/200k_prize_offered_fo...

predictabl3 3y ago

This makes me want to try my hand again at using Nix to build a full Linux disk image for the OG Xbox. I had a whole strategy planned until realizing that the OG Xbox needs an older rev of x86 than we support in nixpkgs...

WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago

Re-purposing old console is a fun hobby Linux on PSVita: https://github.com/xerpi/vita-linux-loader/tree/master https://github.com/xerpi/vita-linux-loader/tree/master

b8 3y ago

Ubuntu build meant for Car's HMU might be worth trying.

stevezsa8 3y ago

I've been thinking that linux on an xbox one could be a nice way to reuse all those consoles sitting un-used as people move to Series X/S. Also made me think that there could be a market for PCs that are inbetween laptop and desktop size. So something Xbox sized that can upgrade RAM and SSD and keep everything else small like a console.