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Free60 Project Aims for Linux on Xbox 360
BlueMoon writes "The Free60 Project wiki and developers mailinglist has been launched. The project aims to port open source operating systems like GNU/Linux and Darwin to the Microsoft Xbox 360 gaming console.
The site already contains some interesting details about the Xbox 360 security: per-box key stored on CPU, boot ROM will be on CPU too and a hypervisor verifies the running state of the kernel."
Being a triple core 3.2GHz PowerPC it would be cool to get OS X running on the XBOX 360.
This goes extremely well with my solution to the overheating problem:
I suggest that correct this problem that you transform your "XBox" into the form it should have originally been in:
1) Buy MicroATX case (with powersupply)
2) Rip apart XBox
3) Rebuild your computer. err XBox.
Done Right?
and I suppose:
4) Install Linux and stop buying those ridiculously priced games.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
If they're too quick at crackin the new box, microsoft will patch the other xboxes they'll be making. I'd imagine that's one of the reasons they released so few at this time. The other major one being that they didn't wanna get slapped with too many lawsuits concerning house fires.
Just as apple drops the PPC, Microsoft starts using it?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...because a lot of good came out of the original Xbox being hacked. I'm sure there are a lot of high-perf researchers on a shoestring who are eyeing the price on the basic Xbox 360. Even without a hard disk, a small memory card should be enough to house a basic computation/communications infrastructure, and with the retail price on the basic 360, you should be able to string a bunch of them together to get decent computing power at a price even lower than a low-end Beowulf. I understand that the obvious application of hacking the 360 is so that you can play pirated games, but I for one am eagerly waiting to see what comes out of this project, and the PS3-hack that is soon to be.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Interesting source of the information: I met someone on the IRC the other day who told me the following...
The biggest thing I wonder about in "The key is stored inside the CPU". This adds cost, but it is possible. It means that to execute your own code, the serial number must be determined so that a replacement flash chip can be properly encrypted. I'm betting it's pretty hard to find this number out without taking apart the processor.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I've long thought that the only reason MS decided to go with the smaller laptop drives is their drastically reduced capacity. Does the lure of piracy decrease with the size of the Hard Drive? I'll admit that on my modded XBox, I prefer to rip all of my *legit* games to the HD, just for easy access. Anybody else think the same way?
Well, if the device actually works (and the apparent overheating issues worked out) you will end up with a low cost, low profile machine with TV-out that can be used as a media center box while (in a perfect world) being able to still playing XBox games online.
One box to do it all. You get a lot by being able to run your own OS on the box. Don't troll with unintelligent comments, it's not worth it.
An Indian Psycologist (whose name went something like Sikh Sent Mahalia - but I'm sure I totally mangled it, and can't lay my hands on the book) identified the necessary components of "flow" as skills, rules, goals, and feedback. For any activity, whether work or play, if you lack the skill, or if the activity is too easy or too hard, you are frustrated and unhappy. If you can't discern the rules (or meta rules), you are frustrated and unhappy. If there is no goal, you are frustrated and unhappy. If there is no feedback on your progress, you are frustrated and unhappy.
Sports like football have all the components (for those with the skill), and there is "flow". Putting linux on machines designed to prevent that very thing is like a game of football for geeks. It requires skill (is not too easy), but has been and probably can be done (is not too hard). The rules are those of logic and electronics. The goal is clear, and there is feedback along the way as you (carefully arrange to) see evidence of the system running your code further and further along in the boot process.
It can get frustrating if there is a lack of feedback - you can't find a visible bit to twiddle to show the code has gotten to a specific point.
As other posters have noted, game consoles share the distinctive trait of standardized, special-purpose hardware, on which a general-purpose Linux OS is installed. But even the best game consoles make for pretty poor PCs if you just look at the specs, so it seems to me that this is more of a proof-of-concept and the sheer devilish joy of seeing Tux on an Xbox.
But is it not possible to modify a distro for specifically that set of hardware that comes with, say, the Xbox 360? Would the gain in performance not be equal to that of games software written for that set of hardware?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Sometimes we want people to get karma for making us laugh. And Taco took away karma for Funny mods. Thus, Informative.
It would be pretty cool if Linux worked on a 360 but please remind me again why people are trying to make it so? Aren't there enough projects crying out for some decent developer input already? Maybe I am just getting old and grumpy but this seems like a terrible waste of time that could be used to great benefit.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
I know that was a joke, but the appeal of getting linux on the Xbox for me is to be able to run MythFrontend for all my video needs... which requires QT and tends to be a little clunky on ancient machines. Not that you need 3.2 ghz processors, but hey, the XBox is cheaper than a new machine.
Renderfarm maybe?
If only we could port Vray, Mental Ray and PRman to it.
Cheap renderfarm networked together. Need lots of cooling though from what I understand about the 360
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
This is (as far as I know) the very first Trusted Computing platform that we can put our hands on. Very, very interesting. And it is well done (no obvious flaws).
If somebody can break that, we may be safe! That or they may build a more secure one, but we'll be safe for more time anyway.
Rethinking email
so I highly doubt Microsoft would create huge disruptions in supplies just to stop this behavoir.....
If Sony's cat-and-mouse game with PSP homebrew enthusiasts is any indication of what Microsoft might do, especially given that one of the linked pages has "TPM"...
Everyone expects that Microsoft would want to shut such a site down. Believe it or not, if the Trusted Computing Machine paradigm is to really take hold, Microsoft is going to have to wait it out. Lots of companies have worked on other tamper-proof technology. If this platform can withstand a very large portion of that attack, then they will have a reputation to be proud of - from a security perspective.
Bruce Schneier reminds us of several attributes in his book Secrets and Lies.
For the record, I have no interest in playing on a 360, much less compromizing one, but if Microsoft can apply the above principles, then they will have a reputation and platform other non-gaming industries can embrace. Even Sony couldn't buy that with money. I do, however, have my doubts that Microsoft has focused on security robustness because their first and formost motto should be "It's all about the gaming experience." Fail that and the thing dies anyway.
Other systems may use one-time-programmable chips, and most of these have various kinds of "security bits" that effectively slams the door on the possibility of reading the existing program and changing it. Typically something done in order to retain trade secrets.
Now, there are also field-programmable units, whether memories or erasable and re-writeable controller, with some kind of EEPROM memory in them. Even if they can be erased and re-programmed, these still tend to have some kind of security mechanism for the benefit of those wanting to keep their trade secrets.
I do expect that Microsoft has not made it easy to reprogram or even inspect the contents of these memory areas that hold the key for the unit. And it's not like there'd be a separate 24C01 memory chip with an I2C-bus interface holding the secret key, we can expect that there are some nonvolatile bytes of memory safely tucked away inside the chip.
Very likely, this memory is designed as externally write-only-once, so that once the key is written it can never be either read or rewritten. This resembles the region coding change limitation on DVD-drives, where the region code may be changed N times and it eventually sticks at the last one. Reduce N to 1 here, don't implement any way of externally reading the value, and there it is.
That does not preclude the possibility of overall testing of the external response to stimuli and deducing the internal secrets; but it does make this job quite a bit harder. After all, the device must eventually be able to run code from an external data source, as opposed to embedded controllers that have a fixed program that hardly ever changes.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
I doubt it. IANAL - but they do not use the words "xbox" in their name, which means that they are going against the phrase "360". Numbers cannot be trademarked - though others have tried. Think intel and 486. That's why they changed the name of their next generation CPU to a word which was "pentium". They had a naming contest within the company with nice prizes and came up with something usable from one of the employees.
Free60 is very clever. Kudos to them.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
To the best of my knowledge there is still no crack for the Xbox that doesn't involve hardware modification.
Done and done.
It involves getting in through a savegame. I had this done to my XBox; it has something to do with FTPing in and replacing boot files.
Hopefully the new system gets cracked quickly; an XBox with XBox Media Center is very useful!
To the best of my knowledge there is still no crack for the Xbox that doesn't involve hardware modification.
There's a simple, Free exploit that uses a buffer overflow in MechAssault to run unsigned code under the security restrictions of the game itself; one of the things it can do is write files to disk. Appropriate files can replace or modify the Dashboard, allowing unsigned code to run with no restrictions and act as an operating system. Such code exists Freely for older Xboxen; for newer ones, there is technically illegal code with the same effect.
("Technically illegal" because it was built with an unlicensed copy of the Xbox developer's kit.)
SourceForge downloads page - get "MechInstaller", dd that to a drive that you can hook up to your Xbox, and load one of its saved games with an original (not "Platinum Hits") version of MechAssault 1. See xbox-linux.org.
And the downsides are that you can't play XBox Live games. Which is fine for some, because you may not want to pay to play on servers that may otherwise be free, but on the XBox 360, the central online service plays a much more important role, so it will be a greater disincentive to hack your box.
Look, I think getting Linux running on some random platform is interesting, and the Xbox 360 may actually have a fair amount of horsepower. But aren't there better things for people to be spending their time and money on that would contribute more to the future of open source? So, instead of hacking the Xbox, how about developing hardware that's open by design?
If people took the money they're going to spend on reverse engineering the Xbox and spent it instead on open hardware development, we'd already have open GPU's, sound cards, motherboards, you name it.
At the same time, open source is borne out of everyone doing whatever they find to be most fascinating, and it's that freedom that has resulted in many people developing open source software that is useful to everyone, whether intentionally or by accident.