PlayStation 3 liberated

[Robert Millan]

Maybe you heard the recent news that the handcuffware in Sony PS3 has been
recently broken:

  http://geohotps3.blogspot.com/2010/01/heres-your-silver-platter.html

This is somewhat relevant to GRUB:  It is now possible to port free operating
systems to the PS3, but they will need a bootloader.  And GRUB already has
two key pieces:

  - PowerPC support on other platforms

  - Operation mode that starts GRUB as a userland process (grub-emu)

With the PS3 exploit, it is possible to get full access to physical memory.  My
understanding of PowerPC architecture is very limited, but I believe this would
allow grub-emu to:

  - Rise privilege level

  - Disable interrupts

  - Setup 1:1 MMU map

Thereby obtaining full control of the hardware.

I think it would be feasible to make a GSoC project for this, or at least the
beginning of it.  Let me know if you'd like to be a mentor this summer.

-- 
Robert Millan

  "Be the change you want to see in the world" -- Gandhi