Development/Ports/XBOX
From Mandriva
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Work has been done for 10.2 to support the Microsoft XBOX platform.
Status
So Far:
- Most of the "drak" tools are now XBOX friendly (mousedrake, XFdrake, harddrake, install_kernel, diskdrake).
- Diskdrake layers a protective 8Gb partition over the lower 8Gb of the XBox hard drive if no DOS partition table is detected. This is to protect you from overwriting the XBox partitions hda50-54 that occupy this space.
- A special kernel-xbox with patches and configuration appropriate for the hardware has been built.
- Because of the above, the installer should also work with some minor mods to the iso format and some extra files for the xbox-kernel. I currently am able to do a full install with the last mods committed to gi cvs.
- The necessary bits have been uploaded to kenobi for inclusion in the mirror tree (stage1, kernel-xbox, stage2 modules).
Caveats:
- The hardware has to be soft or hard modded before Linux can be installed. Some of the information and tools for softmodding can hard to find, and instructions vary for different machine versions. (see http://www.xbox-linux.org for a start)
- Kernel-2.6 support for fatx is unsafe (can't install to an image file on a fatx partition). This means you need either a hard drive > 8Gb, or an external usb drive to install on (adapter required to connect to XBOX).
- A seperate kernel-xbox is required (kernel team is producing this now).
- Unless you have an adapter and a usb keyboard, you're limited to the xpad to manuever through the install. Unfortunately the xpad is "iffy" with the 2.6 kernel and doesn't always appear functional in X. There is also no method for keyboard input (user accounts).
- I have been able to slow the cursor movement with "xset m 1/8 1" in the installer, and drakmouse should add this in an xpad files in /etc/xinit.d"
- I've played various games with trying to "wake up" the xpad in the installer (it doesn't respond initially). The most consistent method seems to be to just wait a few minutes.
- Some manual bootloader configuration is required outside of Linux, xromwell is recommended.
- I'm only able to run 640x480 on a V1.6 box, and there's a known overscan issue where the display goes beyond a normal TV screen.
- Since most machines have only 64Mb, the installer complains of low resources. I have had it lock up at random points doing a CD/DVD install.
- Media: The XBox is fairly unforgiving about CD/DVD media. This will vary with the drive in the machine. Microsoft used several different versions. Mine won't read the CDRs I own, it will read 1 brand of CDRW I own, and it reads the DVD+RWs I own. Best advice I can give is try several types of media if your CD won't boot.
Bootloader
The most reliable bootloader for XBOX is xromwell. This is the cromwell alternate BIOS code packaged in a .xbe (XBox executable) format. If you are using an alternate dashboard to the MS Dash, you can ftp a copy of xromwell.xbe onto the XBOX and make a menu entry to launch it. It is available as a tarball from http://www.xbox-linux.org/Download or as an rpm in contrib. It uses a configuration file much like lilo or grub. The file is named linuxboot.cfg, and I've been putting mine in the root of the E: drive on the XBOX, with my kernel and initrd in a "mandrake" subdirectory:
title Mandrake2.6.10-3 kernel /mandrake/vmlinuz-2.6.10-3mdkxbox initrd /mandrake/initrd-2.6.10-3mdkxbox.img append root=/dev/sda3 title Mandrake2.6.10-4 kernel /mandrake/vmlinuz-2.6.10-4mdkxbox initrd /mandrake/initrd-2.6.10-4mdkxbox.img append root=/dev/sda3 default Mandrake2.6.10-4
More info about cromwell/xromwell here: http://www.xbox-linux.org/Cromwell_Manual
