Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] hw/core/null-machine: Add the possibility to instantiate a CPU, RAM and kernel

[Eduardo Habkost]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 08:52:28PM +0100, Thomas Huth wrote:
> On 16.01.2017 18:25, Eduardo Habkost wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 07:51:02AM +0100, Thomas Huth wrote:
> >> Sometimes it is useful to have just a machine with CPU and RAM, without
> >> any further hardware in it, e.g. if you just want to do some instruction
> >> debugging for TCG with a remote GDB attached to QEMU, or run some embedded
> >> code with the "-semihosting" QEMU parameter. qemu-system-m68k already
> >> features a "dummy" machine, and xtensa a "sim" machine for exactly this
> >> purpose.
> >> All target architectures have nowadays also a "none" machine, which would
> >> be a perfect match for this, too - but it currently does not allow to add
> >> CPU, RAM or a kernel yet. Thus let's add these possibilities in a generic
> >> way to the "none" machine, too, so that we hopefully do not need additional
> >> "dummy" machines in the future anymore (and maybe can also get rid of the
> >> already existing "dummy"/"sim" machines one day).
> >> Note that the default behaviour of the "none" machine is not changed, i.e.
> >> no CPU and no RAM is instantiated by default. You've explicitely got to
> >> specify the CPU model with "-cpu" and the amount of RAM with "-m" to get
> >> these new features.
> >>
> >> Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <address@hidden>
> > 
> > This sounds nice, but I would like initialization code used by
> > "-machine none" to be generic code usable by other machines,
> > whenever possible.
> > 
> > The CPU and RAM creation probably is simple enough to not deserve
> > a generic wrapper by now. But the kernel loader probably could be
> > made reusable in the first version, so existing machines that
> > already have similar logic could reuse it.
> > 
> > I would love to make all machines automatically use new generic
> > code to create CPUs, allocate RAM, and load a kernel. But
> > probably this would be hard to do in a single step due to subtle
> > initialization ordering requirements in each machine init
> > function.
> > 
> > More specific comments below:
> > 
> >> ---
> >>  hw/core/Makefile.objs  |  2 +-
> >>  hw/core/null-machine.c | 81 
> >> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
> >>  2 files changed, 81 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> >>
> >> diff --git a/hw/core/Makefile.objs b/hw/core/Makefile.objs
> >> index a4c94e5..0b6c0f1 100644
> >> --- a/hw/core/Makefile.objs
> >> +++ b/hw/core/Makefile.objs
> >> @@ -12,7 +12,6 @@ common-obj-$(CONFIG_XILINX_AXI) += stream.o
> >>  common-obj-$(CONFIG_PTIMER) += ptimer.o
> >>  common-obj-$(CONFIG_SOFTMMU) += sysbus.o
> >>  common-obj-$(CONFIG_SOFTMMU) += machine.o
> >> -common-obj-$(CONFIG_SOFTMMU) += null-machine.o
> >>  common-obj-$(CONFIG_SOFTMMU) += loader.o
> >>  common-obj-$(CONFIG_SOFTMMU) += qdev-properties-system.o
> >>  common-obj-$(CONFIG_SOFTMMU) += register.o
> >> @@ -20,3 +19,4 @@ common-obj-$(CONFIG_SOFTMMU) += or-irq.o
> >>  common-obj-$(CONFIG_PLATFORM_BUS) += platform-bus.o
> >>  
> >>  obj-$(CONFIG_SOFTMMU) += generic-loader.o
> >> +obj-$(CONFIG_SOFTMMU) += null-machine.o
> > 
> > I'd like to keep null-machine.o in common-obj-y, if possible. We
> > already have an arch_type variable provided by arch_init.c, maybe
> > it could also provide arch_endianness?
> 
> Yes, that sounds like an idea. Or maybe it's feasible to tweak
> load_elf(), so it can also be called with the endianess parameter set to
> "-1", meaning the caller does not care whether the endianess is big or
> little?
> 
> >> diff --git a/hw/core/null-machine.c b/hw/core/null-machine.c
> >> index 0351ba7..b2468ed 100644
> >> --- a/hw/core/null-machine.c
> >> +++ b/hw/core/null-machine.c
> >> @@ -13,18 +13,97 @@
> >>  
> >>  #include "qemu/osdep.h"
> >>  #include "qemu-common.h"
> >> +#include "qemu/error-report.h"
> >>  #include "hw/hw.h"
> >>  #include "hw/boards.h"
> >> +#include "hw/loader.h"
> >> +#include "sysemu/sysemu.h"
> >> +#include "exec/address-spaces.h"
> >> +#include "cpu.h"
> >> +#include "elf.h"
> >> +
> >> +#ifdef TARGET_WORDS_BIGENDIAN
> >> +#define LOAD_ELF_ENDIAN_FLAG 1
> >> +#else
> >> +#define LOAD_ELF_ENDIAN_FLAG 0
> >> +#endif
> >> +
> >> +static hwaddr cpu_initial_pc;
> > 
> > Other architectures and machines probably have something similar
> > to cpu_initial_pc, so this could be probably be moved to an
> > existing generic struct. But I am not sure if this would be a
> > MachineState field or CPUState field.
> 
> I'm also not sure whether this makes sense right from the start ... the
> intial PC handling seems to be slightly different for each board, so
> trying to generalize this variable sounds quite complicated ... so
> that's maybe rather something for a later clean-up patch instead.

Yeah. I would love to avoid adding another static variable to
QEMU, but maybe this is good enough to avoid making the changes
too intrusive.

Anyway, I believe it will be possible to replace
machine_none_load_kernel() with a simple instantiation of
TYPE_GENERIC_LOADER, which already takes care of CPU reset.

> 
> >> +static uint64_t translate_phys_addr(void *opaque, uint64_t addr)
> >> +{
> >> +    return cpu_get_phys_page_debug(CPU(opaque), addr);
> >> +}
> >> +
> >> +static void machine_none_load_kernel(CPUState *cpu, const char 
> >> *kernel_fname,
> >> +                                     ram_addr_t ram_size)
> >> +{
> >> +    uint64_t elf_entry;
> >> +    int kernel_size;
> >> +
> >> +    if (!ram_size) {
> >> +        error_report("You need RAM for loading a kernel");
> >> +        return;
> >> +    }
> >> +
> >> +    kernel_size = load_elf(kernel_fname, translate_phys_addr, cpu, 
> >> &elf_entry,
> >> +                           NULL, NULL, LOAD_ELF_ENDIAN_FLAG, EM_NONqE, 0, 
> >> 0);
> >> +    cpu_initial_pc = elf_entry;
> >> +    if (kernel_size < 0) {
> >> +        kernel_size = load_uimage(kernel_fname, &cpu_initial_pc, NULL, 
> >> NULL,
> >> +                                  NULL, NULL);
> >> +    }
> >> +    if (kernel_size < 0) {
> >> +        kernel_size = load_image_targphys(kernel_fname, 0, ram_size);
> >> +    }
> >> +    if (kernel_size < 0) {
> >> +        error_report("Could not load kernel '%s'", kernel_fname);
> >> +        return;
> >> +    }
> >> +}
> > 
> > Do you know how many different architectures will be able to use
> > this generic ELF loading logic as-is?
> 
> I've only tried m68k and xtensa so far, and it worked there. OpenRISC
> "or32-sim" machine looks very similar, too. Most other board look
> slightly different, either lacking the "load_uimage" or
> "load_image_targphys" (but the generic code might still work there), or
> having some other magic code inbetween...

I assume we will want to make "-machine none -kernel ..." work on
those other architectures too, eventually.

In this case, we need to keep in mind that this implementation is
just a generic default implementation, but that may be overridden
by arch-specific implementations in the future. (Probably through
a CPUClass::load_kernel hook?)

> 
> > Probably other machines already have very similar logic, so it
> > would be nice if we could make this reusable so other machines
> > don't need to duplicate it.
> 
> I can have a try...
> 
> >> +static void machine_none_cpu_reset(void *opaque)
> >> +{
> >> +    CPUState *cpu = CPU(opaque);
> >> +
> >> +    cpu_reset(cpu);
> >> +    cpu_set_pc(cpu, cpu_initial_pc);
> >> +}
> >>  
> >>  static void machine_none_init(MachineState *machine)
> >>  {
> >> +    ram_addr_t ram_size = machine->ram_size;
> >> +    MemoryRegion *ram;
> >> +    CPUState *cpu = NULL;
> >> +
> >> +    /* Initialize CPU (if a model has been specified) */
> >> +    if (machine->cpu_model) {
> >> +        cpu = cpu_init(machine->cpu_model);
> >> +        if (!cpu) {
> >> +            error_report("Unable to initialize CPU");
> >> +            exit(1);
> >> +        }
> >> +        qemu_register_reset(machine_none_cpu_reset, cpu);
> >> +        cpu_reset(cpu);
> >> +    }
> > 
> > This looks like a sign that we need a generic wrapper to create
> > CPUs. Probably lots of other machines do something very similar.
> > But I think this is something for later.
> 
> I don't think that this sequence can be generalized in a wrapper
> function so easily: Most other machines apparently do some additional
> magic between cpu_init() and qemu_register_reset() ... so if we really
> want to generalize this, this is certainly a task for a separate clean
> up patch later.

Agreed.

> 
> >>  static void machine_none_machine_init(MachineClass *mc)
> >>  {
> >>      mc->desc = "empty machine";
> >>      mc->init = machine_none_init;
> >> -    mc->max_cpus = 0;
> > 
> > Does this line removal has any visible effect? vl.c already
> > interprets max_cpus==0 as the same as max_cpus==1.
> > 
> > Maybe we should set max_cpus=1 explicitly to make it clear that
> > this new code doesn't work if smp_cpus > 1.
> 
> You're right, max_cpus = 1 would make more sense here ... I'll change my
> patch accordingly.
> 
>  Thomas
> 

-- 
Eduardo