* Copyright 2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
* Use is subject to license terms.
#pragma ident "@(#)README 1.1 07/10/12 SMI"
## Getting Started with Legion
## Legion is a fast instruction accurate simulator which provides a rapid
## means of developing and testing software functionality in the absence
## of actual hardware. Legion provides the fastest simulation environment
## for developing and testing SPARC Software and is the primary simulation
## environment for the Niagara firmware and software teams.
- Sparc system running Solaris 8 or higher
- Root access to the system if you want to modify the contents of the
This compressed tar file will install all the necessary binaries and
config files needed to run the Legion simulation tool. The compressed
tar file is approx 161MB and when installed requires approx 514MB of
[1.1] Installing the Legion tar file
# /usr/bin/zcat legion.tar.Z | /usr/bin/tar -xvf -
This will create a directory called legion in the current directory.
plugins - Legion simulation plugins
reset.bin - Reset binary for basic processor configuration
q.bin - Hypervisor binary
openboot.bin - Openboot binary
nvram1 - Non-Volatile Ram used by openboot
disk1 - Solaris 10 disk image (512MB, approx 250MB of
netcons - tool used to connect to legion console socket
1up-md.bin ---> Machine Description and Legion config files
1up.conf --/ for 1 processor configuration
1g2p-md.bin ---> Machine Description and Legion config files
1g2p.conf --/ for 2 processor configuration
1g32p-md.bin ---> Machine Description and Legion config files
1g32p.conf --/ for 32 processor configuration
[3] Environment requirements:
- Make sure your DISPLAY variable is set so that you can run an xterm
and have it display on your desktop.
- Your path should include the following :
/usr/openwin/bin/xterm # or the path to the xterm of your choice
/usr/lib/cpp # or the path where cpp lives on your machine
Legion need to be run with the -a option and needs to have a config
file specified. The config file can be one of 1up.conf, 1g2p.conf
While the 2 and 32 processor configs will boot just fine on a single
processor machine, the boot times will be much longer than the
single processor config. Legion is fully multi-threaded so it
runs larger configs faster on host machines with more cpus.
[4.2] Log file of Console output:
Legion maintains a log file of the Guest Console. This output
is written to a file called guest1.log. The name of this file
can be changed by modifying the filename in the legion config
files (1up.conf, 1g2p.conf or 1g32p.conf). All output is
[4.3] Booting Solaris from the ok prompt:
Once you get the ok prompt, you can :
[-] View the number of processors in your config:
[-] Boot from the disk by typing 'boot disk' or
'boot disk -vV' for a verbose boot or boot
without any services for a quicker boot time
by 'boot disk -m milestone = none'.
ok boot disk -m milestone=none
[-] There is no root password on this disk so just login as
[-] You can set the system to automatically boot by
setting auto-boot? to true at the ok prompt
ok setenv auto-boot? true
[-] To undo this you can set auto-boot? to false at the ok
ok setenv auto-boot? false
[-] If you corrupt your nvram file and want to start with
a new one, just remove the nvram1 file and re-create
it as a blank file and re-start the simulation. auto-boot?
will be set to true by default when you create a new nvram
[4.3] Killing the simulation
When you are done with the simulation, you can terminate it by:
- Ctrl-C in the window where you ran legion
- ~z in the Guest console window
Legion can be started in verbose mode using the -v or --verbose flag
Legion can be started in debug mode which will dump out debug state
while the simulation is running. An example is if you want to see
the %pc and all sparc instruction that the simulator is executing
along with the register and relevant processor state at each instn
# ./sim -debug 0x2 -a 1up.conf
The list of debug flags that you can pass is:
0000.0000.0000.0001 Parsing messages, initialization,
0000.0000.0000.0002 PC & Instruction
0000.0000.0000.8000 Hypervisor Calls
0000.0000.0001.0000 Performance Counters
0000.0000.0002.0000 Exceptions, XIR
0000.0000.0004.0000 hpstate changes
0000.0000.0010.0000 MMU miss
0000.0000.0020.0000 Memory controllers
0000.0000.0040.0000 TSTATE, etc.
0000.0000.0080.0000 Error injection
0000.0000.0100.0000 SSI interrupts
0000.0000.0200.0000 Little Endian
0000.0000.0400.0000 Alignment errors
0000.0000.0800.0000 Mondo
0000.0000.1000.0000 SOFTINT
0000.0000.4000.0000 Instruction decode
0000.0000.8000.0000 Device
0000.0001.0000.0000 Execution Loop
0000.0002.0000.0000 Error Traps
You can combine multiple debug flags by OR'ing them together.
So if you want to see all the hypervisor calls (0x8000) along
with the parsing information (0x1), you can run it as follows:
# ./sim -debug 0x8001 -a 1up.conf
[5.3] Dynamic tilde escape sequences:
Once you have started the simulation you can use the ~ (tilde)
escape sequence in your Legion Guest Console window to dump out
some processor state. The list of tilde commands supported is
i dump I-TLB contents for CPUs in same domain
d dump D-TLB contents for CPUs in same domain
b toggle the debug output enable bits
n dump the current and delta instruction count for each CPU
So if you want to turn on the %pc and instruction tracing after
you have started the simulation, you can type ~b in the Legion
Guest console window. Typing this gain will turn off the
If you want to view the contents of the I-TLB (Instruction TLB)
you can dump it out for all cpus by typing ~i in the Guest
The output will appear in the window where you started legion.
[6] Modifying the Disk Image
[6.1] Adding/Removing files to/from the disk
If you want to add/remove/modify files on the disk image provided,
you will need root access on a system. Here are the instructions
for doing this on a Solaris system.
# Use the loopback file driver to moun the disk image:
/usr/sbin/lofiadm -a /export/legion/disk1
# Mount this device onto a mount point:
# where /dev/lofi/1 is the value returned from lofiadm
/usr/sbin/mount /dev/lofi/1 /mnt
You can now add/remove files to/from your disk image
If you get permission problems when accessing the files:
1) As root, chown/chmod the file/dir that you are modifying
2) only modify files as the root-user on your host machine
Once you are done, you can umount the disk image and boot
the simulator. It's always advisable to unmount the disk image
before booting it in the simulator.
/usr/sbin/lofiadm -d /dev/lofi/1
[6.2] Making your disk writable
By default, legion mounts it's disk image as read-only. That means
that any changes to the disk while running legion will not be
written back to the disk image file on the host machine. If you
want to preserve the changes to the disk, you will have to mount
the disk under legion in write mode (or shared).
- edit your legion config file and locate the block where the disk
is mounted (search for virtual_disk).
- change the rom keyword to shared
- now when you boot legion, any changes to the file system within
the simulation will be reflected on the disk image file. You
can get log files off the disk image my lofi mounting it as
WARNING!!!: When mounting a disk as shared, you must gracefully exit
the simulation to avoid file system corruption on the disk image.
To do this, sync;halt Solaris within the simulation and wait until
you return to the ok prompt before terminating the simulation by
typing ~z in the Guest Console window.
[7] Limitations of this Environment:
- Legion only implements enough of the processor state to boot the
firmware and software needed to boot Solaris. There are many areas
of the processor that are not needed in this boot flow and are most
likely not implemented. Areas like caches, RAS, are not implemented
- This simulation environment does not simulate any IO devices
therefore you cannot telnet into or out of the simulation
- The configs are currently 1 proc, 2 proc and 32 proc. Binary
users do not have the ability at this time to create new configs.
projects / OpenSPARC-T2-SAM / blob