OpenBSD Journal

Xbox port of OpenBSD

Contributed by merdely on from the openbsd-the-game dept.

As a follow-up to a previous story, Markus Ritzer wrote to www@:

Hello!

My name is Markus Ritzer, and I have ported OpenBSD to the Microsoft Xbox. I have done this as a project for university, and this project is finished on July 18th.

It is not an official port until now, and I don't think it will become one. I don't have enough time to be a maintainer of my port.

But it would be great if you could mention the project on www.openbsd.org/plat.html.

Every information about the project can be found at http://tobias.schroepf.de/doku/doku.php?id=xbox:porting_openbsd_to_the_xbox

Status: System is booting, there is output on the screen, rootfs gets mounted, users can log in (multi-user support), network and sound are working.

Please mention the port on the OpenBSD homepage (It's ok for me if you mention it as "unstable, unofficial, untested by the official developers" and so on.

Thanks a lot,
Markus

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Tim (tim) on

    that's great, thanks!
    i may have to pick up an old one off of ebay and give it a try.

  2. By Anonymous Coward (217.205.77.85) on

    Nice going ;) Hope you get some good marks for your Uni course



  3. By Brynet (Brynet) on

    What exactly is the point of this? and why the heck did he change the dmesg output to the colour red?

    Boring.. :P

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (65.243.149.146) on

      > What exactly is the point of this? and why the heck did he change the dmesg output to the colour red?
      >
      > Boring.. :P

      Yeah no kidding, everyone should just use i386 and be happy with it!

      The point of porting to other platforms is to make the code base better by fixing any bugs that show up. In this case it was also to learn more about operating systems. There is now one more person in the world who understands the internals of OpenBSD to some extent and that can only be a good thing.

      Comments

      1. By Brynet (Brynet) on

        > > What exactly is the point of this? and why the heck did he change the dmesg output to the colour red?
        > >
        > > Boring.. :P
        >
        > Yeah no kidding, everyone should just use i386 and be happy with it!
        >
        > The point of porting to other platforms is to make the code base better by fixing any bugs that show up. In this case it was also to learn more about operating systems. There is now one more person in the world who understands the internals of OpenBSD to some extent and that can only be a good thing.
        >


        The "Xbox" is an x86 based architecture as well... Do some research :P

        In any sense, I'm sure you could learn more by porting BSD to an ARM based router ffs! haha!

        Comments

        1. By Damien Miller (djm) on http://www.mindrot.org/~djm/

          > In any sense, I'm sure you could learn more by porting BSD to
          > an ARM based router ffs! haha!

          Where can I download your port of OpenBSD to an ARM-based router?

          Comments

          1. By Brynet (Brynet) on

            > Where can I download your port of OpenBSD to an ARM-based router?

            Sorry pal, That's classified and closed source... lmao!..

            (But seriously, this is about my anti-games style of life.. I'm sure his port is just brilliant lol..)

          2. By Anonymous Coward (156.143.132.61) on

            > > In any sense, I'm sure you could learn more by porting BSD to
            > > an ARM based router ffs! haha!
            >
            > Where can I download your port of OpenBSD to an ARM-based router?
            >
            >

            http://www.openbsd.org/plat.html

    2. By Lars Hansson (203.65.245.11) lars@unet.net.ph on

      > What exactly is the point of this? and why the heck did he change the dmesg output to the colour red?
      >
      > Boring.. :P


      I'm sure we're all eagerly awaiting *you* port to some interesting platform.

    3. By Miod Vallat (miod) on

      > What exactly is the point of this? and why the heck did he change the dmesg output to the colour red?

      If the kernel output is red, it is likely because the display device is in 24 or 32 bpp mode, and rasops_init() is invoked without swapping blue and red first.

      Markus, if you are reading this, have a look at sys/dev/pci/tga.c lines 356 to 363 to see how this is done.

  4. By Anonymous Coward (193.95.154.74) on

    Hi,

    Could you put on website dmesg output? Thanks.

    Comments

    1. By Brynet (Brynet) on

      > Hi,
      >
      > Could you put on website dmesg output? Thanks.

      Wow, you must be considerably blind... :D

      http://tobias.schroepf.de/doku/doku.php?id=xbox:openbsd-pictures

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (128.171.90.200) on

        > > Could you put on website dmesg output? Thanks.
        >
        > Wow, you must be considerably blind... :D
        >
        > http://tobias.schroepf.de/doku/doku.php?id=xbox:openbsd-pictures

        yeah, next time a developer asks you for a dmesg, send them a jpeg of the monitor display - they are sure to show their appreciation.



        Comments

        1. By sthen (85.158.44.149) on

          > > > Could you put on website dmesg output? Thanks.
          > >
          > > Wow, you must be considerably blind... :D
          > >
          > > http://tobias.schroepf.de/doku/doku.php?id=xbox:openbsd-pictures
          >
          > yeah, next time a developer asks you for a dmesg, send them a jpeg of the monitor display - they are sure to show their appreciation.

          Read the write-up if you want to learn why.

        2. By Dan Farrell (thedanno) on http://danno.appliedi.net/drupal/

          > > > Could you put on website dmesg output? Thanks.
          > >
          > > Wow, you must be considerably blind... :D
          > >
          > > http://tobias.schroepf.de/doku/doku.php?id=xbox:openbsd-pictures
          >
          > yeah, next time a developer asks you for a dmesg, send them a jpeg of the monitor display - they are sure to show their appreciation.
          >
          >
          >
          >

          dmesg problem

          When you type dmesg, the message

          sysctl: KERN_MFGBUFSIZE: Device not configured

          appears. A reason for this could be that kernel and userland are out of sync. The problem is the magic number of the buffer. 0xffffffff is passed, but 0×63061 is expected. So there is no dmesg output.



          Good thing you read that ;

  5. By Anonymous Coward (208.48.231.12) on

    Completely useless port.

    Comments

    1. By jose nazario (68.40.197.82) --@---.-- on http://---.--/

      > Completely useless port.

      spoken like someone who hasn't ever contributed anything useful or challenging to anyone's projects. spoken like too many openbsd users. quit being a dipass and a sourpuss.

      i'm willing to get the guy learned more in the past few months of doing this project than you've learned in that time, that alone makes it useful.

      -- jose (formerly jose@)

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (70.66.16.205) on

        > > Completely useless port.
        >
        > spoken like someone who hasn't ever contributed anything useful or challenging to anyone's projects. spoken like too many openbsd users. quit being a dipass and a sourpuss.
        >
        > i'm willing to get the guy learned more in the past few months of doing this project than you've learned in that time, that alone makes it useful.
        >
        > -- jose (formerly jose@)

        formerly jose@? Are you going to elaborate on this a little more?

        Comments

        1. By Eric Gillingham (137.78.212.149) on

          > > > Completely useless port.
          > >
          > > spoken like someone who hasn't ever contributed anything useful or challenging to anyone's projects. spoken like too many openbsd users. quit being a dipass and a sourpuss.
          > >
          > > i'm willing to get the guy learned more in the past few months of doing this project than you've learned in that time, that alone makes it useful.
          > >
          > > -- jose (formerly jose@)
          >
          > formerly jose@? Are you going to elaborate on this a little more?

          Ever read the little notice at the bottom of every page here?

    2. By Anonymous Coward (62.180.31.65) on

      > Completely useless port.


      oh come on. as long as it is useful for him it IS useful.

    3. By Lars Hansson (203.65.245.11) lars/2unet.net.ph on

      > Completely useless port.

      Completely useless comment.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (66.90.103.37) on

        > Completely useless comment.

        Completely useless genetic garbage detected, evolution recommended. :-)

    4. By art (213.0.113.90) on

      > Completely useless port.

      Spoken like someone who doesn't understand the pure joy of hacking.
      Your life must be really boring, I'm happy to not be you.

  6. By Anonymous Coward (70.68.164.2) on

    a port for the WRT54G of OpenBSD would be awesome!

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (210.1.204.231) on

      > a port for the WRT54G of OpenBSD would be awesome!
      A port for the Cisco 2500 series routers would be awesome!

      Comments

      1. By sthen (85.158.44.149) on

        > > a port for the WRT54G of OpenBSD would be awesome!
        > A port for the Cisco 2500 series routers would be awesome!

        Hmm. Here's a typical 2500.

        cisco 2509 (68030) processor (revision C) with 4096K/2048K bytes of memory.
        ...
        1 Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 interface.
        2 Serial network interfaces.
        8 terminal lines.
        32K bytes of non-volatile configuration memory.
        8192K bytes of processor board System flash (Read ONLY)

        Just stick 'em on a private lan behind a soekris running conserver if you want cheap async serial ports, or use some hardware which doesn't suck if it's the WAN ports you're after... the xbox is a much more useful target.

      2. By Dan Farrell (thedanno) on http://danno.appliedi.net/drupal/

        > > a port for the WRT54G of OpenBSD would be awesome!
        > A port for the Cisco 2500 series routers would be awesome!
        A port for the Riverstone RS3000 series switch/routers would be awesome!

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (74.13.39.27) on

          > > > a port for the WRT54G of OpenBSD would be awesome!
          > > A port for the Cisco 2500 series routers would be awesome!
          > A port for the Riverstone RS3000 series switch/routers would be awesome!
          A port for the Nintendo Wii gaming console would be awesmoe!

          Comments

          1. By cruel (82.193.98.1) on

            > A port for the Nintendo Wii gaming console would be awesmoe!


            if only you can logon using wii's accels...

            Comments

            1. By Mike Swanson (71.197.194.170) on

              > > A port for the Nintendo Wii gaming console would be awesmoe!
              >
              >
              > if only you can logon using wii's accels...
              >

              Nah, it'd support what Nintendo has been too lazy to do: Use the USB port in the back for a keyboard.

  7. By Anonymous Coward (68.164.34.118) on

    <b>Fantastic work!</b> You should be commended for doing this, no matter what the naysayers bleat.

    Comments

    1. By Terrell Prude' Jr. (70.169.167.212) tprude@cmosnetworks.com on

      > Fantastic work! You should be commended for doing this, no matter what the naysayers bleat.
      >

      I have to agree. Any time that someone takes the initiative to port an operating system to another platform and learns something more about computers, that's to be encouraged. Heck, it's why Linus Torvalds wrote his kernel, too--to learn more about the 80386 and because he could.

      Well done! And way better than I could do.

      --TP

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