1. First go to System->Administration->Users and Groups, type in your root password and you should get to a screen with all of your users. Now click on the ‘Manage Groups‘ button and then on the ‘Add Group‘ button. Type ‘psplink‘ in the Group name section and select your user in the Group Members section. Click on Ok and then twice on Close. Now you have to logoff and log back in for your user to be added to the new group. You can also do this with terminalcommands but quite frankly I forgot how the commands work (since I don’t add groups and users on a regular basis) and I was too lazy to find out how they work again, so that’s why I chose the GUI-approach.

2. Start psplink on your PSP and plug the usb cable in. Type this command in the terminal :

lsusb

Now you should see something like this:

Bus 005 Device 005: ID 054c:01c9 Sony Corp.
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 0c45:624f Microdia
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 046d:c019 Logitech, Inc.
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 08ff:2580 AuthenTec, Inc.
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

3. Find the line with Sony Corp. in it and write down the two hexidecimal numbers in front of it. In my case it’s 054c and 01c9. The first number is the vendor id and is the same for all PSP’s and the second number is the product id, which is hardcoded in usbhostfs_pc so it should be the same for everybody. There is a way to change the product id by either changing it in the sourcecode and recompiling it or by supplying the wanted product id in the psplink.ini file on your PSP. Here’s how mine looks like:

# Example psplink configuration file.

# pid=num Set the product ID for hostfs allows you to use multiple PSPs at one time
# Must specify the PID using the -p option of usbhostfs_pc
# pid=0x1C9

# pluser=[0 1] Enable the PSPLink user module
pluser=0

# resetonexit=[0 1] Specify wheher to reset psplink when sceKernelExitGame
# is called
resetonexit=1

So if you wanted to change the product id (because you have more than 1 PSP for example) you would remove the ‘#‘ in front of the pid=0x1C9 line and change the hexidecimal number.

4. Now you need to create a rules file in /etc/udev/rules.d/ so type:

cd /etc/udev/rules.d
gksudo gedit 96-psplink.rules

Now edit this file to look like this:

SUBSYSTEM!=”usb_device”, GOTO=”psp_rules_end”
SYSFS{idVendor}==”054c”, SYSFS{idProduct}==”01c9″, GROUP=”psplink”, MODE=”0664″
LABEL=”psp_rules_end”

Pay attention here, you see the idVendor and idProduct tags in the second line? Replace the hexidecimal codes you got form the lsusb command with your own. If you have more than 1 PSP you could create more files like “96-psplink2.rules” for your second PSP. Save the file(s) and disconnect your psp.

5. Now open up a terminal, connect your psp and type:

usbhostfs_pc

Or if you have changed your product id:

usbhostfs_pc -p <value>

And it should say “Connected to device”. If not, then type this:

sudo udevcontrol reload_rules

If it still doesn’t work then read the instructions carefully and check if you have made an error and if it still doesn’t work you can send me and email.

I know that there are some guides out there how to setup the psptoolchain but when I followed them I still had problems compiling SDL programs. So here is my guide to installing the psptoolchain and psplibraries on Linux. I figured these out by myself and with the help of J.F.’ post on the ps2dev forums, so my thanks to him. I assume that you have basic shell knowledge like how to make a folder and how to change folders and stuff like that.

1. The first step is to have a couple of programs and libraries setup before you can compile the toolchain. These programs are stated in the readme file included in the psptoolchain package, but it wasn’t complete at the time i downloaded it, so i’ll write them here just in case. Get these programs and/or libraries (ubuntu users can use Synaptic Package Manager to install these):

• autoconf
  
• automake v1.9
  
• bison
  
• flex
  
• gcc
  
• imagemagick
  
• libreadline-dev
  
• libusb-dev
  
• libtool
  
• make
  
• ncurses (I have ncurses-base, ncurses-bin, ncurses-hex and ncurses-term)
  
• patch
  
• readline (readline-common in Synaptic)
  
• subversion
  
• texinfo
  
• wget
  
• (ubuntu-users: build-essential)

2. Now you have to get the latest psptoolchain (pspsdk is included). Open up a terminal and make a folder somewhere you’d like to have your downloaded files to reside. I use ~/Downloads where the ~/ means that it’s in my Home folder, so as an absolute path, that would be: /home/username/Downloads (username is obviously your own username).

mkdir Downloads
cd Downloads
svn co svn://svn.ps2dev.org/psp/trunk/psptoolchain psptoolchain

You will see a message like “Checked out revision xxxx” where xxxx is the newest revision, which means you just have succesfully downloaded the last version of the psptoolchain. Read the Readme file located in your Downloads/psptoolchain folder.

3. Time to compile the toolchain, but first you have to set some paths. Type this in the (still open) terminal.

cd psptoolchain
export PSPDEV=/usr/local/pspdev
export PATH=$PATH:$PSPDEV/bin

You also need to make the /usr/local/pspdev folder and give it permission to be writable by your user.

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/pspdev
sudo chmod a+rxw /usr/local/pspdev
sudo chown username:group /usr/local/pspdev

Pay attention to the last line. You should replace username with your username and group also with your username (that’s how i do it).
Now to compile this baby:

./toolchain.sh

Ok time to sit back and relax, because now it should start compiling without errors and it can take a long time. Most people talk about an average about 3 hours, but on my laptop (Core Duo 2Ghz) it takes about 20-30 minutes. Don’t close the terminal when it’s done, we still need it. If by some accident you closed the terminal don’t worry. Just type those export-lines above here in the terminal and you are good to go.

4. When you have no errors (you should have no errors), it’s time to download and install the psplibraries package. It contains a collections of libraries such as SDL, SDL_mixer, jpeg, png, zlib etc. I recommend that you download this as well. On the terminal type the following commands:

cd ..
svn co svn://svn.ps2dev.org/psp/trunk/psplibraries psplibraries

Now you will have downloaded the lastest psplibraries package. Again read the Readme file inside the psplibraries folder.

5. Time to compile the libraries. Type these commands in the terminal:

cd psplibraries
./libraries.sh

And it should compile, again with no errors. On my laptop it takes about 20 minutes to compile so go get something to drink and relax, we are almost done.

6. Last thing you need to do is add a couple of lines to your .bashrc file in your home folder.

gedit ~/.bashrc

Add the following lines at the end of the file (and save of course):

export PSPDEV=”/usr/local/pspdev”
export PSPSDK=”$PSPDEV/psp/sdk”
export PATH=”$PATH:$PSPDEV/bin:$PSPSDK/bin”

And now you should have everything setup to start developing applications for the psp!

7. (optional) If you also want to use the pspusblink package follow these steps. On the terminal:

cd ..
cd psptoolchain/build/psplinkusb
make release

Now go to the release_oe folder inside the pspusblink folder and copy the psplink folder to your psp. On my psp the directory is the PSP/GAME folder, but yours may differ. How to use psplink can be found in the manual found in the pspusblink folder.

Congratulations, everything should be setup and working correctly now! If you have any problems, found a mistake in my guide, just mail me by clicking on the about me link and filling in the form.