ps3netsrv-go

It's an alternative implementation of original ps3netsrv which needed to install games using WebMAN/IrisMAN over network (without copying files to console).

I made it because original code is way hard to read and hard to build for some platforms. And for fun and education (understanding and implementation custom network protocols, generating/serving iso image on-the-fly) of course.

This project written in Go because it's (cross-)compilation is much easier than C/C++ and resulting binaries will run without any external library on target system.

Features

Unique ✳️

• Write protection. Enabled by default, use flag --allow-write or corresponding parameter.
• TCP data exchange timeouts / auto-close of idle connections: configured by --read-timeout parameter.
• Compressed images - save your disk space without filesystem-level compression.
• Built-in client: see ps3netsrv-go client --help

Supported ✅

• Simple file transfer / directory listing
• File streaming including game images in PS3ISO
• PSX images streaming
• Client addresses whitelist, capping amount of connections
• Virtual ISO: games in directory format (residing in GAMES). Note: #28
• 3k3y/Redump images: if iso path is <root>/PS3ISO/game.iso than dedicated key expected at <root>/PS3ISO/game.dkey or at <root>/REDKEY/game.dkey

Unsupported ❌

• Multipart files *.666xx
• Subdir scanning if requested by WebMAN #29
• PS2 Games, more tests/debugging needed #31

Compressed images

ps3netsrv-go supports compressed images to help save disk space. Currently only MAME CHD format is supported.

MAME CHD

CHD is a format for space-efficient lossless compression that preserves ability to randomly access data without full decompression of whole file. Originally developed as part of MAME but today used in many emulators: ScePSX, Duckstation, PCSX2 and others. Space-efficiency is achieved by combining multiple comression algorithms to different data types (audio, data, ...) inside a raw disk image.

Powered by:

• libchdr - a C-library used to read and decompress CHD files
• purego - a loader that allows to call functions in a dynamically-loaded shared libraries without CGO.
• zig cc - C toolchain with fantastic cross-compilation abilities.

Usage

libchdr is required to be installed on the system. See Installation for more details how to do this.

Just put your .chd images into necessary directory under server root: PSXISO, PS2ISO or even PS3ISO. In case of successful libchdr loading you will see a following log message on server start:

Mar 23 00:00:00.000 INF libchdr loaded, enabling chd support

PS3 will see such images as .chd.iso - server intentionally adds .iso extension to help console properly detecting a file type.

Use chdman tool maintained by MAME to compress your existing images.

Compatibility

• PS1 (PSX) images: tested and working ✅ (kudos to @turbosagat for assistance)
• PS2 images: tested and not working ❌ (to be investigated in #31)
• PS3 images: untested ❔ (technically should work because uses same codebase as PS1 images)

Limitations

• purego does not work on some platforms supported by Go (i.e. aix and ppc64). However, they're pretty exotic nowdays and it's highly unlikely to see ps3netsrv-go running on them.
• libchdr does not support AVHuff compression codec: rtissera/libchdr#69. However it's used mainly for laserdiscs so it's very unlikely to meet it in videogame images.
• Mixed CD/non-CD codecs (cdlz and lzma) and mixed CD modes (MODE1, MODE1/RAW, etc. in image metadata) are not supported. It's possible to create such image only by specifying -c option in chdman and probably such images are not supported by other emulators as well.

Installation

This project shipped in a multiple ways for convenient installation:

• Docker images: docker pull ghcr.io/xakep666/ps3netsrv-go. amd64 and arm64 images are available.
• Linux packages: deb, rpm and archlinux. See Releases. If your distro is based on other package manager you may want to use a simple binary and a systemd unit.
• Archived binaries are also available in Releases.

libchdr

This libarary is required to enable CHD images support. It's included in a following release types:

• Docker: present in a container image, should work out of the box
• Release archive: contains compiled version of library except Windows/arm64 build.

libchdr is not included in Linux packages but declared as a dependancy. Most distros contain it in their repos. If necessary, getting it compiled on Linux is pretty straightforward if you're familiar with CMake.

Configuration

Server supports configuration via environment variables and command line flags. Environment variables names can be found in output of ps3netsrv-go server --help command. I.e. in line:

--root="."                             Root directory with games ($PS3NETSRV_ROOT).

PS3NETSRV_ROOT is environment variable name.

Also server supports configuration via config file. Example:

[server]
root = /home/user/games
client-whitelist = 192.168.1.0/24
max-clients = 10
allow-write = true

Configuration keys names are the same as command line flags names without -- prefix.

Config file discovered in following order:

• --config flag or PS3NETSRV_CONFIG_FILE environment variable
• config.ini file in current directory
• <user config directory>/ps3netsrv-go/config.ini, where <user config directory> is OS-specific directory for user configuration files:
  • %APPDATA% on Windows
  • $XDG_CONFIG_HOME or ~/.config on Linux
  • ~/Library/Application Support on macOS

Running

Simple binary

Download necessary archive from Releases, unpack it and run

$ ps3netsrv-go server

from your working directory to serve it.

Or specify custom root directory in --root flag of server subcommand:

$ ps3netsrv-go server --root=/home/user/games

To get help run:

$ ps3netsrv-go --help

To run "debug" server (for pprof, etc.) specify --debug-server-listen-addr flag.

Docker

Recommended way to serve your directory is:

$ docker run \
  -u $(id -u):$(id -g) \
  -v <data directory>:/srv/ps3data \
  -p 38008:38008 \
  ghcr.io/xakep666/ps3netsrv-go

But note that listen address displayed in logs is not an address you can connect to because it's container internal address. In-container persistent volume is also available in /srv/ps3data.

Systemd service

Deb, rpm and archlinux packages are shipped with systemd unit. Run

$ systemctl daemon-reload
$ systemctl enable ps3netsrv-go

to enable automatic startup.

Config file location is /etc/ps3netsrv-go/config.ini. Data location is /srv/ps3data. Service is running under separate user ps3netsrv.

Note for non-glibc Linux distros users

Due to usage of purego all Linux executables in releases are dynamically linked ones. By default they're linked to run with glibc because it's most popular and widespread libc. However, some distros like Alpine uses different libc (musl in case of Alpine). If you try to run ps3netsrv-go executable from release directly on such distro, you'll get an error like

exec /path/to/ps3netsrv-go: no such file or directory

There are two ways to resolve this issue:

• Compile from source code for necessary libc. Recommended way. See Building for more details.
• Run with loader: /lib/ld-musl-<arch>.so.1 /path/to/ps3netsrv-go. Downside: libchdr likely will not be loaded so CHD support will be disabled.

Windows

To run as a service it's recommended to use NSSM. It allows to specify user, startup args and environment variables.

Performance tips

• Connect your console to the network using ethernet cable. To achieve maximum performance server and console should be connected with 1Gbps network.
• Use SSD or NVMe drive to store games. It will reduce loading times.
• Use decrypted ISOs. It will reduce CPU usage and loading times. You can decrypt images using decrypt subcommand.
• Use "compiled" ISOs instead of folder with files. It will reduce loading times. You can build ISO image using makeiso subcommand.

Exposing tips

• Use limits:
  • strict root to prevent possible directory traversal outside provided root: --strict-root flag
  • by IP address(es) using --client-whitelist flag: $ ps3netsrv-go server --root=/home/games --client-whitelist=192.168.0.123
  • by number of clients using --max-clients flag
  • idle connection time: --read-timeout flag
• To expose over NAT (non-public or "grey" IP) you can use:
  • ngrok TCP tunnels
  • Reverse SSH tunnel to host with public IP
  • any other options
• To secure connection using TLS you may use two TLS-terminators (like HAProxy) configured with mutual TLS authentication. Note that desired terminator must support "wrapping" plain TCP connection to TLS with client certificate.

Requirements to build

Go 1.26+

Building

$ go mod download
$ go build -o ps3netsrv-go ./cmd/ps3netsrv-go/...

Important

Some platforms require extra build flags to be compiled successfully due to purego usage. See support notes for details.

If you're building for non-glibc Linux distro (like Alpine) or building on non-glibc distro for glibc-based distro (like on Alpine for Ubuntu) you need to properly specify ldso path via GO_LDSO environment variable:

• GO_LDSO=/lib/ld-musl-x86_64.so.1 for Alpine on x86_64 architecture
• GO_LDSO=/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 for any glibc-based distro (Ubuntu/Debian/Arch/...) on x86_64 architecture