PS3 jailbreaking using Linux and Nokia N800

As I am one of lucky owners of PS3 and because of source code of Psgroove being published on internet in recent weeks a also started to investigate how to jailbreak my PS3 myself. Finally I decided to share my experience here.

First of all you have to stay on firmware version 3.41 otherwise you won’t be able to use psfreedom800 nor any other known tools to jailbreak your PS3. There are plenty of known ways (on both Windows and Linux) how to manage this but I used simple DNS fake workaround.

DNS fake works by manually specifying DNS server on PS3 to point to our local DNS server with faked IP addresses of PS3 official servers which are used by PS3 for checking for latest firmware versions. It’ll take us just few minutes to set it up.

Install apache (or any other web) server and configure it to be able to serve /update/ps3/list/eu/ps3-updatelist.txt file. This is a file PS3 is trying to read once it’s powered as it’s checking for new firmware versions. The content of file is following (can be downloaded here):

Dest=85;CompatibleSystemSoftwareVersion=0.0000-;
Dest=85;ImageVersion=0000a20e;SystemSoftwareVersion=3.2100;CDN=http://dus01.ps3.update.playstation.net/update/ps3/image/us/2010_0401_3a08ef6164a7770ae3e7d5b9f366437a/PS3UPDAT.PUP;CDN_Timeout=30;

Path to file as well as content of the file can differ based on your country. Mine should work for whole Europe. Detailed description of file format is here.

The put these lines to /etc/hosts on your linux box (can be of course the same box as apache is running on) and replace apache_ip with IP address of Apache server serving ps3-updatelist.txt file:

apache_ip fus01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip fus01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip fjp01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip feu01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip fkr01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip fuk01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip fmx01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip fau01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip fsa01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip ftw01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip fru01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip fcn01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip dus01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip djp01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip deu01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip dkr01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip duk01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip dmx01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip dau01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip dsa01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip dtw01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip dru01.ps3.update.playstation.net
apache_ip dcn01.ps3.update.playstation.net

Install dnsmasq utility and run it with -d parameter (to see what happens in foreground).
On PS3 change network settings to manually setup DNS server and choose IP address of your linux box with running dnsmasq.
Once you power on PS3 dnsmasq should output all queries of PS3 pointing it directly to your faked ps3-updatelist.txt file which means you are done and PS3 shouldn’t annoy you with newer firmwares anymore. I also can play COD MW2 online without need to upgrade to 3.42

Now power on your Nokia N800, open the browser and go to http://kilian.no-ip.org/~shamot/PsFreedom800. Follow the install link and install PSfreedom800.
Connect to Nokia using SSH or open local shell as root (this is beyond the scope of this document) and run psfreedom-enable-n800.sh.

Then you can follow the usual procedure, unplug the PS3 from power, plug in the N800, connect the power to the PS3, then press power and quickly press the eject button… That’s it

Posted in Programming, PS3