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-revision 4 by dpavlin,
Mon Oct  8 16:18:00 2007 UTC
+revision 32 by dpavlin,
Mon Oct  8 16:20:58 2007 UTC
 Line 1
- .\" $Id: gxemul.1,v 1.14 2005/04/16 02:38:21 debug Exp $
+ .\" $Id: gxemul.1,v 1.76 2006/11/04 06:40:20 debug Exp $
  .\"
- .\" Copyright (C) 2004-2005  Anders Gavare.  All rights reserved.
+ .\" Copyright (C) 2004-2006  Anders Gavare.  All rights reserved.
  .\"
  .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
  .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
 Line 29
  .\" This is a minimal man page for GXemul. Process this file with
  .\"     groff -man -Tascii gxemul.1    or    nroff -man gxemul.1
  .\"
- .Dd APRIL 2005
+ .Dd NOVEMBER 2006
  .Dt GXEMUL 1
  .Os
  .Sh NAME
 Line 41
  .Op file Ar ...
  .Nm
  .Op general options
- .Op Ar @configfile ...
+ .Ar @configfile
- .Nm
+ .\" TODO: Reenable this once userland emulation works:
- .Op userland, other, and general options
+ .\" .Nm
- .Ar file Op Ar args ...
+ .\" .Op userland, other, and general options
+ .\" .Ar file Op Ar args ...
  .Sh DESCRIPTION
  .Nm
- is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. It can be used
+ is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. Several
- to run binary code for (among others) MIPS-based machines.
+ emulation modes are available. In some modes, processors and surrounding
- Several emulation modes are available. For some emulation modes, processors
+ hardware components are emulated well enough to let unmodified operating
- and surrounding hardware components are emulated well enough to let
+ systems (e.g. NetBSD) run inside the emulator as if they were running on a
- unmodified operating systems (eg NetBSD) run as if they were running on a
  real machine.
  .Pp
- There are three ways to invoke the emulator. When emulating a
+ Processors (ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SuperH) are emulated using dynamic translation.
- complete machine, settings can be entered directly on the command line, or
+ However, unlike some other dynamically translating emulators, GXemul does
- they can be read from a configuration file. When emulating a userland
+ not currently generate native code, only a "runnable intermediate
- environment (syscall-only emulation, not emulating complete machines),
+ representation", and will thus run on any host architecture, without the
- then the program name and its argument should be given on the command
+ need to implement per-architecture backends.
- line.
+ .Pp
+ The emulator can be invoked in the following ways:
+ .Pp
+. When emulating a complete machine, configuration options can be entered
+ directly on the command line.
+ .Pp
+. Options can be read from a configuration file.
+ .\" .Pp
+ .\" 3. When emulating a userland environment (syscall-only emulation, not
+ .\" emulating complete machines), then the program name and its argument
+ .\" should be given on the command line. (This mode doesn't really work yet,
+ .\" and is disabled for stable release builds.)
  .Pp
  The easiest way to use the emulator is to supply settings directly on the
  command line. The most important thing you need to supply is the
- file argument. This is the name of a binary file (an ELF, a.out, ECOFF,
+ file argument. This is the name of a binary file (an ELF, a.out, COFF/ECOFF,
  SREC, or a raw binary image) which you wish to run in the emulator. This file
  might be an operating system kernel, or perhaps a ROM image file.
  .Pp
-Line 78 
 from SGI. Use
+Line 89 
 from SGI. Use
  .Fl H
  to get a list of available emulation modes.
  .Pp
- (There is an exception to the normal invocation usage mentioned above;
+ There are two exceptions to the normal invocation usage mentioned above.
- if you want to use the DECstation emulation mode, and have a bootable
+ The first is for DECstation emulation: if you have a bootable
  DECstation harddisk or CDROM image, then just supplying the diskimage via
  the
  .Fl d
- option is sufficient. The filename of the kernel can then be
+ option is sufficient. (The filename of the kernel can then be
  skipped, as the emulator runs the bootblocks from the diskimage directly and
  doesn't need the kernel as a separate file.)
+ The second is if you supply an ISO9660 CDROM disk image. You may then use
+ the
+ .Fl j
+ option to indicate which file on the CDROM filesystem that should be
+ loaded into emulated memory.
+ .Pp
+ Gzipped kernels are automatically unzipped, by calling the external gunzip
+ program, both when specifying a gzipped file directly on the command line
+ and when loading such a file using the
+ .Fl j
+ option.
  .Pp
  Machine selection options:
  .Bl -tag -width Ds
  .It Fl E Ar t
  Try to emulate machine type
  .Ar "t".
+ This option is not always needed, if the
+ .Fl e
+ option uniquely selects a machine.
  (Use
  .Fl H
  to get a list of types.)
-Line 105 
 Use this together with
+Line 130 
 Use this together with
  .Pp
  Other options:
  .Bl -tag -width Ds
- .It Fl B
- Disable dynamic binary translation completely. By default, bintrans
- will be turned on if the host architecture supports it.
- However, in this release (0.3.1), there is no new bintrans system.
- If you want to enable binary translation, use
- .Fl "b".
- .It Fl b
- Use the OLD binary translation subsystem. (Alpha and i386 hosts only.)
  .It Fl C Ar x
  Try to emulate a specific CPU type,
  .Ar "x".
-Line 120 
 This overrides the default CPU type for
+Line 137 
 This overrides the default CPU type for
  (Use
  .Fl H
  to get a list of available CPU types.)
- .It Fl d Ar name
+ .It Fl d Ar [modifiers:]filename
  Add
- .Ar name
+ .Ar filename
  as a disk image. By adding one or more modifier characters and then a
  colon (":") as a prefix to
- .Ar "name",
+ .Ar filename,
- you can modify the disk image's behaviour. Available modifiers are:
+ you can modify the way the disk image is treated. Available modifiers are:
  .Bl -tag -width Ds
  .It b
  Specifies that this is a boot device.
-Line 136 
 CD-ROM.
+Line 153 
 CD-ROM.
  DISK (this is the default).
  .It f
  FLOPPY.
+ .It gH;S;
+ Override the default geometry; use H heads and S sectors-per-track.
+ (The number of cylinders is calculated automatically.)
  .It i
- IDE.
+ IDE. (This is the default for most machine types.)
  .It r
  Read-only (don't allow changes to be written to the file).
  .It s
- SCSI (this is the default for most machine types).
+ SCSI.
  .It t
  Tape.
  .It 0-7
- Force a specific SCSI ID number.
+ Force a specific ID number.
  .El
  .Pp
- Filenames ending with ".iso" are assumed to be CDROM images. Files with a
+ For SCSI devices, the ID number is the SCSI ID. For IDE harddisks, the ID
- size of exactly 1.44 MB are assumed to be floppy images. All others
+ number has the following meaning:
- are assumed to be disks.
+ .Bl -tag -width Ds
- .It Fl I Ar x
+ .It 0
- Emulate clock interrupts at
+ Primary master.
- .Ar x
+ .It 1
- Hz. (This affects emulated clock devices only, not actual runtime speed.
+ Primary slave.
- This disables automatic clock adjustments, which is otherwise turned on.)
+ .It 2
- (This option is probably only valid for DECstation emulation.)
+ Secondary master.
+ .It 3
+ Secondary slave.
+ .El
+ .Pp
+ Unless otherwise specified, filenames ending with ".iso" or ".cdr" are
+ assumed to be CDROM images. Most others are assumed to be disks. Depending
+ on which machine is being emulated, the default for disks can be either
+ SCSI or IDE. Some disk images that are very small are assumed to be floppy
+ disks. (If you are not happy with the way a disk image is detected, then
+ you need to use explicit prefixes to force a specific type.)
+ .Pp
+ For floppies, the gH;S; prefix is ignored. Instead, the number of
+ heads and cylinders are assumed to be 2 and 80, respectively, and the
+ number of sectors per track is calculated automatically. (This works for
+KB, 1.2MB, 1.44MB, and 2.88MB floppies.)
+ .It Fl G Ar port
+ Pause at startup, and listen to TCP port
+ .Ar port
+ for incoming remote GDB connections. The emulator starts up in paused
+ mode, and it is up to the remote GDB instance to start the session.
+ .It Fl I Ar hz
+ Set the main CPUs frequency to
+ .Ar hz
+ Hz. This option does not work for all emulated machine modes. It affects
+ the way count/compare interrupts are faked to simulate emulated time =
+ real world time. If the guest operating system relies on RTC interrupts
+ instead of count/compare interrupts, then this option has no effect.
+ .Pp
+ Setting the frequency to zero disables automatic synchronization of
+ emulated time vs real world time, and the count/compare system runs at a
+ fixed rate.
  .It Fl i
- Display each instruction as it is being executed.
+ Enable instruction trace, i.e. display disassembly of each instruction as
+ it is being executed.
  .It Fl J
- Disable some speed tricks.
+ Disable instruction combinations in the dynamic translator.
  .It Fl j Ar n
  Set the name of the kernel to
  .Ar "n".
- Useful names are "bsd" for OpenBSD/pmax, or "vmunix" for Ultrix.
+ When booting from an ISO9660 filesystem, the emulator will try to boot
- ("netbsd" is usually the default value.)
+ using this file. (In some emulation modes, eg. DECstation, this name is passed
+ along to the boot program. Useful names are "bsd" for OpenBSD/pmax,
+ "vmunix" for Ultrix, or "vmsprite" for Sprite.)
  .It Fl M Ar m
  Emulate
  .Ar m
  MBs of physical RAM. This overrides the default amount of RAM for the
  selected machine type.
- .It Fl m Ar nr
- Run at most
- .Ar nr
- instructions (on any cpu).
  .It Fl N
- Display nr of instructions/second average, at regular intervals.
+ Display the number of executed instructions per second on average, at
+ regular intervals.
  .It Fl n Ar nr
- Set nr of CPUs (for SMP experiments).
+ Set the number of processors in the machine, for SMP experiments.
+ .Pp
+ Note 1: The emulator allocates quite a lot of virtual memory for
+ per-CPU translation tables. On 64-bit hosts, this is normally not a
+ problem. On 32-bit hosts, this can use up all available virtual userspace
+ memory. The solution is to either run the emulator on a 64-bit host,
+ or limit the number of emulated CPUs to a reasonably low number.
+ .Pp
+ Note 2: SMP simulation is not working very well yet; multiple processors
+ are simulated, but synchronization between the processors does not map
+ very well to how real-world SMP systems work.
  .It Fl O
  Force a "netboot" (tftp instead of disk), even when a disk image is
  present (for DECstation, SGI, and ARC emulation).
  .It Fl o Ar arg
- Set the boot argument (for DEC, ARC, or SGI emulation).
+ Set the boot argument (mostly useful for DEC, ARC, or SGI emulation).
  Default
  .Ar arg
- for DEC is '-a', for ARC '-aN'.
+ for DEC is "-a", for ARC/SGI it is "-aN", and for CATS it is "-A".
  .It Fl p Ar pc
- Add a breakpoint (remember to use the '0x' prefix for hex).
+ Add a breakpoint.
+ .Ar pc
+ can be a symbol, or a numeric value. (Remember to use the "0x" prefix for
+ hexadecimal values.)
  .It Fl Q
- Disable the built-in PROM emulation. This is useful for running raw ROM
+ Disable the built-in (software-only) PROM emulation. This option is useful
- images from real machines.
+ for experimenting with running raw ROM images from real machines. The default
+ behaviour of the emulator is to "fake" certain PROM calls used by guest
+ operating systems (e.g. NetBSD), so that no real PROM image is needed.
  .It Fl R
- Use a random bootstrap cpu, instead of CPU nr 0. (For SMP experiments.)
+ Use a random bootstrap cpu, instead of CPU nr 0. (This option is only
+ meaningful together with the
+ .Fl n
+ option.)
  .It Fl r
  Dump register contents for every executed instruction.
  .It Fl S
- Initialize the emulated RAM to random data, instead of zeroes.
+ Initialize emulated RAM to random data, instead of zeroes. This option
- .It Fl T
+ is useful when trying to trigger bugs in a program that occur because the
- Enter the single-step debugger on unimplemented memory accesses.
+ program assumed that uninitialized memory contains zeros. (Use with
+ care.)
+ .It Fl s Ar flags:filename
+ Gather statistics based on the current emulated program counter value,
+ while the program executes. The statistics is actually just a raw dump of
+ all program counter values in sequence, suitable for post-analysis with
+ separate tools. Output is appended to
+ .Ar filename.
+ .Pp
+ The
+ .Ar flags
+ should include one or more of the following type specifiers:
+ .Bl -tag -width Ds
+ .It v
+ Virtual. This means that the program counter value is used.
+ .It p
+ Physical. This means that the physical address of where the program
+ is actually running is used.
+ .It i
+ Instruction call. This type of statistics gathering is practically only
+ useful during development of the emulator itself. The output is a list of
+ addresses of instruction call functions (ic->f), which after some
+ post-processing can be used as a basis for deciding when to implement
+ instruction combinations.
+ .El
+ .Pp
+ The
+ .Ar flags
+ may also include the following optional modifiers:
+ .Bl -tag -width Ds
+ .It d
+ Disabled at startup.
+ .It o
+ Overwrite the file, instead of appending to it.
+ .El
+ .Pp
+ .\" Statistics gathering can be enabled/disabled at runtime by using the
+ .\" "TODO" debugger command.
+ .\" .Pp
+ When gathering instruction statistics using the
+ .Fl s
+ option, instruction combinations are always disabled (i.e.
+ an implicit
+ .Fl J
+ is added to the command line).
+ .Pp
+ If a value is missing (e.g. the end-of-page slot does not really have a
+ known physical address), it is written out as just a dash ("-").
  .It Fl t
  Show a trace tree of all function calls being made.
  .It Fl U
  Enable slow_serial_interrupts_hack_for_linux.
  .It Fl X
- Use X11.
+ Use X11. This option enables graphical framebuffers.
  .It Fl x
- Open up new xterms for emulated serial ports. (Default is to open up
+ Open up new xterms for emulated serial ports. The default behaviour is to
- xterms when using configuration files, but not when starting an
+ open up xterms when using configuration files, or if X11 is enabled. When
- emulation with settings directly on the command line.)
+ starting up a simple emulation session with settings directly on the
+ command line, and neither
+ .Fl X
+ nor
+ .Fl x
+ is used, then all output is confined to the terminal that
+ .Nm
+ started in.
  .It Fl Y Ar n
  Scale down framebuffer windows by
  .Ar n
  x
  .Ar n
- times.
+ times. This option is useful when emulating a very large framebuffer, and
- .It Fl y Ar x
+ the actual display is of lower resolution. If
- Set max_random_cycles_per_chunk to
+ .Ar n
- .Ar x
+ is negative, then there will be no scaledown, but emulation of certain
- (experimental).
+ graphic controllers will be scaled up
+ by
+ .Ar -n
+ times instead. E.g. Using
+ .Ar -2
+ with VGA text mode emulation will result in 80x25 character cells rendered
+ in a 1280x800 window, instead of the normal resolution of 640x400.
  .It Fl Z Ar n
  Set the number of graphics cards, for emulating a dual-head or tripple-head
  environment. (Only for DECstation emulation so far.)
-Line 229 
 Add
+Line 358 
 Add
  as an X11 display to use for framebuffers.
  .El
  .Pp
- Userland options:
+ .\" Userland options:
- .Bl -tag -width Ds
+ .\" .Bl -tag -width Ds
- .It Fl u Ar emul-mode
+ .\" .It Fl u Ar emul-mode
- Userland-only (syscall) emulation. (Use
+ .\" Userland-only (syscall) emulation. (Use
- .Fl H
+ .\" .Fl H
- to get a list of available emulation modes.) Some (but not all) of the
+ .\" to get a list of available emulation modes.) Some (but not all) of the
- options listed under Other options above can also be used with userland
+ .\" options listed under Other options above can also be used with
- emulation.
+ .\" userland emulation.
- .El
+ .\" .El
- .Pp
+ .\" .Pp
  General options:
  .Bl -tag -width Ds
+ .It Fl c Ar cmd
+ Add
+ .Ar cmd
+ as a command to run before starting the simulation. A similar effect can
+ be achieved by using the
+ .Fl V
+ option, and entering the commands manually.
  .It Fl D
- Guarantee fully deterministic behaviour. Normally, the emulator calls
+ Causes the emulator to skip a call to srandom(). This leads to somewhat
- srandom() with a seed based on the current time at startup. When the
+ more deterministic behaviour than running without this option.
- .Fl D
+ However, if the emulated machine has clocks or timer interrupt sources,
- option is used, the srandom() call is skipped, which should cause two
+ or if user interaction is taking place (e.g. keyboard input at irregular
- subsequent invokations of the emulator to be identical, if all other
+ intervals), then this option is meaningless.
- settings are identical. (If this option is used, then
- .Fl I
- must also be used.)
  .It Fl H
  Display a list of available CPU types, machine types, and userland
  emulation modes. (Most of these don't work. Please read the documentation
  included in the
  .Nm
- distribution for details on which modes that actually work.)
+ distribution for details on which modes that actually work. Userland
+ emulation is not included in stable release builds, since it doesn't work
+ yet.)
  .It Fl h
  Display a list of all available command line options.
  .It Fl K
  Force the single-step debugger to be entered at the end of a simulation.
  .It Fl q
  Quiet mode; this suppresses startup messages.
- .It Fl s
+ .\".It Fl s
- Show opcode usage statistics after the simulation.
+ .\"For MIPS emulation: Show opcode usage statistics after the simulation.
+ .\"For non-MIPS emulation (i.e. using dyntrans): Save statistics to a file
+ .\"at regular intervals of which physical addresses that were executed.
  .It Fl V
  Start up in the single-step debugger, paused.
  .It Fl v
- Verbose debug messages.
+ Increase verbosity (show more debug messages). This option can be used
+ multiple times.
  .El
  .Pp
  Configuration file startup:
-Line 283 
 subdirectory of the
+Line 421 
 subdirectory of the
  distribution.
  .Sh EXAMPLES
  The following command will start NetBSD/pmax on an emulated DECstation
-/200 (3MAX), with the old bintrans system enabled:
+/200 (3MAX):
  .Pp
- .Dl "gxemul -E dec -e 3max -b -d netbsddisk.img"
+ .Dl "gxemul -e 3max -d nbsd_pmax.img"
  .Pp
- netbsddisk.img should be a raw disk image containing a bootable
+ nbsd_pmax.img should be a raw disk image containing a bootable
  NetBSD/pmax filesystem.
  .Pp
  The following command will start an emulation session based on settings in
-Line 303 
 emulated test machine in "paused" mode:
+Line 441 
 emulated test machine in "paused" mode:
  .Pp
  .Dl "gxemul -E testmips -V hello_mips"
  .Pp
- (Paused mode means that you enter the interactive single-step debugger
+ Paused mode means that you enter the interactive single-step debugger
- directly at startup, instead of launching the Hello World program.)
+ directly at startup, instead of launching the Hello World program.
+ .Pp
+ The paused mode is also what should be used when running "unknown" files
+ for the first time in the emulator. E.g. if you have a binary which you
+ think is some kind of MIPS ROM image, then you can try the following:
+ .Pp
+ .Dl "gxemul -vv -E baremips -V 0xbfc00000:image.raw"
+ .Pp
+ You can then use the single-stepping functionality of the built-in
+ debugger to run the code in the ROM image, to see how it behaves. Based on
+ that, you can deduce what machine type it was actually from (the
+ baremips machine is not a real machine), and perhaps try again with
+ another emulation mode.
+ .Pp
+ In general, however, real ROM images require much more emulation detail
+ than GXemul provides, so they can usually not run.
  .Pp
  Please read the documentation for more details.
  .Sh BUGS
- There are many bugs. Some of the known bugs are listed in the BUGS
+ There are many bugs. Some of the known bugs are mentioned in the TODO
  file in the
  .Nm
- source distribution, some are indirectly mentioned in the TODO file.
+ source distribution, some are marked as TODO in the source code itself.
  .Pp
- There is no new bintrans system in this release (0.3.1), so you will
+ Userland (syscall-only) emulation, i.e. running a userland binary directly
- need to add
+ without simulating an entire machine, doesn't really work yet.
- .Fl b
+ .Pp
- to select the old bintrans system, if you want speed.
+ The documentation sometimes only reflects the way things worked with
+ the old MIPS emulation mode (prior to 0.4.0), and it is incorrect when
+ applied to current releases.
+ .Pp
+ .Nm
+ is in general not cycle-accurate; it does not simulate individual
+ pipe-line stages or penalties caused by branch-prediction misses or
+ cache misses, so it cannot be used for accurate simulation of any actual
+ real-world processor.
  .Pp
  .Nm
- does not simulate individual pipe-line stages or penalties caused by
+ is in general not timing-accurate. Some emulation modes
- branch-prediction misses, so it cannot be used for accurate performance
+ (DECstation, CATS, NetWinder, MobilePro (hpcmips), Malta (evbmips),
- measurement.
+ Cobalt, Algor, and Dreamcast) try to make the guest
+ operating system's clock run at the same speed as the host clock.
+ However, the number of instructions executed per clock tick can
+ obviously vary, depending on the current CPU load on the host.
  .Sh AUTHOR
- Anders Gavare <anders@gavare.se>
+ GXemul is Copyright (C) 2003-2006 Anders Gavare <anders@gavare.se>
  .Pp
- See http://gavare.se/gxemul/ for more information.
+ See http://gavare.se/gxemul/ for more information. For other Copyright
+ messages, see the corresponding parts of the source code and/or
+ documentation.

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