How to run Ubuntu on PS4 with FW1.76

Last week the last piece came together to run the Linux loader on the PS4 with 1.76FW, now it wasn’t what you saw failoverflow run but it was a big step in the right direction. Soon or later someone was going to get a full Linux distro working on the PS4 and today that’s what happen, as seen in this YouTube video below.

https://youtu.be/7Ngo80zpEMo

Here’s a little guide from playstationhax.it member fx0day on how you to can get this working on your PS4.

What you need:

• PS4 with Fw 1.76
• Ubuntu
• USB HDD or a USB thumb drive big enough to install Ubuntu.

1 Download the Iso 

2 Copy the iso to Usb with a tool like unetbootin (Win/mac/linux)  https://unetbootin.github.io/ (You can burn on a Dvd also)

3 Boot on this Usb or Dvd

4 Launch Install on your Usb HDD or Usb key (you can make small partition in Fat32 for Bzimage and initramfs) and the rest in Ext4

I’ve used the ubuntu-14.04.4-desktop-amd64.iso and made the install on my USB HDD (with a PC of course) , nothing more to say here just configure your keyboard layout , password …)

So now you should have Ubuntu installed on your USB HDD …

Now go to the PS4-Playground and load Linux (you must have of course a USB key with bZimage & initramfs.cpio.gz in the PS4)

Now you should see better-initramfs shell …

Plug the Usb Hdd where you have your ubuntu install (At this point you can remove the Usb key with bZimage & initramfs.cpio.gz everything is in RAM)
Type fdisk -l to see the name of your Usb Hdd ( /dev/sdXX)

As you can see my ubuntu partition is in /dev/sdc1
Now just type (if your bootable partition is sdc1)

mount /dev/sdc1 newroot/
exec switch_root /newroot/ /newroot/sbin/init

Sometimes exec switch_root don’t start at the first time , just type the command again ..

Wait a few seconds and you should see Ubuntu running

Keep in mind that there’s no network working yet

If you need some extra help getting this to work on your PS4 checkout this thread at playstationhax.it

source: