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<b>GXemul:</b></font>
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<a href="./">Back to the index</a>
<p><br>
<h2>Miscellaneous</h2>
<p>
<ul>
<li><a href="#devel">Writing operating system code, or
developing firmware, using GXemul</a>
<li><a href="#compilercontruct">Using GXemul in compiler contruction courses</a>
<li><a href="#disk">How to start the emulator with a disk image</a>
<li><a href="#tape_images">How to start the emulator with tape images</a>
<li><a href="#disk_overlays">How to use disk image overlays</a>
<li><a href="#filexfer">Transfering files to/from the guest OS</a>
<li><a href="#largeimages">How to extract large gzipped disk images</a>
<li><a href="#userland">Running userland binaries</a>
<li><a href="#promdump">Using a PROM dump from a real machine</a>
</ul>
<p><br>
<a name="devel"></a>
<h3>Writing operating system code, or developing firmware, using GXemul:</h3>
Is this a good idea? The answer is yes and no, depending on the level of
detail you need in your simulations. If you are developing an operating
system or operating system kernel of your own, then the emulator can be a
complement to testing on real hardware.
<p>Important things to keep in mind:
<ul>
<li>Porting code to a specific machine mode, e.g. a Silicon Graphics
machine, using GXemul, will not "magically" cause the code to
work on a real machine. Sometimes code works in GXemul which doesn't
work on real hardware, sometimes it's the other way around.
<p>
<li>GXemul contains bugs, and many things are not yet implemented.
<p>
<li><b>Very important!</b> I have only implemented devices in GXemul
to the degree that NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, etc don't complain too much.
<p>
If you are developing a driver for a device which is emulated by
GXemul, and your driver does not seem to be working, then the
probability of a bug in GXemul's implementation of the device is
very much higher than that of a bug in your driver.
<p>
The device implementations in GXemul are based on the assumption
that the emulated OS is already developed and bug-free. They are
not primarily intended to be used for development of new device
driver code in operating systems, so if you do that, then be
prepared for bugs and inconsitencies.
<p>
<li>CPU details in GXemul are usually wrong. If your code depends
on, say, R10000 or MIPS64 specifics, chances are that GXemul will
not be sufficient. One example is different revisions of ISAs;
some instructions which should trigger an exception on a
real MIPS processor usually execute anyway in GXemul. Another
example is if userland code tries to access kernel memory; in some
cases there is protection against this, but not in all cases (to get
higher performance).
<p>
<li>Caches. There is no cache emulation in GXemul right now. Caches
for R2000/R3000 are faked well enough to run NetBSD, Ultrix, etc
in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECstation">DECstation</a>
emulation mode, but other than that, cache operations are treated as nops.
</ul>
<p>The bottom line is that GXemul can be useful as yet another way to test
your code during development, but it should not be fully relied on.
<p><br>
<a name="compilercontruct"></a>
<h3>Using GXemul in compiler contruction courses:</h3>
If you are learning how to write a compiler, and wish to target a
realistic target platform, then MIPS or ARM (as emulated by GXemul)
might be suitable choices.
<ul>
<li><b>(+)</b> Your compiler needs to output real assembly
language code, which the assembler (e.g. gas, the GNU assembler) can
then compile into object format, and then you need to link this
into an executable image. This is much closer to how things work
in real life than running assembly language listings in a simulator
(e.g. <a href="http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html">SPIM</a>).
<p>
<li><b>(-)</b> GXemul does not simulate <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-order_execution">out-of-order
execution</a>, penalties related to instruction scheduling, or
load-delays, so it cannot be used to create optimizing compilers
that take advantage of such processor features. GXemul keeps
track of the number of instructions executed, and that's it.
</ul>
<p><br>
<a name="disk"></a>
<h3>How to start the emulator with a disk image:</h3>
Add <i>-d [prefixes:]diskimagefilename</i> to the command line, where prefixes
are one or more single-character options. Run <b>gxemul -h</b>
to get a list of possible options.
<p>
Here are some examples. If you want to run a <a href="http://www.netbsd.org/ports/pmax/">NetBSD/pmax</a>
kernel on an emulated <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECstation">DECstation</a>
machine, you would use a command line such as this:
<pre>
$ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d pmax_diskimage.fs netbsd-pmax-INSTALL</b>
</pre>
<p>NOTE: For some emulation modes, such as the DECstation mode, you do
<i>not</i> actually have to specify the name of the kernel, if the disk
image is bootable!
<p>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.
<pre>
$ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d disk0.raw -d disk1.raw -d 5:disk2.raw netbsd-pmax-INSTALL</b>
</pre>
Note: In the example above, disk2.raw will get scsi id 5.
<p>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:
<pre>
$ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d image.iso -d disk0.img -d c:second_cdrom.img netbsd-pmax-INSTALL</b>
</pre>
Usually, the device with the lowest id becomes the boot device. To override
this, add a 'b' prefix to one of the devices:
<pre>
$ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d rootdisk.img -d bc:install-cd.iso name_of_kernel</b>
</pre>
If 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:
<pre>
$ <b>gxemul -e 3max -d rootdisk.img -d bc:/dev/cd0c name_of_kernel</b>
</pre>
It is probably possible to use harddisks as well this way, but I would not
recommend it.
<p><br>
<a name="tape_images"></a>
<h3>How to start the emulator with tape images:</h3>
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 <i>first</i> file on that tape (number zero, implicitly). For
files following file nr 0, a dot and the filenumber is appended to the
filename.
<p>
As an example, starting the emulator with
<pre>
<b>-d t4:mytape.img</b>
</pre>
will cause SCSI id 4 to be a tape device, using the following file number
to name translation scheme:
<p>
<center>
<table border="0">
<tr>
<td><b>File number:</b></td>
<td><b>File name in the host's filesystem:</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">0</td>
<td align="left">mytape.img</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">1</td>
<td align="left">mytape.img.1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">2</td>
<td align="left">mytape.img.2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">..</td>
<td align="left">..</td>
</tr>
</table>
</center>
<p>
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).
<p>
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.
<p>
<font color="#ff0000">Note: Tape support is most likely very buggy,
because it has not been tested much, and has probably also suffered
from bit-rot by now.</font>
<p><br>
<a name="disk_overlays"></a>
<h3>How to use disk image overlays:</h3>
This is most likely best understood by an example:
<p><ul>
<li>Install e.g. <a href="guestoses.html#netbsdcatsinstall">NetBSD/cats</a>.
You will end up with a disk image called
<tt>nbsd_cats.img</tt>.
<p>
<li>Running the following command will boot straight from the disk
image, with no overlay images:<pre>
<b>gxemul -XEcats -d nbsd_cats.img netbsd.aout-GENERIC.gz</b>
</pre>
<li>You may now create an overlay file, a corresponding map file,
and start the emulator with the overlay image connected to
the same (explicit) ID as the base disk image:<pre>
<b>touch overlay.img overlay.img.map
gxemul -XEcats -d 0:nbsd_cats.img -d V0:overlay.img netbsd.aout-GENERIC.gz</b>
</pre>
<li>Any changes to the filesystem you perform when using the overlay
will only be written to that overlay. For example, to perform
a "roll back", you can do the following:<pre>
<b>rm -f overlay.img overlay.img.map
touch overlay.img overlay.img.map</b>
</pre>
and then simply start the emulator again, with the newly created
overlay image.
</ul>
<p>It is also possible to add multiple overlays. In that case, writes
always go the the <i>last</i> added overlay.
<p>GXemul uses Unix' way of supporting files with "holes",
so even if <tt>ls -l overlay.img</tt> says that the overlay is several
gigabytes large, <tt>du overlay.img</tt> should reveal that only the
blocks that have actually been written to have been stored in the
overlay, e.g.:<pre>
<b>$ ls -l
..
-rw-r--r-- 1 debug wheel 3072319488 Mar 24 11:59 nbsd_cats.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 debug wheel 2465354 Mar 24 11:44 netbsd.aout-GENERIC.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 debug wheel 2930841600 Mar 24 14:02 overlay.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 debug wheel 715538 Mar 24 14:02 overlay.img.map
$ du overlay.img
864 overlay.img
</b>
</pre>
<p>The .map file is simply a raw bitmap telling which blocks of the
overlay file that are in use.
<p><br>
<a name="filexfer"></a>
<h3>Transfering files to/from the guest OS:</h3>
If the emulated machine supports networking (see <a
href="networking.html#intro">this section</a> for more info), then the easiest
way to transfer files is probably to use FTP or similar methods.
<p>There is another way of transfering files which works for any kind of
emulated machine which supports disks (either SCSI or IDE). Any file can
be supplied as a disk image. For example, consider the following:<pre>
$ <b>gxemul -XEcats -d nbsd_cats.img -d archive.tar.gz netbsd-GENERIC</b>
</pre>
This will start NetBSD/cats with <tt>nbsd_cats.img</tt> as IDE master on
controller 0 (wd0), and <tt>archive.tar.gz</tt> as IDE slave on controller
0 (wd1). From inside NetBSD, it is now possible to extract the files using
the following command:<pre>
(inside emulated NetBSD/cats)
# <b>tar zxvf /dev/wd1c</b>
</pre>
Don't worry if NetBSD complains about lack of disklabel; it doesn't
matter. On some machines, NetBSD uses <tt>wd1d</tt> instead of
<tt>wd1c</tt> for the entire disk.
There is also a minor problem: reading the end of the disk image. If you
experience problems untaring archives like this, then pad out the archive
first with some zeroes.
<p>Transfering files <i>out</i> from the emulated operating system to the
host can be done the same way. First, prepare an empty archive file:<pre>
$ <b>dd if=/dev/zero of=newarchive.tar bs=1024 count=1 seek=10000</b>
</pre>This example created a 10 MB empty file. Then, start the emulator
like this:<pre>
$ <b>gxemul -XEcats -d nbsd_cats.img -d archive.tar netbsd-GENERIC</b>
</pre>
and transfer files by creating an archive directly onto the disk image:<pre>
(inside emulated NetBSD/cats)
# <b>tar cvf /dev/wd1c filenames</b>
</pre>
where filenames are the files or directories to transfer.
<p><br>
<a name="largeimages"></a>
<h3>How to extract large gzipped disk images:</h3>
Unix filesystems usually support large files with "holes". Holes are
zero-filled blocks that don't actually exist on disk. This is very
practical for emulated disk images, as it is possible to create a very
large disk image without using up much space at all.
<p>
Using gzip and gunzip on disk images can be <i>very</i> 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
<p>
<pre>
$ <b>gunzip disk.img.gz</b>
</pre>
<p>
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 <b>ls -l</b> and the filesize is 9 GB, it will actually occupy
9 GB of disk space! This is often unacceptable.
<p>
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:
<p>
<pre>
$ <b>gunzip -c disk.img.gz | cp_removeblocks /dev/stdin disk.img</b>
</pre>
<p>
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 <b>du disk.img</b> to see the physical block
count.)
<p><br>
<a name="userland"></a>
<h3>Running userland binaries:</h3>
<font color="#ff0000"><b>NOTE 2007-06-15:</b> I just removed most of the
userland (syscall) emulation support, and started a rewrite from scratch.
The rest of this section in the documentation is not currently valid.</font>
<p>There is some skeleton code for running userland programs as well. This
will not emulate any particular machine, but instead try to translate
syscalls from e.g. NetBSD/pmax into the host's OS' syscalls. Right now,
this is just a proof-of-concept, to show that it could work; there's lots
of work left to do to make it actually run useful programs.
<p>
<ul>
<li><b>NetBSD/pmax:</b>
<br>
Running /bin/hostname or /bin/date and similarly trivial
programs from the NetBSD/pmax distribution works:<pre>
$ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_hostname</b>
tab.csbnet.se
$ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_date</b>
Sun Jan 25 02:26:14 GMT 2004
$ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sleep</b>
usage: pmax_bin_sleep seconds
$ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sleep 5</b>
$ <b>gxemul -q -u netbsd/pmax pmax_bin_sync</b>
</pre>
<p>
<li><b>Ultrix:</b>
<br>
At least /bin/date and /bin/hostname work:<pre>
$ <b>gxemul -q -u ultrix ultrix4_bin_date</b>
UNIMPLEMENTED ultrix syscall 54
UNIMPLEMENTED ultrix syscall 62
Mon Feb 9 12:50:59 WET 2004
$ <b>gxemul -q -u ultrix ultrix4_bin_hostname</b>
tab.csbnet.se
</pre>
<!--
<p>
<li><b>NetBSD/powerpc:</b>
<br>
/bin/sync from NetBSD/macppc works, but probably not much else.<pre>
$ <b>gxemul -v -u netbsd/powerpc netbsd-1.6.2-macppc-bin-sync</b>
...
[ sync() ]
[ exit(0) ]
cpu_run_deinit(): All CPUs halted.
</pre>
<p>
<li><b>Linux/PPC64:</b>
<br>
The <a href="http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-ppc/#h13">64-bit Hello World assembly language example</a>
on IBM's developerWorks pages runs:<pre>
$ <b>ppc64-unknown-linux-as hello-ppc64.s -o hello-ppc64.o</b>
$ <b>ppc64-unknown-linux-ld hello-ppc64.o -o hello-ppc64</b>
$ <b>gxemul -q -u linux/ppc64 hello-ppc64</b>
Hello, world!
</pre>
-->
</ul>
<p><br>
<a name="promdump"></a>
<h3>Using a PROM dump from a real machine:</h3>
Raw PROM images from real machines can, in a few cases, be used in
the emulator. ROM code is usually much more sensitive to correctness
of the emulator than operating system kernels or userland programs
are, so don't expect any PROM image to just magically work.
<p>
<h4>Dumping the PROM on a DECstation 5000/125:</h4>
The image first needs to be extracted from the machine. There are
several ways to do this.
<ul>
<li>Use hardware to read the PROM chip(s) directly. Not easy if you
don't have such a hardware reader.
<li>Copy the PROM memory range into a file, from a running
operating system. You need a running OS, and it must
have access to the PROM memory range. NetBSD, for example,
doesn't allow that from userland.
<li>Hook up a serial console and dump using the PROM's own dump
command.
</ul>
<p>The easiest way is to hook up a serial console. The terminal must be
able to capture output to a file.
<p>These are approximately the commands that I used:
<pre>
>><b>cnfg</b> <i>Show machine configuration</i>
>><b>printenv</b> <i>Show environment variables</i>
>><b>setenv more 0</b> <i>This turns off the More messages</i>
>><b>e -x 0xbfc00000:0xbfffffff</b> <i>Dump the PROM data</i>
</pre>
<p>Remember that DECstations are little endian, so if the dump data
looks like this:
<pre>
bfc00000: 0x0bf0007e
</pre>
then the bytes in memory are actually 0x7e, 0x00, 0xf0, and 0x0b.
<p>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:
<pre>
>><b>setenv more 24</b>
</pre>
<p>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.
<pre>
$ <b>decprom_dump_txt_to_bin DECstation5000_125_promdump.txt DECstation5000_125_promdump.bin</b>
</pre>
This binary image can now be used in the emulator:
<pre>
$ <b>gxemul -e 3min -Q -M128 -q 0xbfc00000:DECstation5000_125_promdump.bin</b>
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)
>><b>?</b>
? [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
>><b>cnfg</b>
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
>><b>printenv</b>
boot=
testaction=q
haltaction=h
more=24
#=3
console=*
osconsole=3
>>
</pre>
<p><font color="#ff0000">(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.)</font>
<p>During bootup, the PROM complains <i>a lot</i> about hardware failures.
That's because the emulator doesn't emulate the hardware well enough yet.
<p>The command line options used are: <tt>-e 3min</tt> for
"DECstation 3min" (5000/1xx), <tt>-Q</tt> to supress the emulator's own PROM
call emulation, <tt>-M128</tt> for 128MB RAM (because GXemul doesn't correctly
emulate memory detection well enough for the PROM to accept, so it will
always believe there is 128MB ram anyway), and <tt>-q</tt> to supress debug messages.
The <tt>0xbfc00000</tt> in front of the filename tells GXemul that it is a raw
binary file which should be loaded at a specific virtual address.
<p><br>
<a name="promdump_o2"><h4>Dumping the PROM on a SGI O2:</h4></a>
The general ideas in this section applies to using ROM images from other
machines as well. I have also tried this on an SGI IP32 ("O2"), in addition
to the DECstation.
<p>For the O2, a suitable command to dump the prom memory range is
<pre>
>> <b>dump -b 0xBFC00000:0xBFC80000</b>
</pre>
Make sure you capture all the output (via serial console) into a file,
and then run <tt>experiments/sgiprom_to_bin</tt> on the captured file.
<p>
<a href="sgi-o2-real.jpg"><img src="sgi-o2-real_small.jpg"></a>
<a href="20050817-sgi-o2-success-7.png"><img src="20050817-sgi-o2-success-7_small.png"></a>
<a href="20050817-sgi-o2-success-8.png"><img src="20050817-sgi-o2-success-8_small.png"></a>
<p>The photo on the left is from the real machine. The other two are
screenshots of the PROM running experimentally in GXemul, using <tt>-Y2</tt>
framebuffer scaledown.
<p><font color="#ff0000">
Note 2007-10-18: Running the O2 PROM image broke somewhere between release
0.3.8 and 0.4.0. (Running with graphics broke between 0.3.7 and 0.3.8.)</font>
<p>Normally during bootup, the IP32 PROM does a Power-On test which makes
sure that the caches and other things are working properly. GXemul doesn't
emulate all those things well enough for the tests to pass. The
experimental screenshots above were taken with cache detection skipped
manually.
<p><font color="#ff0000">
In other words: don't expect this to work out-of-the-box with GXemul right
now. It might work once I've added correct cache emulation.</font>
<p>The command line used to start the emulator, once correct cache
emulation has been implemented, would be something like <tt>gxemul -XQeo2
0xbfc00000:prom.bin</tt>.
<p>The same caution applies when dealing with SGI PROMs as with
DECstation PROMs: GXemul doesn't really emulate the hardware, it only
"fakes" devices well enough to fool some things, primarily NetBSD, that
it is emulating a real machine. ROM code is usually a <i>lot</i> more
picky about the details.
<p>The graphics used in the O2 is (as far as I know) undocumented. Combining
some traces of info from how Linux/O2 draws to the screen with some
reverse-engineering of my own, I've implemented enough of the controller to
let the PROM draw rectangles and bitmaps, but not much more. The SCSI
controller is not implemented yet either.
</p>
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