mips64emul documentation: Misc. |
!!mips64emul <-- configuration files must start like this ! ! This is an example configuration file for mips64emul. ! Anything following an exclamation mark (and also the exclamation ! mark itself) is ignored. ! ! Each configuration file should contain one emul entry. Almost ! everything else is optional. emul( name("my test emul") ! Optional name of this emulation ! This creates a network (ethernet): net( ipv4net("10.2.0.0") ! The default is 10.0.0.0/8, but ipv4len(16) ! it can be overridden like this. ) ! This creates a machine: machine( name("My test machine") type("dec") ! This is actually not optional subtype("5000/200") cpu(R3000) ! Normally set implicitly to a reasonable ! value, depending on type and subtype ! ncpus(4) ! use_random_bootstrap_cpu(yes) memory(128) ! 128 MB memory. This overrides ! the default amount of memory for ! this machine type. ! random_mem_contents(yes) ! prom_emulation(no) ! byte_order(big) ! Normally set implicitly (because ! of type and subtype, or decided ! from the file loaded with load load("netbsd-INSTALL") bootname("netbsd") bootarg("-a") ! n_gfx_cards(2) ! for DECstation dual/tripple-head ! emulated_hz(10000000) ! for fixing the emulated clock speed ! add_x11_display("otherbox:0") ! for dual/tripple-head etc ! add_x11_display("thisbox:0") ! force_netboot(yes) ! start_paused(yes) disk("nbsd.img") disk("6c:cdrom.iso") use_x11(yes) x11_scaledown(2) bintrans(enable) ! bintrans_size(24) ! slow_serial_interrupts_hack_for_linux(yes) ! debugger_on_badaddr(yes) { Long comments spanning multiple lines should be surrounded with tuborg parentheses. { Long comments can be nested. } ... TODO ... -i display each instruction as it is executed -J disable some speed tricks -m nr run at most nr instructions (on any cpu) -N display nr of instructions/second average, at regular intervals -p pc add a breakpoint (remember to use the '0x' prefix for hex!) -r register dumps before every instruction -t show function trace tree -y x set max_random_cycles_per_chunk to x (experimental) -u ... userland } ) ! Multiple machine are allowed. machine( name("another machine") type("hpcmips") subtype("be300") ... ) ) |
Starting the emulator with a configuration file is as simple as
$ ./mips64emul @myconfigif myconfig is the name of the configuration file.
The guest OS running inside the emulator uses a private IPv4 address, such as 10.0.0.1, and the emulator acts as a NAT-like gateway/firewall at IPv4 address 10.0.0.254. To the outside world it will seem like it is the host's OS that connects to other machines on the internet, not the guest OS.
NOTE: This is still experimental! As of 2004-07-21, ARP + ICMP + UDP + TCP are emulated well enough to let NetBSD and OpenBSD install via ftp, and use the network for many normal activities, but not everything works yet.
However, if you think that you can port an operating system to, say, the Silicon Graphics machine mode of mips64emul and hope that your operating system will run on a real SGI machine, then you will most likely fail. mips64emul simply does not emulate things well enough for that to work. Another example would be specific CPU details; if your code depends on, say, R10000 specifics, chances are that mips64emul will not be sufficient.
In many cases, hardware devices in mips64emul are only implemented well enough to fool for example NetBSD that they are working correctly, while in fact they don't work very much at all. Please keep this in mind, if you plan to use mips64emul when porting your code to MIPS.
Here are some examples. If you want to run a NetBSD/pmax kernel on an emulated DECstation machine, you would use a command line such as this:
$ ./mips64emul -D2 -d pmax_diskimage.fs netbsd-pmax-INSTALL
NOTE: For some emulation modes, such as the DECstation mode, you do not have to specify the name of the kernel, if the disk image is bootable!
It is possible to have more than one disk. For each -d argument, a disk image is added; the first will be SCSI target 0, the second will be target 1, and so on, unless you specify explicitly which ID number the devices should have.
$ ./mips64emul -D2 -d disk0.raw -d disk1.raw -d 5:disk2.raw netbsd-pmax-INSTALLNote: In the example above, disk2.raw will get scsi id 5.
If a filename has a 'c' prefix, or ends with ".iso", then it is assumed to be a CDROM device (this can be overridden with a 'd' prefix, to force a read/write disk). For example, the following command would start the emulator with two CDROM images, and one harddisk image:
$ ./mips64emul -D2 -d image.iso -d disk0.img -d c:second_cdrom.img netbsd-pmax-INSTALLUsually, the device with the lowest id becomes the boot device. To override this, add a 'b' prefix to one of the devices:
$ ./mips64emul -D2 -d rootdisk.img -d bc:install-cd.iso name_of_kernelIf you have a physical CD-ROM drive on the host machine, say /dev/cd0c, you can use it as a CD-ROM directly accessible from within the emulator:
$ ./mips64emul -D2 -d rootdisk.img -d bc:/dev/cd0c name_of_kernelIt is probably possible to use harddisks as well this way, but I would not recommend it.
Using emulated tape drives is a bit more complicated than disks, because a tape can be made up of several "files" with space in between. The solution I have choosen is to have one file in the host's file system space for each tape file. The prefix for using tapes is 't', and the filename given is for the first file on that tape (number zero, implicitly). For files following file nr 0, a dot and the filenumber is appended to the filename.
As an example, starting the emulator with
-d t4:mytape.imgwill cause SCSI id 4 to be a tape device, using the following file number to name translation scheme:
File number: | File name in the host's filesystem: |
0 | mytape.img |
1 | mytape.img.1 |
2 | mytape.img.2 |
.. | .. |
If you already have a number of tape files, which should be placed on the same emulated tape, then you might not want to rename all those files. Use symbolic links instead (ln -s).
There is another advantage to using symbolic links for tape filenames: every time a tape is rewound, it is reopened using the filename given on the command line. By changing what the symbolic name points to, you can "switch tapes" without quiting and restarting the emulator.
Using gzip and gunzip on disk images can be very slow, as these files can be multiple gigabytes large, but this is usually necessary for transfering disk images over the internet. If you receive a gzipped disk image, say disk.img.gz, and run a naive
$ gunzip disk.img.gz
on it, you will not end up with an optimized file unless gunzip supports that. (In my experiments, it doesn't.) In plain English, if you type ls -l and the filesize is 9 GB, it will actually occupy 9 GB of disk space! This is often unacceptable.
Using a simple tool which only writes blocks that are non-zero, a lot of space can be saved. Compile the program cp_removeblocks in the experiments/ directory, and type:
$ gunzip -c disk.img.gz | ./cp_removeblocks /dev/stdin disk.img
This will give you a disk.img which looks like it is 9 GB, and works like the real file, but the holes are not written out to the disk. (You can see this by running for example du disk.img to see the physical block count.)
$ ./mips64emul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_hostname tab.csbnet.se $ ./mips64emul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_date Sun Jan 25 02:26:14 GMT 2004 $ ./mips64emul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sleep usage: pmax_bin_sleep seconds $ ./mips64emul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sleep 5 $ ./mips64emul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sync
$ ./mips64emul -q -u ultrix ultrix4_bin_date UNIMPLEMENTED ultrix syscall 54 UNIMPLEMENTED ultrix syscall 62 Mon Feb 9 12:50:59 WET 2004 $ ./mips64emul -q -u ultrix ultrix4_bin_hostname tab.csbnet.se
$ ./mips64emul -v -u netbsd/powerpc netbsd-1.6.2-macppc-bin-sync ... [ sync() ] [ exit(0) ] cpu_run_deinit(): All CPUs halted.
$ ppc64-unknown-linux-as hello-ppc64.s -o hello-ppc64.o $ ppc64-unknown-linux-ld hello-ppc64.o -o hello-ppc64 $ ./mips64emul -q -u linux/ppc64 hello-ppc64 Hello, world!
The easiest way is to hook up a serial console. The terminal must be able to capture output to a file.
These are approximately the commands that I used:
>>cnfg Show machine configuration >>printenv Show environment variables >>setenv more 0 This turns off the More messages >>e -x 0xbfc00000:0xbfffffff Dump the PROM data
Remember that DECstations are little endian, so if the dump data looks like this:
bfc00000: 0x0bf0007ethen the bytes in memory are actually 0x7e, 0x00, 0xf0, and 0x0b.
At 9600 bps, about 10KB can be dumped per minute, so it takes a while. Once enough of the PROM has been dumped, you can press CTRL-C to break out. Then, restore the more environment variable:
>>setenv more 24
Now, convert the data you just saved (little-endian words -> bytes), and store in a file. Let's call this file DECstation5000_125_promdump.bin.
$ ./decprom_dump_txt_to_bin DECstation5000_125_promdump.txt DECstation5000_125_promdump.binThis binary image can now be used in the emulator:
$ ./mips64emul -D3 -Q -M128 -q 0xbfc00000:DECstation5000_125_promdump.bin KN02-BA V5.7e ?TFL: 3/scc/access (1:Ln1 reg-12: actual=0x00 xpctd=0x01) [KN02-BA] ?TFL: 3/scc/io (1:Ln0 tx bfr not empty. status=0X 0) [KN02-BA] ... --More--?TFL: 3/scsi/cntl (CUX, cause= 1000002C) >>? ? [cmd] boot [[-z #] [-n] #/path [ARG...]] cat SCRPT cnfg [#] d [-bhw] [-S #] RNG VAL e [-bhwcdoux] [-S #] RNG erl [-c] go [ADR] init [#] [-m] [ARG...] ls [#] passwd [-c] [-s] printenv [EVN] restart script SCRPT setenv EVN STR sh [-belvS] [SCRPT] [ARG..] t [-l] #/STR [ARG..] unsetenv EVN >>cnfg 3: KN02-BA DEC V5.7e TCF0 (128 MB) (enet: 00-00-00-00-00-00) (SCSI = 7) 0: PMAG-BA DEC V5.3a TCF0 >>printenv boot= testaction=q haltaction=h more=24 #=3 console=* osconsole=3 >>(Note: at the moment, this doesn't work. I must have broken something when fixing something else, but this is what it looked like at the time.)
During bootup, the PROM complains a lot about hardware failures. That's because the emulator doesn't emulate the hardware well enough yet.
The command line options used are: -D3 for DECstation model 3 (5000/1xx), -Q to supress the emulator's own PROM call emulation, -M128 for 128MB RAM (because mips64emul doesn't correctly emulate memory detection well enough for the PROM to accept, so it will always believe there is 128MB ram anyway), and -q to supress debug messages. The 0xbfc00000 in front of the filename tells mips64emul that it is a raw binary file which should be loaded at a specific virtual address.
For the O2, a suitable command to dump the prom memory range is
>> dump -b 0xBFC00000:0xBFC80000Make sure you capture all the output (via serial console) into a file, and then run experiments/sgiprom_to_bin on the captured file.
(2005-01-16: The emulator doesn't really emulate the IP32 well enough to actually run the PROM image without using special hacks, but it might do so some time in the future.)