0.3.1/man/gxemul.1

.\" $Id: gxemul.1,v 1.12 2005/04/07 16:00:24 debug Exp $
.\"
.\" Copyright (C) 2004-2005  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:
.\"
.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
.\" 3. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products
.\"    derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
.\"
.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
.\" ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
.\" 
.\" 
.\" 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
.Dt GXEMUL 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm gxemul
.Nd an experimental machine emulator
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op machine, other, and general options
.Op file Ar ...
.Nm
.Op general options
.Op Ar @configfile ...
.Nm
.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 
to run binary code for (among others) MIPS-based machines.
Several emulation modes are available. For some emulation modes, processors
and surrounding hardware components are emulated well enough to let
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 
complete machine, settings can be entered directly on the command line, or
they can be read from a configuration file. 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.
.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,
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
If more than one filename is supplied, all files are loaded into memory, 
and the entry point (if available) is taken from the last file.
.Pp
Apart from the name of a binary file, it is also necessary to select
which specific emulation mode to use. For example, a MIPS-based machine
from DEC (a DECstation) is very different from a MIPS-based machine
from SGI. Use
.Nm
.Fl H
to get a list of available emulation modes.
.Pp
(There is an exception to the normal invocation usage mentioned above;
if you want to use the DECstation emulation mode, and 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 
skipped, as the emulator runs the bootblocks from the diskimage directly and 
doesn't need the kernel as a separate file.)
.Pp
Machine selection options:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl E Ar t
Try to emulate machine type
.Ar "t".
(Use
.Fl H
to get a list of types.)
.It Fl e Ar st
Try to emulate machine subtype
.Ar "st".
Use this together with
.Fl E .
(This option is not always needed, if a machine type has no subtypes.)
.El
.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".
This overrides the default CPU type for the machine being emulated.
(Use
.Fl H
to get a list of available CPU types.)
.It Fl d Ar name
Add
.Ar name
as a disk image. By adding one or more modifier characters and then a
colon (":") as a prefix to
.Ar "name",
you can modify the disk image's behaviour. Available modifiers are:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It b
Specifies that this is a boot device.
.It c
CD-ROM (instead of a normal SCSI DISK).
.It d
SCSI DISK (this is the default).
.It i
IDE (instead of SCSI).
.It r
Read-only (don't allow changes to be written to the file).
.It t
SCSI tape.
.It 0-7
Force a specific SCSI ID number.
.El
.Pp
Filenames ending with ".iso" are assumed to be CDROM images, all others
are assumed to be normal SCSI disks.
.It Fl I Ar x
Emulate clock interrupts at
.Ar x
Hz. (This affects emulated clock devices only, not actual runtime speed.
This disables automatic clock adjustments, which is otherwise turned on.)
(This option is probably only valid for DECstation emulation.)
.It Fl i
Display each instruction as it is being executed.
.It Fl J
Disable some speed tricks.
.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.
("netbsd" is usually the default value.)
.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.
.It Fl n Ar nr
Set nr of CPUs (for SMP experiments).
.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).
Default
.Ar arg
for DEC is '-a', for ARC '-aN'.
.It Fl p Ar pc
Add a breakpoint (remember to use the '0x' prefix for hex).
.It Fl Q
Disable the built-in PROM emulation. This is useful for running raw ROM
images from real machines.
.It Fl R
Use a random bootstrap cpu, instead of CPU nr 0. (For SMP experiments.)
.It Fl r
Dump register contents for every executed instruction.
.It Fl S
Initialize the emulated RAM to random data, instead of zeroes.
.It Fl T
Enter the single-step debugger on unimplemented memory accesses.
.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.
.It Fl x
Open up new xterms for emulated serial ports. (Default is to open up 
xterms when using configuration files, but not when starting an 
emulation with settings directly on the command line.)
.It Fl Y Ar n
Scale down framebuffer windows by
.Ar n
x
.Ar n
times.
.It Fl y Ar x
Set max_random_cycles_per_chunk to
.Ar x
(experimental).
.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.)
.It Fl z Ar disp
Add
.Ar disp
as an X11 display to use for framebuffers.
.El
.Pp
Userland options:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl u Ar emul-mode
Userland-only (syscall) emulation. (Use
.Fl H
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
emulation.
.El
.Pp
General options:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl D
Guarantee fully deterministic behaviour. Normally, the emulator calls
srandom() with a seed based on the current time at startup. When the
.Fl D
option is used, the srandom() call is skipped, which should cause two 
subsequent invokations of the emulator to be identical, if all other 
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.)
.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
Show opcode usage statistics after the simulation.
.It Fl V
Start up in the single-step debugger, paused.
.It Fl v
Verbose debug messages.
.El
.Pp
Configuration file startup:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It @ Ar configfile
Start an emulation based on the contents of
.Ar "configfile".
.El
.Pp
For more information, please read the documentation in the doc/
subdirectory of the
.Nm
distribution.
.Sh EXAMPLES
The following command will start NetBSD/pmax on an emulated DECstation 
5000/200 (3MAX), with the old bintrans system enabled:
.Pp
.Dl "gxemul -E dec -e 3max -b -d netbsddisk.img"
.Pp
netbsddisk.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 
the configuration file "mysession". The -v option tells gxemul to be
verbose.
.Pp
.Dl "gxemul -v @mysession"
.Pp
If you have compiled the small Hello World program mentioned in the
.Nm
documentation, the following command will start up an
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
directly at startup, instead of launching the Hello World program.)
.Pp
Please read the documentation for more details.
.Sh BUGS
There are many bugs. Some of the known bugs are listed in the BUGS
file in the
.Nm
source distribution, some are indirectly mentioned in the TODO file.
.Pp
There is no new bintrans system in this release (0.3.1), so you will
need to add
.Fl b
to select the old bintrans system, if you want speed.
.Pp
.Nm
does not simulate individual pipe-line stages or penalties caused by
branch-prediction misses, so it cannot be used for accurate performance 
measurement.
.Sh AUTHOR
Anders Gavare <anders@gavare.se>
.Pp
See http://gavare.se/gxemul/ for more information.
1	.\" $Id: gxemul.1,v 1.12 2005/04/07 16:00:24 debug Exp $
2	.\"
3	.\" Copyright (C) 2004-2005 Anders Gavare. All rights reserved.
4	.\"
5	.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
6	.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
7	.\"
8	.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
9	.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
10	.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
11	.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
12	.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
13	.\" 3. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products
14	.\" derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
15	.\"
16	.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
17	.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
18	.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
19	.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
20	.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
21	.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
22	.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
23	.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
24	.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
25	.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
26	.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
27	.\"
28	.\"
29	.\" This is a minimal man page for GXemul. Process this file with
30	.\" groff -man -Tascii gxemul.1 or nroff -man gxemul.1
31	.\"
32	.Dd APRIL 2005
33	.Dt GXEMUL 1
34	.Os
35	.Sh NAME
36	.Nm gxemul
37	.Nd an experimental machine emulator
38	.Sh SYNOPSIS
39	.Nm
40	.Op machine, other, and general options
41	.Op file Ar ...
42	.Nm
43	.Op general options
44	.Op Ar @configfile ...
45	.Nm
46	.Op userland, other, and general options
47	.Ar file Op Ar args ...
48	.Sh DESCRIPTION
49	.Nm
50	is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. It can be used
51	to run binary code for (among others) MIPS-based machines.
52	Several emulation modes are available. For some emulation modes, processors
53	and surrounding hardware components are emulated well enough to let
54	unmodified operating systems (eg NetBSD) run as if they were running on a
55	real machine.
56	.Pp
57	There are three ways to invoke the emulator. When emulating a
58	complete machine, settings can be entered directly on the command line, or
59	they can be read from a configuration file. When emulating a userland
60	environment (syscall-only emulation, not emulating complete machines),
61	then the program name and its argument should be given on the command
62	line.
63	.Pp
64	The easiest way to use the emulator is to supply settings directly on the
65	command line. The most important thing you need to supply is the
66	file argument. This is the name of a binary file (an ELF, a.out, ECOFF,
67	SREC, or a raw binary image) which you wish to run in the emulator. This file
68	might be an operating system kernel, or perhaps a ROM image file.
69	.Pp
70	If more than one filename is supplied, all files are loaded into memory,
71	and the entry point (if available) is taken from the last file.
72	.Pp
73	Apart from the name of a binary file, it is also necessary to select
74	which specific emulation mode to use. For example, a MIPS-based machine
75	from DEC (a DECstation) is very different from a MIPS-based machine
76	from SGI. Use
77	.Nm
78	.Fl H
79	to get a list of available emulation modes.
80	.Pp
81	(There is an exception to the normal invocation usage mentioned above;
82	if you want to use the DECstation emulation mode, and have a bootable
83	DECstation harddisk or CDROM image, then just supplying the diskimage via
84	the
85	.Fl d
86	option is sufficient. The filename of the kernel can then be
87	skipped, as the emulator runs the bootblocks from the diskimage directly and
88	doesn't need the kernel as a separate file.)
89	.Pp
90	Machine selection options:
91	.Bl -tag -width Ds
92	.It Fl E Ar t
93	Try to emulate machine type
94	.Ar "t".
95	(Use
96	.Fl H
97	to get a list of types.)
98	.It Fl e Ar st
99	Try to emulate machine subtype
100	.Ar "st".
101	Use this together with
102	.Fl E .
103	(This option is not always needed, if a machine type has no subtypes.)
104	.El
105	.Pp
106	Other options:
107	.Bl -tag -width Ds
108	.It Fl B
109	Disable dynamic binary translation completely. By default, bintrans
110	will be turned on if the host architecture supports it.
111	However, in this release (0.3.1), there is no new bintrans system.
112	If you want to enable binary translation, use
113	.Fl "b".
114	.It Fl b
115	Use the OLD binary translation subsystem. (Alpha and i386 hosts only.)
116	.It Fl C Ar x
117	Try to emulate a specific CPU type,
118	.Ar "x".
119	This overrides the default CPU type for the machine being emulated.
120	(Use
121	.Fl H
122	to get a list of available CPU types.)
123	.It Fl d Ar name
124	Add
125	.Ar name
126	as a disk image. By adding one or more modifier characters and then a
127	colon (":") as a prefix to
128	.Ar "name",
129	you can modify the disk image's behaviour. Available modifiers are:
130	.Bl -tag -width Ds
131	.It b
132	Specifies that this is a boot device.
133	.It c
134	CD-ROM (instead of a normal SCSI DISK).
135	.It d
136	SCSI DISK (this is the default).
137	.It i
138	IDE (instead of SCSI).
139	.It r
140	Read-only (don't allow changes to be written to the file).
141	.It t
142	SCSI tape.
143	.It 0-7
144	Force a specific SCSI ID number.
145	.El
146	.Pp
147	Filenames ending with ".iso" are assumed to be CDROM images, all others
148	are assumed to be normal SCSI disks.
149	.It Fl I Ar x
150	Emulate clock interrupts at
151	.Ar x
152	Hz. (This affects emulated clock devices only, not actual runtime speed.
153	This disables automatic clock adjustments, which is otherwise turned on.)
154	(This option is probably only valid for DECstation emulation.)
155	.It Fl i
156	Display each instruction as it is being executed.
157	.It Fl J
158	Disable some speed tricks.
159	.It Fl j Ar n
160	Set the name of the kernel to
161	.Ar "n".
162	Useful names are "bsd" for OpenBSD/pmax, or "vmunix" for Ultrix.
163	("netbsd" is usually the default value.)
164	.It Fl M Ar m
165	Emulate
166	.Ar m
167	MBs of physical RAM. This overrides the default amount of RAM for the
168	selected machine type.
169	.It Fl m Ar nr
170	Run at most
171	.Ar nr
172	instructions (on any cpu).
173	.It Fl N
174	Display nr of instructions/second average, at regular intervals.
175	.It Fl n Ar nr
176	Set nr of CPUs (for SMP experiments).
177	.It Fl O
178	Force a "netboot" (tftp instead of disk), even when a disk image is
179	present (for DECstation, SGI, and ARC emulation).
180	.It Fl o Ar arg
181	Set the boot argument (for DEC, ARC, or SGI emulation).
182	Default
183	.Ar arg
184	for DEC is '-a', for ARC '-aN'.
185	.It Fl p Ar pc
186	Add a breakpoint (remember to use the '0x' prefix for hex).
187	.It Fl Q
188	Disable the built-in PROM emulation. This is useful for running raw ROM
189	images from real machines.
190	.It Fl R
191	Use a random bootstrap cpu, instead of CPU nr 0. (For SMP experiments.)
192	.It Fl r
193	Dump register contents for every executed instruction.
194	.It Fl S
195	Initialize the emulated RAM to random data, instead of zeroes.
196	.It Fl T
197	Enter the single-step debugger on unimplemented memory accesses.
198	.It Fl t
199	Show a trace tree of all function calls being made.
200	.It Fl U
201	Enable slow_serial_interrupts_hack_for_linux.
202	.It Fl X
203	Use X11.
204	.It Fl x
205	Open up new xterms for emulated serial ports. (Default is to open up
206	xterms when using configuration files, but not when starting an
207	emulation with settings directly on the command line.)
208	.It Fl Y Ar n
209	Scale down framebuffer windows by
210	.Ar n
211	x
212	.Ar n
213	times.
214	.It Fl y Ar x
215	Set max_random_cycles_per_chunk to
216	.Ar x
217	(experimental).
218	.It Fl Z Ar n
219	Set the number of graphics cards, for emulating a dual-head or tripple-head
220	environment. (Only for DECstation emulation so far.)
221	.It Fl z Ar disp
222	Add
223	.Ar disp
224	as an X11 display to use for framebuffers.
225	.El
226	.Pp
227	Userland options:
228	.Bl -tag -width Ds
229	.It Fl u Ar emul-mode
230	Userland-only (syscall) emulation. (Use
231	.Fl H
232	to get a list of available emulation modes.) Some (but not all) of the
233	options listed under Other options above can also be used with userland
234	emulation.
235	.El
236	.Pp
237	General options:
238	.Bl -tag -width Ds
239	.It Fl D
240	Guarantee fully deterministic behaviour. Normally, the emulator calls
241	srandom() with a seed based on the current time at startup. When the
242	.Fl D
243	option is used, the srandom() call is skipped, which should cause two
244	subsequent invokations of the emulator to be identical, if all other
245	settings are identical. (If this option is used, then
246	.Fl I
247	must also be used.)
248	.It Fl H
249	Display a list of available CPU types, machine types, and userland
250	emulation modes. (Most of these don't work. Please read the documentation
251	included in the
252	.Nm
253	distribution for details on which modes that actually work.)
254	.It Fl h
255	Display a list of all available command line options.
256	.It Fl K
257	Force the single-step debugger to be entered at the end of a simulation.
258	.It Fl q
259	Quiet mode; this suppresses startup messages.
260	.It Fl s
261	Show opcode usage statistics after the simulation.
262	.It Fl V
263	Start up in the single-step debugger, paused.
264	.It Fl v
265	Verbose debug messages.
266	.El
267	.Pp
268	Configuration file startup:
269	.Bl -tag -width Ds
270	.It @ Ar configfile
271	Start an emulation based on the contents of
272	.Ar "configfile".
273	.El
274	.Pp
275	For more information, please read the documentation in the doc/
276	subdirectory of the
277	.Nm
278	distribution.
279	.Sh EXAMPLES
280	The following command will start NetBSD/pmax on an emulated DECstation
281	5000/200 (3MAX), with the old bintrans system enabled:
282	.Pp
283	.Dl "gxemul -E dec -e 3max -b -d netbsddisk.img"
284	.Pp
285	netbsddisk.img should be a raw disk image containing a bootable
286	NetBSD/pmax filesystem.
287	.Pp
288	The following command will start an emulation session based on settings in
289	the configuration file "mysession". The -v option tells gxemul to be
290	verbose.
291	.Pp
292	.Dl "gxemul -v @mysession"
293	.Pp
294	If you have compiled the small Hello World program mentioned in the
295	.Nm
296	documentation, the following command will start up an
297	emulated test machine in "paused" mode:
298	.Pp
299	.Dl "gxemul -E testmips -V hello_mips"
300	.Pp
301	(Paused mode means that you enter the interactive single-step debugger
302	directly at startup, instead of launching the Hello World program.)
303	.Pp
304	Please read the documentation for more details.
305	.Sh BUGS
306	There are many bugs. Some of the known bugs are listed in the BUGS
307	file in the
308	.Nm
309	source distribution, some are indirectly mentioned in the TODO file.
310	.Pp
311	There is no new bintrans system in this release (0.3.1), so you will
312	need to add
313	.Fl b
314	to select the old bintrans system, if you want speed.
315	.Pp
316	.Nm
317	does not simulate individual pipe-line stages or penalties caused by
318	branch-prediction misses, so it cannot be used for accurate performance
319	measurement.
320	.Sh AUTHOR
321	Anders Gavare <anders@gavare.se>
322	.Pp
323	See http://gavare.se/gxemul/ for more information.