Slashdot Mirror
Linux Running on Xbox Without Modchip!
NiteStar writes "It looks like people on xbox-scene.com and xboxhacker.net managed to run Xbox-Linux on a non-modded Xbox console.
It requires no soldering at all - you don't even have to open up the Xbox. They are using an exploit in the saved game handling of the EA xbox game '007 Agent Under Fire'.
It requires the original version of the 007 game and a memorycard you can connect to PC like the mega-X-key or datel's action replay. Apparently you can even build this memorycard yourself using a standard USB memstick." Frankly it seems like just soldering in the modchip would be easy, but big points for being clever!
So, does this qualify for the rest of the price money from that lindows founder?
Anyway, i think they should award a price to the person that finds a good reason to run linux on a x-box.
Fleur de Sel
Here's the announcement in a forum...
http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/03/01/04 /1522202.shtml?tid=156 .....
Looks like they are getting a lot of money
And no breaking the RSA too...
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
Im buying an EA game, even if it does cure cancer.
Are the evil pirates making a comeback?
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
you'd think they had already created every type of bug. Well, in colaboration with EA they've just developed a new type of bug: THE USEFUL BUG. Now where are all those bashers that say that Microsoft never invented anything new?
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
You mean they are still in business? I can remember having an action replay cartridge for my C64...
The owls are not what they seem
Free as in '007 Agent Under Fire'!
No not really, all this means is that Linux gets a cheap, subsidised my MS platform to run on.
Should see the game being pulled out of the market soon, making XBox hacking illegal again
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
Its a real victory for everyone who feels that when you pay for something you own it, it doesn't own you.
Great news! This puts us that much closer to being able to run Linux on anything such as a PC! Oh, wait...
Cover your eyes and click this link!
ok all this is, is a buffer overflow exploit.
a link to the code is:
http://www.xbox-scene.com/007linux.txt
it is uuencoded
enjoy!
It's not a war. This project is just a good show of hacking spirit. Remember that this is how Linux got started in the first place.
The analogy I heard was that of being invited to a free dinner at someone's house and ending up demanding to supervise the cooking.
1. Linux needs to be ubiquitous. Non-PC is not yet dominated by Windows, so if Linux gets established there, it could gradually take over the rest of the market. 2. MS loses money with each Xbox. If you could run Linux on a cheap, subsidized machine and create a Beowulf cluster (!) or something, then you're using your enemy to prosper -> good. 3. It's a hack. This is how Linux was created!
With a Linux-based OS running on XBox, you have a machine capable of playing some great games, with a bit of work a PVR using Myth TV, and also a general entertainment center capable of playing music, DVDs, and the like - all in a box specifically designed for the TV room instead of a beige box.
I'm pretty sure this is also Microsoft's vision, however making it Linux-based would give us the choice of operating system and the choice between paying .Net (or whatever they call it these days) subscriptions and paying a one-time fee (or not) for the brains of the system.
Tim
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
You are thinking like a buisness. Linux is not one buisness they are a comunity so there will be a very wide range of focuses for using Linux. And as with this comunity not everybody agrees that Linux needs to be on the desktop. I personally beleave the quest for the desktop is basicly a useless endever because in my mind the desktop is a dieing computer platform. And it is moving more towards Imbedded devices that have special tasks (Like the XBox, Playstation, PDAs, Server Apliances). This is an important task just as important as Linux on the Desktop. By making Linux kernel as much of a general porpose tools as possible helps it gain grounds on many new technoligies. Things like this is the reason why Linux is more popular then *BSD.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And illegal. Don't be stupid, taco. The whole point of the non-mod xbox linux is that any other way is illegal in many places.
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
Timing seems right for an April Fools joke...
Aren't modules pretty much the solution here? -N
I've nothing to say here...
This time everyone will agree when they announce that this bug should be thought of a feature.
Here is the website which has the 007 saved games, a movie file, and instructions. http://kotisivu.mtv3.fi/vilz/unmod/
no money. it must boot from cd to win the 100.000 $$$
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
What I'm wondering is how exactly it works? I'm sure the bootable save is probably altered to boot linux as opposed to the game, but how'd they do it?
Anyone have any _solid_ info?
I'm tempted to buy an XBox or two now just to cost Microsoft some money, set it up as a server monitoring console in my living room or something similar since I don't game.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
Only if someone provides a "tool" for circumventing a copy protection device. In this case, no tool is being distributed (written instructions are NOT a tool, unless executable by a machine.) It is not prohibited to ACTUALLY circumvent copy protection devices (of course, unlicensed copying of copyrighted material is), just to provide the tools. I don't see the DMCA applying here, at all. Furthermore, an X-Box is largely like a Ramones CD; I can hit it with a hammer, let my neighbor borrow it, sell it on EBay, rip tracks (or chips) out of it (for my own use); Its only when I copy the music/software out of it and the distribute it that anybody has issues with it. And that's regular copyright law, not the DMCA.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
This may only work with one specific game, but the hackers may be able to extract important info from this, or be able to do the same thing with other games. A console on an unmodded xbox is a good thing, and may lead to a great thing. Who knows what info they'll be able to get from the box now.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Me thinks Cmdr-Taco has never tried to solder wires onto surface mount components with carpel tunnel or a triple latte without a good iron, magnifing glass, camera and robotic arms.
It isn't easy... just hope those components are caps or resistors that aren't important. I would much rather use software than hardware... Now if only we could crack a key?
Karma Clown
I couldn't find any references to Ninnle Linux anywhere but Slashdot. URL?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'll work on whatever I bloody well want to, and so will everyone else.
1. Eat breakfast at Kiev
2. Walk down Second Avenue towards St. Mark's Place
3. Look for those people selling used books and other junk on the street
4. Look for the broken toaster oven on the blanket
5. ???
6. Penis!
I imagine MS will be calling EA to get this game "fixed" to stop this from happening - it'll be interesting to see if EA "fix" it really quickly or drag their feet (after all, won't they sell a few copies of this now?)
This sounds pretty damn spiffy to me, I like the idea of using an XBox to run Linux software - and I don't see doing this can be seen as breaking any laws. I mean, you'd not be pirating anything, or modifying anything it HAS to be in the clear - right?
Burning Xboxen is a crime, like books, right? j/k
The analogy I heard was that of being invited to a free dinner at someone's house and ending up demanding to supervise the cooking.
No, it is like buying food, taking it home, and then demanding to get to decide yourself how you are going to cook it.
Sounds pretty fair to me, but then my "you are a consumer not an individual" re-education is not completed yet...
I'm guessing that it's just a "troll" (in quotes, as it isn't really a troll...). I've seen these a few times before they get modded down *shrug*.
The bug is in quite a few games out there! :)
Very similar "flaws" exist in a lot of games. From talking to a friend apparently many of the flaws are in EA games, but not all.
i.e. This isn't a genie which can be put back in the bottle.
Yea, just compile all modules just in case you will need one of 'em, this is what is done in distributions...
... :)
offtopic:
There are 10 kinds of people in the world:
Those who understand binary and those who think there are 1010 kinds.
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
This is the kind of elitist crap that is going to keep Linux off most people's desktop. Maybe you should work on falling off your high horse.
Wrong. The XBOX would be more like a cooked dinner from Boston Market. The analogy would go more like you taking home your dinner from Boston Market and being pissed off that you can;t cook the chicken a different way. If you didn't want roasted chicken then you should have either not gone to Boston Market or you should have gone to your local grocery store and purchased raw chicken from them and cooked it the way you like.
Yes, because you are paying them $200 for a console that cost maybe $400. So they end up losing $200 per console rather than $400 from you not buying it.
I was pretty skeptical at first, considering when I first saw the forum post, there was only like 6 replies, and all were negative. But, apparently it's real. Overall tho, it may be a cool trick, but it's not going to eclipse the major uses of modchips. Backups, flashing BIOS, addon BIOS, etc..
/me surfs on over to ebay and orders up a $100 xbox =)
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
The analogy was given to the gentleman trying to steer efforts away from the XBox Linux project and toward more desktop development. Buying an XBox has nothing to do with getting anything for free, and two thumbs up to the people making unsigned code use possible! :-)
Can someone explain to me, why would I buy Xbox and install Linux on it?
If you (or someone nearby) has ALREADY purchased an X-Box to play games on, it would be interesting to repurpose that existing hardware.
It has also been suggested that Microsoft loses money on every X-Box sale, and attempts to make it up in game sales, so by buying an X-Box and no games, you're costing them money, which is good because they're evil. Personally I wouldn't recommend buying one for this reason alone, but that's me.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
On one unit, yes. But, the more they sell, the more they lose... And lets face it, I can buy a low end P2 for $200, the XBox can do a bit more then that... Plus it can play DVDs for another $30. So yeah, I'll spend $230 on a DVD player that doubles as a computer just to get $200 out of Microsoft's pockets.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
The next big advance will be somebody doing power consumption or timing analysis while the xbox is checking (bad) signatures, and teasing out the key a bit at a time. Then you will be able to sign anything you like. (Look up Markus Kuhn's papers.)
Any need to read further than the subject line, and I wonder just what you're doing here in the first place.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
It's not just EA that has this problem, and I doubt they can pull all the games with this problem off the shelves.
-dk
it DOES boot from cd
As far as I know, "Agent Under Fire" is a DVD, not a CD.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Video 'proof' of the exploits can be viewed here and here.
You can also download the 007 save games that are required to run this exploit and view additional instructions on how to get it running.
"I filter at +6, and have yet to miss out on an important comment." (#822545)
MS loses money with each Xbox
I have it on good, reliable word that this is not true anymore.
garethw
so there IS a use for that game! seriously, agent under fire is quite possibly the very worst FPS-style game EVER made, so i actually feel kind of bad that people (albeit a small group) actually has a reason to support such a piece of crap.
but on the bright side, i think march's issue of computer gaming monthly has a nice guide for what you can do with your worthless game disc once you realize it is NOT to be placed in your console (or PC) ever, EVER again!
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
-Dr. Weird
Do you think that an average app is going to deal with /dev/psaux and /dev/input/mouse0 when the two use entirely different protocols?
/dev/mouse (Which although the driver which drives /dev/mouse may change, does not mean that the software interface to the device node changes)
No, I would expect them to use X events, gpm or at a pinch,
The number of people who people who don't understand the basic premise of device abstraction is scary.
Doesn't this make it illegal to sell "007: Agent Under Fire" since that is effectively the circumvention device?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
**Have you even read the Mozilla source code? Around 75% of it is dealing with issues like PS/2 vs USB keyboards and mice, floppy support, etc. Do you think that an average app is going to deal with /dev/psaux and /dev/input/mouse0 when the two use entirely different protocols?**
average app is definetely not going to deal with them directly, so why would mozilla, i would rather say that around less than 1% of it is the part that even talks to the host os?
** This is why we need a Gentoo approach to everything. When one compiles a binary for everybody, the binary has to support what everybody has. When one compiles a binary for one person, that binary only has to support that one person's hardware. No redundancy, no cruft, no bloat.*
in the world of xbox everybody has the same hardware.
and no, i don't have read the mozilla source code(fully, but then again, who has?), but i would guess most of the bloat in the source comes supporting a wide range of architechtures to compile for and from having the user interface in xul(and generally, being a big hunking pile of programs and capable of rendering the pages correctly). and i except it to talk to the operating system(/ windowing system) rather than to talk straight to the hardware to not break everything when hardware changes and to generally keep it in good check.
i don't run plain mozilla, i prefer phoenix(because it's faster, more lightweight, without the things that _really_ bloat mozilla, no extra crap).
besides, the systems where running gentoo for the sake of optimizations would be really worth it are too slow to compile on, otherwise it's just tinkering above general optimazation flags..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I've been taking note of when a system does something unexpected and putting it to "good use" since the 60's. It's a primary form of hacking. Many bugs, like this one, are useful, just not useful in a way the author intended or may have wanted.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
read this.
The core goals are to be able to boot Linux on an unmodified machine, preferably by CD without opening the case, but via code directly copied to HDD or a USB device is acceptable too.
and
Solutions must be practical in the sense that a 12 year old kid can hope to replicate them in terms of both complexity and cost
since you have to buy the buggy game, buy a mem stick, write some code to the mem stick, enter the game, make the game read from the mem stick to make this exploit work, i think the ruile #1 is not respected.
but only for now. great job anyway.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Because it has TV/video out that works, stero sound that works, it looks good next to a TV, and it is cheap. Sure I could build a computer with most of that, but cheap is already out, a nice looking case would just about be more than an Xbox. Now find a TV card that works on linux. (Doable, but not all work so be careful) Of course the computer I build would be faster, but that wasn't a requirement.
A xbox is a good machine for those expirimenting with linux as a control for their home enertainment system. It isn't good for general purpose computing, but it is good for living room applications. Drop MAME, stella, atari800, etc on it and you can play a lot more games. With a good net connection you can download movies from the internet and play them on a TV, which is bitter than the monitor most people have. (I don't know where to find legal movies, but that is a different issue. I'm sure you can find one though, which will prove to the judge that copyright infringement isn't the only reason for this)
The 007AUF exploit enables arbitrary, unsigned code to be executed on the XBox- not just Linux, but any other program could be run, without authorization from Microsoft or the copyright holder.
Currently, XBox games are protected from piracy by two technical measures: all game binaries must be signed by Microsoft before being playable, and all games come on non-standard CD-ROMs, which are larger than what consumer hardware can replicate. Together, those two defenses make it impossible for consumers to illegally share copies of a single game.
But now, with the 007AUF hack, one leg is removed- an XBox can be tricked into running unsigned programs. This means that an unscrupulous person can copy a normal XBox game onto his computer, manipulate the game data to reduce it's size to within the 650 megabytes accomdated by normal CD-R media, and then mass-produce copies for distribution on the internet the underworld. Techniques to reduce the size of game data are already well known among the cyber-criminals called "IRC Dreamcast Release Groups" (most famously the gangs Utopia and Kalisto). They will remove, shorten, or reduce the quality of art resources such as pictures, audio, and video, in order to fit the game onto a CD-R.
So far, XBox developers have been spared the economic deprivation that internet game piracy can bring. But if the government fails to punish these new hackers and suppress the 007AUF exploit, this innovative platform may become unprofitable, and go the way of the Sega Dreamcast.
Is that really too far-fetched?
I haven't followed the X-Box hacking projects out there, but if this is the first person to try a buffer-overflow on an existing certified game then I'll bet we're onto something here. With the plethora of games coming out that are coded under tight deadlines I'd imagine there's going to be a rather large number of buffer overflows found in stuff like this. The reading of a saved-game from the memory chip is a great one. I'd imagine you could do something similiar when games need to pull data from the hard drive too. On top of that, with things going online there's a high probability (in my mind) that buffer overflows will exist within the networking code.
Now, there are two ways MS can entirely prevent this. One is to re-structure the X-box OS so that buffer overflows just cannot occur. There are theoritical techniques for this if I'm not mistaken; but nobody's got a horribly good reason to do this. MS does now I guess.
Or, MS could do a security audit on all the code for a game before it comes out and verify that it's free of buffer overflows. Baahahaha!
http://www.xbox-saves.com/ is where you can find more info on the Mega X-Key mentioned in the article, and they also have the save needed to get linux going in their saves archive.
The only way to protect against it is to provide an API for writing to the memory card/hard drive that closes off all possibilities for buffer overflows, and then lock out people from "programming the metal" directly.
Mozilla is unusual amongst X applications in that it handles virtually everything itself. This is why you sometimes get wierd behaviour with the mouse moving by itself or your keyboard map changing when you're using it. Early versions didn't even support USB mice! (I still have an old 386 with a kensington bus mouse that Mozilla doesn't support.) Basicly Mozilla is a platform rather than a webbrowser, it happens to have a web browser with it. The Mozilla platform not only has hardware independence but also does cool things such as draw its own buttons using a customized widget library, parse XML itself rather than use third party XML tools, draw JPEGs and GIFs, layout HTML, and manage tabs; it includes multiple software platforms such as Javascript and i386 emulation, and it uses direct disk access (via /dev/sda or /dev/hda, etc) to handle the file system to implement resource forks and stuff.
That's why an out-of-the-box Mozilla install is about 25 megs, rather than the four or so you'd expect out of what's ultimately just a network enabled rich text viewer.
People are asking "Why Xbox Linux?" and others are responding with "Why not?", well I have a legitimate reason for wanting Linux on an unmodded Xbox.
My Xbox is going back to MS as they have attempted to fix a problem several times and have so far been unsuccessful. This time, they're considering swapping systems for a new one, which I'm fine with except for one thing: Loss of saved games.
They will not just swap drives as it would save them at least 5 minutes of work, so I will lose all of my info on the HD.
With Linux running on my unmodded Xbox, I could possibly FTP the data elsewhere and restore it on the new system. This makes so much sense to me that I wonder why there is no way of doing it by default.
Microsoft's idea is to purchase their Memory Units and backup this way. Problem is, since each Xbox comes with a hard drive, no developer tries to make the smallest possible size save file. I would need several MUs to backup my data. Plus, some files cannot even be copied to a MU which means they cannot be backed up at all.
Some form of backup should exist to relieve this problem. I think that this could be it.
Hmm... that makes me wonder just how much the flawed anti-piracy measures of the Dreamcast ended up costing Sega.
--
est modus in rebus
So, lets say I'm running linux on the xbox this way - all fine and dandy, I can run emus, and play around with linux..... But, once I've done so, can I still play normal games? I mean, I still think there are SOME xbox games worth playing!:-)
I don't believe they actually cost very much- Dreamcast was already on the decline before Release Groups became very successful.
But I'm sure that Sega and it's game publishing friends would love to claim that their failure was due to rampaging criminals, and not their own business mistakes.
Am I jumping the gun here or does this opens up the beautifully ironic possiblity of using untold numbers of un-modded X-Boxen to find the Private Key that is used to sign X-box code ? I don't know about you but I'm off to get the hardware and the game to give this a try...
"the more they sell, the more they lose"? What kind of mathematics is that? That'd only be true if they were giving you money along with the X-Box.
How about "the less they sell, the more they lose"? Microsoft losing $400 per X-Box sounds like a far better deal than Microsoft losing $200 per X-Box.
Stumbling in the dark
I hear slavering of jaws
Eaten by a grue.
1. Release a game with buffer overrun
2. Leak information to XBox-Linux community
3. Profit!!!!
They could even get the lindows.com award money if they did it right.
I can understand the coolness factor - the need to hack something. It just seems...ironic, I guess, that a community so vehemently opposed to Microsoft feels the need to acknowledge Microsoft at every turn. I would think that every little step independant (i.e. NOT directly opposed to Microsoft but, rather, truly original, unique, groundbreaking, etc.) would be much more impressive. As long as Microsoft is the "leader", in that the Linux community feels the need to mimick Microsoft, then Microsoft has a legitimate claim that they innovate (ignoring the obvious parts that were embraced and extended) - if the Free Software groups feel the need to mimick and follow Microsoft at every turn, then obviously Microsoft is doing something right.
So I guess that kind of answers the question I asked in this post on whether Palladium will be as secure as they think or not.
Um, if you know what you are doing you can compile a NIC module and install it without rebuilding the kernel (or restarting the machine), provided you have the current kernel source available.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
The logic holds sound as long as they sell every XBox they make. If they sell an XBox and build another, then they've lost $200. If they manufacturer 10 more and sell 10 more they lost $2000. But, if they had one sit on the shelf and not sell, then they've only lost $400.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
... and is that not "illegal?"
..." However, this is America. :/
The proper phrase should be "should not be illegal to modify equipment
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. When using X, Win32 and MacOS APIs, there's no mouse driver code in Mozilla, except to handle things like mouse-over events and button presses, and this sort of stuff gets put in XPToolkit because that's just what toolkits do. Whether the mouse is PS/2 or USB is of no significance to Mozilla at all.
Not likely that MS would care. MS wants control over 2 things:
1. Are you able to pirate games?
2. Are publishers able to sell Xbox games without paying license fees?
This is a cool tech hack, but I don't think it easily enables either of the above. Hence, I don't think MS is going to whip out the lawyers (at their own expense, and incurring negative publicity) to fight this.
EA Games. Challenge DMCA !
You're new here aren't you!
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
The popular game "007: Agent under fire" was pulled from store shelves today, under threat of legal action from microsoft.
The software was found to be illegal by the standards of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, in that it allowed users to potentially run bootleg computer games.
Microsoft's decision was backed firmly by the RIAA, MPAA..
What? Me? Worry?
In other words, If you (or someone nearby) has ALREADY purchased an X-Box to play games on, it would be interesting to stop playing games, right? At this time it's hard to count good Linux games. As for *Wine*, it's not stable enough to be used in real life.
It has also been suggested that Microsoft loses money on every X-Box sale, and attempts to make it up in game sales, so by buying an X-Box and no games, you're costing them money, which is good because they're evil. Personally I wouldn't recommend buying one for this reason alone, but that's me.
So, paying M$ for Xbox I will help to destroy the evil? Tell me you're kidding. Personally I would rather donate money to some Linux fund or FSF or even better - buy something from ThinkGeek :)
So, the conclusion is that Linux on Xbox at this stage is unreasonable, it's just a research project.
Less is more !
This depends on whether or not you are actually good at soldering. I for one have destroyed many PSX's in the past due to my clumsiness. Regardless, CT forgot one important fact: if you mod your XboX, you will _permanently_ (well, without some creative hacking and another Xbox, which, in having one already defeats the purpose) lose the ability to use Xbox Live, as the Xbox's unique,internal serial number will become banned.
Remember that this is how Linux got started in the first place.
Yeah, I remember. Linus was looking at his Nintendo for days, trying to figure out how to make it do something useful. Then he remembered: games like Athena and The Legend of Zelda had a some battery-backed RAM in the cartridge. He knew that the NES used a similar chip to the one in his IIGS, but because Nintendo wasn't letting him use such software as Music Construction Set and FredWriter, he was getting ripped off.
Actually, I don't remember at all. Linus had access to a computer and a rough guide to POSIX.1 (IIRC). He didn't have to deal with hardware that was specifically designed to stop him from running his own software on it like the XBOX is.
You've missed the point of using a public-key signature checking algorithm. The Xbox doesn't have any secrets you can "tease out" by this or any other means - AIUI the key the Xbox uses to check signatures is already well known. You might as well do the signature checking on your own PC and do the timing analysis on that for all the good it'll do you.
Xenu loves you!
Some idiots think that everyone who writes Free software has an obligation to do anything at all. These are the poeple who also whine about shit all day like the fact that Enlightenment hasn't seen an update in a while, Mozilla's broken, blah blah blah all day long.
Hey, dipshits of the world: If you don't like the state of Linux / RPM / &c just FIX IT BITCH! The code is there for the fixing!
I'm paraphrasing one of his lines in the FAQ:
Q: What if Microsoft removes Agent Under Fire from the shelves?
A: Don't worry, AUF is one of many games to have this bug..
What I don't understand is why he would pick AUF as the main game if he had multiple choices, and give EA a software sales boost? That's not "screwing MS" (which I'm sure is half the reason for this whole project), that's screwing the entire Xbox gaming community who have to endure horrible ports of horrible EA games with horrible graphics.
Why not a Sega game? Why not a Tecmo game? Why not a game from any other REAL developer who properly support the Xbox with games they work hard on, instead of the videogaming equivalent of Nsync music that EA is?
You can use the box for other purposes while still retaining the ability to play games on it. As for Wine, WineX is quite usable for games, Crossover is quite usable for standard apps, and even vanilla Wine works quite well in many cases.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
If you took every Xbox that ever has existed or will exist and set them working 24/7, it would take trillions of years to find the key.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
In other words, If you (or someone nearby) has ALREADY purchased an X-Box to play games on, it would be interesting to stop playing games, right? At this time it's hard to count good Linux games. As for *Wine*, it's not stable enough to be used in real life.
:)
By repurpose I meant use for a different purpose, yes - use the X-Box for something other than playing games.
So, paying M$ for Xbox I will help to destroy the evil? Tell me you're kidding. Personally I would rather donate money to some Linux fund or FSF or even better - buy something from ThinkGeek
It wasn't my idea, and as I said, I don't recommend it. Speaking of ThinkGeek, it has come to my attention that I need a tie, and their "ties suck" tie would do nicely...
So, the conclusion is that Linux on Xbox at this stage is unreasonable, it's just a research project.
Yes, pretty much. What were you thinking?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
So do these guys get the prize? Wasn't there a cash prize for Linux without a modchip?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
OK, you're right that it would take an inordinate amount of time to search the "entire" key space, but statistically speaking it's still possible to get "lucky" and find the key before you've exausted the key space. I know it's optimistic, but stranger things have happend IRL. I beleive the EFF's DES cracker found the correct key after seaching through about half of the DES keyspace... Sure 2048-bit RSA is a *MUCH* harder problem, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try : )
I think it is because at the time MS introduced the Xbox, they claimed that there was no way you could hack the Xbox to run Linux. Also, they would (jokingly) hire the first one who could do it. I guess there must be a lot of hackers who want to work for MS :-) Considering that MS always boast that they are the technology leader (and extinct the hackers !), the hackers just want to show who is in charge.
Long time reader, medium time anonymous coward.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
Im my day we had to walk to work in the snow and up hill both ways. We didn't have any fancy USB data keys or buffer overflows to use and had to enter boot loaders through the computers key pad by hand in Octal!
...with a bit of work a PVR using Myth TV...
So, in which of the nonexistant PCI slots in the Xbox are you going to put your tuner card?
(Not that anyone's likely to read this by now..)
The original hacks to run assembly programs on TI-85 calculators was to mess with the pointers used in the custom menu. They only got set with a backup, so that's why ZShell et al. had to be sent as a full backup.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
The odds of coming up with the right key during your lifetime are significantly less than the odds of gaining psychic powers after being struck by a lightning bolt thrown by a flying pig playing Duke Nukem Forever while winning every current lottery similtaneously. It would be a waste of CPU and electrical power to even begin to try. Use cycles on something at least remotely useful, like Seti@Home, Folding@Home, or even distributed.net.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Maybe you should try interacting with some users and you will discover that the statement is true.
Of course, I think that what the original poster meant to say was "we've got a lot of users who don't care enough about their computers to learn about them". That's not a crime although it certainly is understandable why technical people would get frustrated by that attitude.
I don't know about you but I know that my attitude towards my car is VERY similar to the typical office drone's attitude towards their desktop PC. I know how to fuel it up, there is a little light that comes on when it is time to take it in for service, and I am deeply suspicious that the technical people responsible for maintaining and fixing it are not always truthful with me.
You're not being very optimistic : ( I'm amused that you've included seti@home as an alternative... Many of the arguments that you posit against trying to crack the signing keys have been arguments against SETI too. It seems that you're making a value judgement here and that's fine with me, but I think I'll be doing both for a while. Thanks for the encouragement : )
a) No one knows if there's life out there or whether we can detect it, but the chances are a helluva lot better than the infinitesimal probability of cracking the xbox
b) If Seti ever succeeds, not neccessarily within your lifetime but within the lifetime of the human race, it would probably completely change the lives of every living person. For the xbox key to make any difference at all, it would have to be cracked within the next ten years or so.
Now, don't let me tell you what to do with your CPU, but Seti's improbability/benefit ratio looks a lot better than the Xbox's.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I want to run Linux on a hacked xbox with the sole purpose in life is to spam M$ with "F*CK YOU BILL" emails on a relentless schedule.
Let the games begin!
HA HA!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, it maybe can, but only if a system is bug free (without bugs, which can be exploitable). But if you have bug free system, then you do not need Paladium to protect you from viruses/trojans/crackers/... .
hany
Where there's a will, there's a way.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
Only problem is, the only "circumvention tool" they're using is 007AUF itself. (Everything else involved - like USB memory cards - doesn't have any circumvention effect.)
So EA can be sued under the DMCA. Whoops! No they can't - MS authorised their code to run, bugs and all.
Well, that is interesting, seeing as my CVS tree doesn't have those files, or that directory. It's the tree I do my source builds from so I know it works.
No. Original software was written to exploit the bug. (It's the "included zip file" from the announcement). You can't simply copy any old executable code onto the memcard and expect the game to load it- the hacker composed a special, magic header block to smash stack, fool signing, or something.
That software is "a tool"- and unlike 077AUF, it was designed with the explicit purpose of evading Microsoft's code-signing checks- which are a "copy protection mechanism"!
This kind of reminds me of Super 3d Noah's Ark for the Super Nintendo. On that game, you had to have an existing SNES game (I think any one would do) and plug it into the top of the Super 3d Noah's Ark cartridge, sort of like the Game Genie. I imagine this had something to do with the fact that S3DNA was the only unlicensed SNES game, so it needed another game connected to make use of its licensed hardware. You could look at Agent Under Fire as the licensed game which is needed to run the unlicensed program, Linux.
And I bet it wasn't 2003 either.
i jest not.
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
I really don't wish to know :/.
Mythtv supports seperate front and back ends. This means you can use your xbox to play back your video and display it on your tv, and a server with tuner cards seperately to record the stuff.
I have this setup under construction at the moment, I have xbox part of it working well and am just waiting on some hardware for the server.
Martin
The one labelled "USB"
Actually, closer to 23.3 GB
Luke-Jr