XeLL – Linux bootloader for the Xbox360!

Felix Domke, the man who made the news a little while ago when he released kernel patches for Xbox360-specific hardware, has just released a bootloader which sets up a Linux environment on your 360. While the stuff available currently isn’t very exciting for the common Linux user, the future holds a lot of promise if applications get ported to the 360-specific architecture. Here’s what’s in the readme:

This is XeLL.

XeLL is the Xenon Linux Loader. It’s a second-stage bootloader and is usually run by an exploit. The method of booting this is not a part of this project.

XeLL catches CPU threads, sets them up (basically setting HRMOR to zero), loads an ELF file from either network (tftp) or CDROM, and launches it. It also contains a flat device tree for linux.

cdrom.c includes a very simple ISO9660 parser, which tries to boot the file named “”vmlinux”.

lwIP (http://www.sics.se/~adam/lwip/) is used for networking. Network config is currently hardcoded in network.c (and main.c). XeLL also contains a HTTP server. It is not really used.

XeLL is licensed under the GPL v2, and no other version.

Xenon-specific stuff of XeLL was written by Felix Domke <[email protected]>, other parts where taken from other free sourcecodes. No non-free hardware documentation was used for developing XeLL.

XeLL is in a very early stage, but is (most of the time) fully working.

In case you’re wondering, you need an Xbox360 with a buggy kernel (version 4532 or 4548). Unfortunately, if you’ve been on Live or tried out new games, you probably have the latest kernel update (4552) which doesn’t have any known exploits currently. If you’re one of the lucky ones, grab the source from the cvs repository, compile it, and use it with the Crawler360 loader to load the linux environment on the 360.

Personally, I can’t wait for more great stuff from these guys. With the speed at which these things are moving forward, you can be sure that the next few weeks will bring a lot more exciting stuff. It’s gonna be a great ride, and we’ll be there to cover every bit of it!

Felix Domke, the man who made the news a little while ago when he released kernel patches for Xbox360-specific hardware, has just released a bootloader which sets up a Linux environment on your 360. While the stuff available currently isn’t very exciting for the common Linux user, the future holds a lot of promise if applications get ported to the 360-specific architecture. Here’s what’s in the readme:

This is XeLL.

XeLL is the Xenon Linux Loader. It’s a second-stage bootloader and is usually run by an exploit. The method of booting this is not a part of this project.

XeLL catches CPU threads, sets them up (basically setting HRMOR to zero), loads an ELF file from either network (tftp) or CDROM, and launches it. It also contains a flat device tree for linux.

cdrom.c includes a very simple ISO9660 parser, which tries to boot the file named “”vmlinux”.

lwIP (http://www.sics.se/~adam/lwip/) is used for networking. Network config is currently hardcoded in network.c (and main.c). XeLL also contains a HTTP server. It is not really used.

XeLL is licensed under the GPL v2, and no other version.

Xenon-specific stuff of XeLL was written by Felix Domke <[email protected]>, other parts where taken from other free sourcecodes. No non-free hardware documentation was used for developing XeLL.

XeLL is in a very early stage, but is (most of the time) fully working.

In case you’re wondering, you need an Xbox360 with a buggy kernel (version 4532 or 4548). Unfortunately, if you’ve been on Live or tried out new games, you probably have the latest kernel update (4552) which doesn’t have any known exploits currently. If you’re one of the lucky ones, grab the source from the cvs repository, compile it, and use it with the Crawler360 loader to load the linux environment on the 360.

Personally, I can’t wait for more great stuff from these guys. With the speed at which these things are moving forward, you can be sure that the next few weeks will bring a lot more exciting stuff. It’s gonna be a great ride, and we’ll be there to cover every bit of it!