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Copyright (c) 2009-2013, ETH Zurich.
All rights reserved.
This file is distributed under the terms in the attached LICENSE file.
If you do not find this file, copies can be found by writing to:
ETH Zurich D-INFK, Haldeneggsteig 4, CH-8092 Zurich. Attn: Systems Group.
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Barrelfish Overview
--------------------------------
Barrelfish currently runs on:
* x86 CPUs in either IA-32 or AMD64 mode. The following are known to work:
- Intel Xeon Clovertown, Gainestown, Beckton, IvyBridge, Haswell (X5355,
E5520, X7560, L5520, L7555, E5-2670v2, E3-1245v3)
- AMD Opteron Italy, Santa Rosa, Barcelona, Shanghai, Istanbul, Magny Cours
(275, 2220, 8350, 8374, 8380, 8431, 6174)
- QEMU simulator (2.0.0)
* ARM CPUs, specifically ARMv7 and ARMv5. The following platforms are known to work:
- The integratorcp ARMv5 machine as simulated by QEM
- The Texas Instruments OMAP4460 Pandaboard ES SoC
(Barrelfish runs on both the A9 and the M3 cores)
- The ARM VExpress EMM board as simulated by GEM5
- There is also limited support for the Netronome i8000 card, incorporating
a single Intel iXP2800 processor
This README file provides instructions for the x86 architecture. For other
architectures, please refer to the architecture-specific technical notes (e.g.,
see TN 06 for the SCC, and TN 17 for ARM).
You can either generate the latest documentation from this source-code
(instructions at end of this file), or visit the Barrelfish_ website
to download them.
.. _Barrelfish: http://www.barrelfish.org/
Supported PC hardware
--------------------------------
Barrelfish supports following PC hardware :
* x86 CPUs in either IA-32 or AMD64 mode. The following are known to work:
- Intel Xeon Clovertown, Gainestown, Beckton, Ivy Bridge, Haswell (X5355,
E5520, X7560, L5520, L7555, E5-2670v2, E3-1245v3)
- AMD Opteron Italy, Santa Rosa, Barcelona, Shanghai, Istanbul, Magny Cours
(275, 2220, 8350, 8374, 8380, 8431, 6174)
* Note: the Opteron 275 do not work in IA-32 mode.
The biggest compatibility problems are likely to be in the PCI/ACPI code. We
usually discover new quirks (or missing functionality in the ACPI glue code)
on each new machine we test. The following systems are known to work:
* Intel x5000XVN
* Tyan n6650W and S4985
* Supermicro H8QM3-2
* Dell PowerEdge R610 and R905
* Sun Fire X2270 and X4440
* Intel/Quanta QSSC-S4R
* Lenovo X200 and X301 laptops
* ASUS Eee PC 1015PEM netbooks
The e1000n driver should work with most recent Intel gigabit ethernet
controllers (see the list in devices/e1000.dev). We've mostly used the
82572EI (PCI device ID 0x1082).
You should also be able to boot Barrelfish on a recent version of QEMU (0.14);
note that the e1000 device emulated by QEMU is not supported by our driver.
Required Tools
--------------------------------
We are making sure that Barrelfish and its tools can be built using the
following:
* GCC 4.8.2 for x86_64 and x86_32
- cross-compiling between i386 and x86_64 works (install gcc-multilib on 64 bit Ubuntu LTS)
* GCC 4.7.3 for ARMv5 and ARMv7
- gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi and g++-arm-linux-gnueabi on Ubuntu LTS
* GNU binutils (2.24 is known to work)
* GNU make
* GHC v7.6.3 and Parsec 3.1
- older versions of the tree supported v6.10 or v6.12.2 with Parsec 2.1 or
v7.4 with Parsec 3.1
- GHC v6.12.1 has a known bug and is unable to build our tools
- earlier versions of GHC are unsupported
Our build system may not be very portable; if in doubt, try building on the
latest Ubuntu LTS system (14.04.1), as this is what we use to run nightly
tests.
Building
--------------------------------
1. Assuming you have already unpacked the sources, create a build directory ::
$ mkdir build && cd build
1. Run ``hake.sh``, giving it the path to the source directory and target
architecture(s) ::
$ ../hake/hake.sh -s ../ -a x86_64
This will configure the build directory and use GHC to compile and then run
hake, a tool used to generate the ``Makefile``.
3. Optionally, edit the configuration parameters in ``hake/Config.hs`` and
run ``make rehake`` to apply them.
4. Run make, and wait ::
$ make
5. If everything worked, you should now be able to run Barrelfish inside QEMU ::
$ make sim
Installing and Booting
--------------------------------
Barrelfish requires a Multiboot-compliant bootloader that is capable of loading
an ELF64 image. At the time of writing, this doesn't include the default GRUB.
Your options are either:
* use the pre-loader "elver" that can be found in the tools directory
* patch GRUB to support a 64-bit kernel image, using this patch_.
.. _patch: http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?17963
"Installing" Barrelfish currently consists of copying the ELF files for the CPU
driver and user programs to a location that the target machine can boot from,
and writing a suitable menu.lst file that instructs the bootloader (GRUB) which
programs to load and the arguments to pass them.
If you specify an appropriate INSTALL_PREFIX, ``make install`` will copy the
binaries to the right place for you, eg ::
$ make install INSTALL_PREFIX=/tftpboot/barrelfish
We usually boot Barrelfish via PXE/TFTP, although loading from a local disk
also works. Instructions for setting up GRUB to do this are beyond the scope of
this document. Assuming you have such a setup, here is a sample menu.lst file
for a basic diskless boot that doesn't do anything useful beyond probing the
PCI buses and starting a basic shell ::
title Barrelfish
root (nd)
kernel /barrelfish/x86_64/sbin/elver
module /barrelfish/x86_64/sbin/cpu
module /barrelfish/x86_64/sbin/init
module /barrelfish/x86_64/sbin/mem_serv
module /barrelfish/x86_64/sbin/monitor
module /barrelfish/x86_64/sbin/ramfsd boot
module /barrelfish/x86_64/sbin/skb boot
modulenounzip /barrelfish/skb_ramfs.cpio.gz nospawn
module /barrelfish/x86_64/sbin/acpi boot
module /barrelfish/x86_64/sbin/pci boot
module /barrelfish/x86_64/sbin/spawnd boot
module /barrelfish/x86_64/sbin/serial
module /barrelfish/x86_64/sbin/fish
There are many other programs you can load (take a look around the usr tree for
examples). To start a program on a core other than the BSP core, pass
``core=N`` as its first argument.
If things work, you should see output on both the VGA console and COM1.
Generating Documentation
--------------------------------
Barrelfish documentation can be found on Barrelfish website
(http://www.barrelfish.org/). And it can be also generated from the code tree.
For documentation generation, you will need ``latex`` packages installed,
including support for ``pdflatex``. Following are the instructions for
generating the documentation assuming you have already unpacked the sources ::
$ mkdir build && cd build
$ ../hake/hake.sh -s ../
$ make docs
You will find all the technotes in ``docs/`` directory.
Known Issues
--------------------------------
There are many. Those you're likely to encounter include:
* The documentation is incomplete and out of date.
* Some drivers and user programs are known not to build, and are
not included in the default set of targets (MODULES) in the Makefile.
Likely FAQs
--------------------------------
Q: How do I run a program?
A: Add it to the boot sequence by specifying the module in your menu.lst file.
For example, to run the memtest program, add the line:
module /PATH/x86_64/sbin/memtest
to the end of menu.lst, where PATH is relative either to your TFTP
server's root directory (when booting on hardware) or to your build
directory (when using a simulator such as QEMU).
If memtest runs, you should see it output "memtest passed successfully!".
Q: Where's the CPU driver?
A: It's in the directory named kernel :) But don't worry, it really does run
independently on each core.
Q: Where is the source for the SPLASH2 benchmarks? It seems to be missing.
A: The license for these prevents redistribution, so we were forced to ship our
changes as a patch. See usr/splash2/README for further instructions.
Q: Can I use a debugger?
A: Maybe. There are two options at the moment:
* On a simulator, using whatever debug interfaces it supports.
For QEMU, you could try the "debugsim" target.
* On hardware, using the kernel-mode remote GDB stubs that operate on the
primary serial port and are entered in response to a kernel trap or
exception. However, these are not well maintained, and may not be usable
beyond reading/writing memory locations and inspecting the stack.
When debugging the kernel, beware that it is relocated to an address
determined at core boot time. Look for output such as:
"Kernel starting at address 0xffffffffc072b000".
Q: Where can I find more information, including papers and new releases?
A: http://www.barrelfish.org/
http://wiki.barrelfish.org/
Q: Can I contribute?
A: We'd certainly like to hear from you. Please send us mail.