ps3vram and updated and optimized kernel for the PS3 by Brendan Horan

So we left off with a working PS3 kernel. An older version... Lets get that up to date. I will be using 2.6.30. You can find the .conf at the end of the post. I am sure theres more that can be done to make this run faster on the PS3. Also I have not enabled the card readers yet.

To make use of the ps3vram as a high priority swap space I did the following. Create a file called :

/etc/ps3-vram-swap.sh

Add the following to the file :

#!/bin/sh
mkswap /dev/ps3vram > /dev/null
swapon -p 10 /dev/ps3vram > /dev/null

Make the file executable. Add the following line to /etc/conf.d/local.start :

/etc/ps3-vram-swap.sh

Now the ps3vram will get added as priority 10 swap so it will get used before the HDD swap. Output of swapon -s :

Filename                Type        Size    Used    Priority
/dev/ps3da2                             partition    1686816    0    -1
/dev/ps3vram                            partition    250872    0    10

Hear is the .config file I did for the 2.6.30 kernel. I will keep working to make it better. The PS3 is a LOT faster now compared to the kernel we build using the 2.6.23-ps3 source. Keep in mind that its advisable to use main kernel.org sources now and not a patch-set. Pretty much all PS3 patches from the early patch-sets have been merged.

Save the following as .config under /usr/src/linux . run make menuconfig if you need to edit it. Rebuild your kernel with :

# make &&  make modules_install

Copy the vmlinux to your /boot and update kboot.conf.

Hear is a copy of my .config PS3 vmram Kernel .config