PKGi PS3

PKGi PS3 is a PlayStation 3 port of PSVita pkgi.

The pkgi-ps3 homebrew app allows to download and install .pkg files directly on your PS3.

Comments, ideas, suggestions? You can contact me on Twitter and on my website.

Features

• easy to use: list available downloads, including searching, filtering, and sorting.
• standalone: no PC required, everything happens directly on the PS3.
• automatic downloads: just choose an item, and it will be downloaded by the app to your HDD (direct mode) or queued for background download (background mode) using the internal Download Manager.
• resumes interrupted downloads: you can stop a download at any time, switch applications, and come back to resume the download later.
• content activation: the app can generate .rif files for downloaded content (system must be activated)

Notes:

• queuing up multiple downloads is only supported when using background download mode.
• background download tasks will only show up after rebooting your PS3.

Download

Get the latest version here.

Changelog

See the latest changes here.

Setup instructions

You need to create a pkgi.txt file in /dev_hdd0/game/NP00PKGI3/USRDIR that contains the items available for installation. The text database format is user customizable. Check this section to learn how to define your own custom db format.

Multiple databases

You can also load additional database files:

• pkgi_games.txt
• pkgi_dlcs.txt
• pkgi_themes.txt
• pkgi_avatars.txt
• pkgi_demos.txt
• pkgi_managers.txt
• pkgi_emulators.txt
• pkgi_apps.txt
• pkgi_tools.txt

Items on each of these files will be auto-categorized to the file content type. Note: The app assumes that every database file has the same format, as defined in dbformat.txt.

Online DB update

You can refresh and sync an online database by adding the DB URL(s) to the config.txt file in /dev_hdd0/game/NP00PKGI3/USRDIR.

For example:

url http://www.mysite.com/mylist.csv
url_demos http://www.demos.com/otherlist.csv
url_emulators http://www.example.com/emulators.csv

Using this setup, pkgi.txt will be updated with mylist.csv, pgi_demos.txt with otherlist.csv , and pkgi_emulators.txt with emulators.csv.

Next time you open the app, you'll have an additional menu option called Refresh. When you select it, the local databases will be syncronized with the defined URLs.

DB formats

The application needs a text database that contains the items available for installation, and it must follow the default format definition, or have a custom format definition file.

Default DB format

The default database file format uses a very simple CSV format where each line means one item in the list:

contentid,type,name,description,rap,url,size,checksum

where:

Note: name and description cannot contain newlines or commas.

An example pkgi.txt file:

EP0000-NP9999999_00-0AB00A00FR000000,0,My PKG Test,A description of my pkg,dac109e963294de6cd6f6faf3f045fe9,http://192.168.1.1/html/mypackage.pkg,2715513,afb545c6e71bd95f77994ab4a659efbb8df32208f601214156ad89b1922e73c3
UP0001-NP00PKGI3_00-0000000000000000,0,PKGi PS3 v0.1.0,,,http://bucanero.heliohost.org/pkgi.pkg,284848,3dc8de2ed94c0f9efeafa81df9b7d58f8c169e2875133d6d2649a7d477c1ae13

Content types

User-defined DB format

To use a custom database format, you need to create a dbformat.txt file, and save it on /dev_hdd0/game/NP00PKGI3/USRDIR.

The dbformat.txt definition file is a 2-line text file:

• Line 1: the custom delimiter character (e.g.: ;, ,, |, etc.)
• Line 2: the column names for every column in the custom database, delimited by the proper delimiter defined in line 1

Note: For the columns to be properly recognized, use the column tag names defined in the table above.

All the columns are optional. Your database might have more (or less) columns, so any unrecognized column will be skipped.

Example

Example dbformat.txt, for a database using semi-colon (;) as separator:

;
name;TITLE ID;REGION;description;AUTHOR;TYPE;url;rap;size

Result: only the name,description,url,rap,size fields will be used.

Example

Example dbformat.txt, for a database using character pipe (|) as separator:

|
REGION|TITLE|name|url|rap|contentid|DATE|PKG FILENAME|size|checksum

Result: only the name,url,rap,contentid,size,checksum fields will be used.

Usage

Using the application is simple and straight-forward:

• Move UP/DOWN to select the item you want to download, and press .
• To see the item's details, press .
• To sort/filter/search press . It will open the context menu. Press again to confirm the new settings, or press to cancel any changes.
• Press left or right trigger buttons L1/R1 to move pages up or down.
• Press L2/R2 trigger buttons to switch between categories.

Notes

• RAP data: if the item has .rap data, the file will be saved in the /dev_hdd0/exdata/ folder.

Q&A

1. Where to get a rap string?

   You can use a tool like RIF2RAP to generate a .rap from your existing .rif files. Then you can use a tool like hexdump to get the hex byte string.

2. Where to get .pkg links?

   You can use PSDLE to find .pkg URLs for the games you own. Then either use the original URL, or host the file on your own web server.

3. Where to remove interrupted/failed downloads to free up disk space?

   Check the /dev_hdd0/tmp/pkgi folder - each download will be in a separate .pkg file by its title id. Simply delete the file and start again.

4. Download speed is too slow!

   Optimization is still pending. If direct download is slow, you can use background download mode to download files using the internal PS3 Download Manager.

Credits

• Bucanero: Project developer
• mmozeiko: PS Vita pkgi

Building

You need to have installed:

• PS3 toolchain
• PSL1GHT SDK
• Tiny3D library
• YA2D library (an extended version from my repo)
• PolarSSL library
• MikMod library
• dbglogger library (only required for debug logging)

Run make to create a release build. After that, run make pkg to create a .pkg install file.

You can also set the environment variable PS3LOAD=tcp:x.x.x.x to the PS3's IP address; that will allow you to use make run and send pkgi-ps3.self directly to the PS3Load listener.

To enable debug logging, build PKGi PS3 with make DEBUGLOG=1. The application will send debug messages to UDP multicast address 239.255.0.100:30000. To receive them you can use socat on your PC:

$ socat udp4-recv:30000,ip-add-membership=239.255.0.100:0.0.0.0 -

License

pkgi-ps3 is released under the MIT License.