Running M5 in Full-System Mode

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Quick Start

We'll assume that you've already built the ALPHA_FS M5 simulator. Then you can just run the run.py configuration file in the m5/configs/fullsys directory. For example: 

% ALPHA_FS/m5.debug ../configs/fullsys/run.py
M5 Simulator System
Copyright (c) 2001-2005
The Regents of The University of Michigan
All Rights Reserved

This code is part of the M5 simulator, developed by Nathan Binkert,
Erik Hallnor, Steve Raasch, and Steve Reinhardt, with contributions
from Ron Dreslinski, Dave Greene, Lisa Hsu, Kevin Lim, Ali Saidi,
and Andrew Schultz.

M5 compiled on Jun  4 2005 22:51:26
M5 executing on zed.eecs.umich.edu
M5 simulation started Sun Jun  5 00:59:50 2005
Listening for console connection on port 3456
      0: system.tsunami.io: Real-time clock set to Sun Jan  1 00:00:00 2006
command line: ALPHA_FS/m5.debug ../configs/fullsys/run.py

Listening for remote gdb connection on port 7000
warn: Entering event queue.  Starting simulation...
11371440: system.sim_console: attach console 0

<...simulation continues...>

Basic Operation

The M5 binary can load a Linux binary, and must be pointed to a disk image it can mount as its root filesystem. Any application binaries that you want to run must be present on these disk images. To begin running them, M5 can load .rcS files, which are exactly like normal Linux boot scripts) to directly execute from after booting the OS. These .rcS files can be used to configure ethernet interfaces, execute special m5 instructions, or begin executing a binary on the disk image. The pointers for the linux binary, disk images, and .rcS files are all set in the configuration files (to see how these files work, see Configuration Files Explained). Examples: Going into / of root filesystem and typing ls will show: 

  benchmarks  etc     lib         mnt      sbin  usr
  bin         floppy  lost+found  modules  sys   var
  dev         home    man         proc     tmp   z

Snippet of an .rcS file: 

echo -n "setting up network..."
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.10 txqueuelen 1000
/sbin/ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1
echo -n "running surge client..."
/bin/bash -c "cd /benchmarks/surge && ./Surge 2 100 1 192.168.0.1 5.
echo -n "halting machine"
m5 exit

Full System Benchmarks

We have several full-system benchmarks already up and running. The binaries are available in the disk images you can obtain/download from us, and the .rcS files are in the m5/configs/boot/ directory. To run any of them, you merely need to set the TEST environment variable to the name of the test you want to run. For example: 

%ALPHA_FS/m5.debug -ETEST=NETPERF_MAERTS ../configs/fullsys/run.py

To see a comprehensive list of all benchmarks available, see the Benchmarks.mpy file in m5/configs/fullsys/Benchmarks.mpy. Not every benchmark is commonly used though, and not all are guaranteed to be useful or in working condition. However, we do often run:

  • NETPERF_MAERTS
  • NETPERF_STREAM
  • SURGE_SPECWEB

These should run without a problem, since we have flushed out most bugs.

Currently under development:

  • NFS
  • iSCSI
  • video streaming
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