playstation-joy-dkms

Use the new hid-sony and hid-playstation modules from the mainline in old Linux kernels!

How this works?

This package blacklists the existing hid-sony and hid-playstation kernel modules from loading. Instead, the new kernel modules hid-sony-joy and hid-playstation-joy provided by this package will be used instead.

$ lsmod | grep joy
hid_sony_joy           40960  0
hid_playstation_joy    20480  0
ff_memless             20480  2 hid_playstation_joy,hid_sony_joy
joydev                 32768  0

How to install

1. Update your Ubuntu to the latest version first, and reboot (with the latest Linux kernel)

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo reboot

2. Prepare the environment for kernel module compiling. Ensure your /etc/apt/sources.list whether the below deb-src are enabled/uncommented or not. Replace focal with your distribution version of Ubuntu.

deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal main
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates main

3. Install the build dependencies of the linux kernel

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get build-dep linux linux-image-$(uname -r)

::warning:: If you are using a kernel version below 5.9, you must use the deb package ending with -multicolor. 5.9 kernels or older has no support for the LED class multicolor. This flag includes the patches and kernels for that.

::warning:: If you are using a kernel version higher or equal to 5.9, you must NOT use the -multicolor package to avoid conflicts with the existing led-class-multicolor module. You can check by doing modinfo led-class-multicolor

4. Download latest release from here, or build it yourself using the instructions below.

5. Install required playstation-joy-dkms dependencies

sudo apt-get install build-essential dkms

6. Install the deb package

sudo apt-get install ./playstation-joy-dkms_20220314-1.deb

# or

sudo dpkg -i ./playstation-joy-dkms_20220314-1.deb

• This command will automatically compile the DKMS modules upon install. If the build failed, verify have you installed the kernel build dependencies correctly.
  • Retry DKMS installation: sudo dkms autoinstall
  • If make keeps failing, manually debug by cd to /usr/src/playstation-joy-dkms-VERSIONHERE and run make here manually.

7. Reboot your computer to take effect

sudo reboot

How to Uninstall?

So easy, just do this:

sudo apt-get remove --purge playstation-joy-dkms

Building new Debian package (.deb) yourself

1. You will need git and make to build the files. Installing build-essential in Ubuntu will do.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git build-essential

2. Clone or download this repository

git clone git@github.com:m2robocon/playstation-joy-dkms.git

3. If you have modification to the files and want to update on existing machines, change the version parameter in the root Makefile. The format is YYYYMMDD + revision number:

PACKAGE=playstation-joy-dkms
VERSION=20220314-1

If you used the INCLUDE_LED_CLASS_MULTICOLOR=true flag, make sure to add -multicolor to the back of the version string to indicate it.

4. Package it with make

make clean # clean build folder
make prepare # fetch linux from upstream, reset to HEAD, patch files, prepare fakeroot
make deb # package into deb

# or simply:

# normal packaging without led-class-multicolor
make all

# package with led-class-multicolor
INCLUDE_LED_CLASS_MULTICOLOR=true make all

What files are they?

• patches
  • Contains necessary patches for the modules to work properly and better. Will be patched on deb packaging.
• src/linux
  • The official kernel.org Linux kernel submodule, currently checked out to tag v5.15
• src/playstation-joy-dkms
  • Simply have symbolic links back to the Linux kernel submodules for editing convenience
  • Makefile for dkms compilation on target machine
• control-template
  • A template file of DEBIAN/control, specifies the debian package metadata
• pre-uninstall-template.sh
  • A template file of DEBIAN/prerm, the pre-remove script
• post-install-template.sh
  • A template file of DEBIAN/postinst, the post-install script
• dkms-template.conf
  • A template file of dkms.conf, specifies the DKMS configurations
• playstation-joy-dkms.conf
  • A /etc/modprobe.d file to blacklist existing hid-sony and hid-playstation modules.
• Makefile
  • Handles the deb packaging

Referenced kernel

Sources of hid-sony and hid-playstation are checked out to the master branch using the mainline drivers. Multiple patches are applied to make it work with older kernels.

To use an another version of reference kernel. cd to the src/linux submodule and checkout the commit or tag you want:

cd src/linux
git fetch --all --tags
git checkout tags/v5.15

License

Licensed under GPLv3.