\input texinfo @c -*- texinfo -*- @settitle QEMU CPU Emulator Reference Documentation @titlepage @sp 7 @center @titlefont{QEMU CPU Emulator Reference Documentation} @sp 3 @end titlepage @chapter Introduction @section Features QEMU is a FAST! processor emulator. By using dynamic translation it achieves a reasonnable speed while being easy to port on new host CPUs. QEMU has two operating modes: @itemize @item User mode emulation. In this mode, QEMU can launch Linux processes compiled for one CPU on another CPU. Linux system calls are converted because of endianness and 32/64 bit mismatches. The Wine Windows API emulator (@url{http://www.winehq.org}) and the DOSEMU DOS emulator (@url{www.dosemu.org}) are the main targets for QEMU. @item Full system emulation. In this mode, QEMU emulates a full system, including a processor and various peripherials. Currently, it is only used to launch an x86 Linux kernel on an x86 Linux system. It enables easier testing and debugging of system code. It can also be used to provide virtual hosting of several virtual PCs on a single server. @end itemize As QEMU requires no host kernel patches to run, it is very safe and easy to use. QEMU generic features: @itemize @item User space only or full system emulation. @item Using dynamic translation to native code for reasonnable speed. @item Working on x86 and PowerPC hosts. Being tested on ARM, Sparc32, Alpha and S390. @item Self-modifying code support. @item Precise exceptions support. @item The virtual CPU is a library (@code{libqemu}) which can be used in other projects. @end itemize QEMU user mode emulation features: @itemize @item Generic Linux system call converter, including most ioctls. @item clone() emulation using native CPU clone() to use Linux scheduler for threads. @item Accurate signal handling by remapping host signals to target signals. @end itemize @end itemize QEMU full system emulation features: @itemize @item Using mmap() system calls to simulate the MMU @end itemize @section x86 emulation QEMU x86 target features: @itemize @item The virtual x86 CPU supports 16 bit and 32 bit addressing with segmentation. LDT/GDT and IDT are emulated. VM86 mode is also supported to run DOSEMU. @item Support of host page sizes bigger than 4KB in user mode emulation. @item QEMU can emulate itself on x86. @item An extensive Linux x86 CPU test program is included @file{tests/test-i386}. It can be used to test other x86 virtual CPUs. @end itemize Current QEMU limitations: @itemize @item No SSE/MMX support (yet). @item No x86-64 support. @item IPC syscalls are missing. @item The x86 segment limits and access rights are not tested at every memory access. @item On non x86 host CPUs, @code{double}s are used instead of the non standard 10 byte @code{long double}s of x86 for floating point emulation to get maximum performances. @item Full system emulation only works if no data are mapped above the virtual address 0xc0000000 (yet). @item Some priviledged instructions or behaviors are missing. Only the ones needed for proper Linux kernel operation are emulated. @item No memory separation between the kernel and the user processes is done. It will be implemented very soon. @end itemize @section ARM emulation @itemize @item ARM emulation can currently launch small programs while using the generic dynamic code generation architecture of QEMU. @item No FPU support (yet). @item No automatic regression testing (yet). @end itemize @chapter QEMU User space emulator invocation @section Quick Start If you need to compile QEMU, please read the @file{README} which gives the related information. In order to launch a Linux process, QEMU needs the process executable itself and all the target (x86) dynamic libraries used by it. @itemize @item On x86, you can just try to launch any process by using the native libraries: @example qemu -L / /bin/ls @end example @code{-L /} tells that the x86 dynamic linker must be searched with a @file{/} prefix. @item Since QEMU is also a linux process, you can launch qemu with qemu: @example qemu -L / qemu -L / /bin/ls @end example @item On non x86 CPUs, you need first to download at least an x86 glibc (@file{qemu-XXX-i386-glibc21.tar.gz} on the QEMU web page). Ensure that @code{LD_LIBRARY_PATH} is not set: @example unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH @end example Then you can launch the precompiled @file{ls} x86 executable: @example qemu /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/ls-i386 @end example You can look at @file{/usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/qemu-conf.sh} so that QEMU is automatically launched by the Linux kernel when you try to launch x86 executables. It requires the @code{binfmt_misc} module in the Linux kernel. @item The x86 version of QEMU is also included. You can try weird things such as: @example qemu /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/qemu-i386 /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/ls-i386 @end example @end itemize @section Wine launch @itemize @item Ensure that you have a working QEMU with the x86 glibc distribution (see previous section). In order to verify it, you must be able to do: @example qemu /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/ls-i386 @end example @item Download the binary x86 Wine install (@file{qemu-XXX-i386-wine.tar.gz} on the QEMU web page). @item Configure Wine on your account. Look at the provided script @file{/usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/wine-conf.sh}. Your previous @code{$@{HOME@}/.wine} directory is saved to @code{$@{HOME@}/.wine.org}. @item Then you can try the example @file{putty.exe}: @example qemu /usr/local/qemu-i386/wine/bin/wine /usr/local/qemu-i386/wine/c/Program\ Files/putty.exe @end example @end itemize @section Command line options @example usage: qemu [-h] [-d] [-L path] [-s size] program [arguments...] @end example @table @option @item -h Print the help @item -L path Set the x86 elf interpreter prefix (default=/usr/local/qemu-i386) @item -s size Set the x86 stack size in bytes (default=524288) @end table Debug options: @table @option @item -d Activate log (logfile=/tmp/qemu.log) @item -p pagesize Act as if the host page size was 'pagesize' bytes @end table @chapter QEMU System emulator invocation @section Quick Start This section explains how to launch a Linux kernel inside QEMU. @enumerate @item Download the archive @file{vl-test-xxx.tar.gz} containing a Linux kernel and an initrd (initial Ram Disk). The archive also contains a precompiled version of @file{vl}, the QEMU System emulator. @item Optional: If you want network support (for example to launch X11 examples), you must copy the script @file{vl-ifup} in @file{/etc} and configure properly @code{sudo} so that the command @code{ifconfig} contained in @file{vl-ifup} can be executed as root. You must verify that your host kernel supports the TUN/TAP network interfaces: the device @file{/dev/net/tun} must be present. When network is enabled, there is a virtual network connection between the host kernel and the emulated kernel. The emulated kernel is seen from the host kernel at IP address 172.20.0.2 and the host kernel is seen from the emulated kernel at IP address 172.20.0.1. @item Launch @code{vl.sh}. You should have the following output: @example > ./vl.sh connected to host network interface: tun0 Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel. Linux version 2.4.20 (bellard@voyager) (gcc version 2.95.2 20000220 (Debian GNU/Linux)) #42 Wed Jun 25 14:16:12 CEST 2003 BIOS-provided physical RAM map: BIOS-88: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable) BIOS-88: 0000000000100000 - 0000000002000000 (usable) 32MB LOWMEM available. On node 0 totalpages: 8192 zone(0): 4096 pages. zone(1): 4096 pages. zone(2): 0 pages. Kernel command line: root=/dev/ram ramdisk_size=6144 Initializing CPU#0 Detected 501.785 MHz processor. Calibrating delay loop... 973.20 BogoMIPS Memory: 24776k/32768k available (725k kernel code, 7604k reserved, 151k data, 48k init, 0k highmem) Dentry cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 32768 bytes) Inode cache hash table entries: 2048 (order: 2, 16384 bytes) Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes) Buffer-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes) Page-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes) CPU: Intel Pentium Pro stepping 03 Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK. POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4 Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039 Initializing RT netlink socket apm: BIOS not found. Starting kswapd pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with no serial options enabled ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16450 ne.c:v1.10 9/23/94 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com) Last modified Nov 1, 2000 by Paul Gortmaker NE*000 ethercard probe at 0x300: 52 54 00 12 34 56 eth0: NE2000 found at 0x300, using IRQ 9. RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 6144K size 1024 blocksize NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0 IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes TCP: Hash tables configured (established 2048 bind 2048) NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0. RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0 RAMDISK: Loading 6144 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done. Freeing initrd memory: 6144k freed VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem). Freeing unused kernel memory: 48k freed sh: can't access tty; job control turned off # @end example @item Then you can play with the kernel inside the virtual serial console. You can launch @code{ls} for example. Type @key{Ctrl-a h} to have an help about the keys you can type inside the virtual serial console. In particular, use @key{Ctrl-a x} to exit QEMU and use @key{Ctrl-a b} as the Magic SysRq key. @item If the network is enabled, launch the script @file{/etc/linuxrc} in the emulator (don't forget the leading dot): @example . /etc/linuxrc @end example Then enable X11 connections on your PC from the emulated Linux: @example xhost +172.20.0.2 @end example You can now launch @file{xterm} or @file{xlogo} and verify that you have a real Virtual Linux system ! @end enumerate NOTES: @enumerate @item A 2.5.66 kernel is also included in the vl-test archive. Just replace the bzImage in vl.sh to try it. @item vl creates a temporary file in @var{$VLTMPDIR} (@file{/tmp} is the default) containing all the simulated PC memory. If possible, try to use a temporary directory using the tmpfs filesystem to avoid too many unnecessary disk accesses. @item The example initrd is a modified version of the one made by Kevin Lawton for the plex86 Project (@url{www.plex86.org}). @end enumerate @section Kernel Compilation You can use any Linux kernel within QEMU provided it is mapped at address 0x90000000 (the default is 0xc0000000). You must modify only two lines in the kernel source: In asm/page.h, replace @example #define __PAGE_OFFSET (0xc0000000) @end example by @example #define __PAGE_OFFSET (0x90000000) @end example And in arch/i386/vmlinux.lds, replace @example . = 0xc0000000 + 0x100000; @end example by @example . = 0x90000000 + 0x100000; @end example The file config-2.4.20 gives the configuration of the example kernel. Just type @example make bzImage @end example As you would do to make a real kernel. Then you can use with QEMU exactly the same kernel as you would boot on your PC (in @file{arch/i386/boot/bzImage}). If you are not using a 2.5 kernel as host kernel but if you use a target 2.5 kernel, you must also ensure that the 'HZ' define is set to 100 (1000 is the default) as QEMU cannot currently emulate timers at frequencies greater than 100 Hz on host Linux systems < 2.5. In asm/param.h, replace: @example # define HZ 1000 /* Internal kernel timer frequency */ @end example by @example # define HZ 100 /* Internal kernel timer frequency */ @end example @section PC Emulation QEMU emulates the following PC peripherials: @itemize @item PIC (interrupt controler) @item PIT (timers) @item CMOS memory @item Serial port (port=0x3f8, irq=4) @item NE2000 network adapter (port=0x300, irq=9) @item Dumb VGA (to print the @code{Uncompressing Linux} message) @end itemize @chapter QEMU Internals @section QEMU compared to other emulators Like bochs [3], QEMU emulates an x86 CPU. But QEMU is much faster than bochs as it uses dynamic compilation and because it uses the host MMU to simulate the x86 MMU. The downside is that currently the emulation is not as accurate as bochs (for example, you cannot currently run Windows inside QEMU). Like Valgrind [2], QEMU does user space emulation and dynamic translation. Valgrind is mainly a memory debugger while QEMU has no support for it (QEMU could be used to detect out of bound memory accesses as Valgrind, but it has no support to track uninitialised data as Valgrind does). The Valgrind dynamic translator generates better code than QEMU (in particular it does register allocation) but it is closely tied to an x86 host and target and has no support for precise exceptions and system emulation. EM86 [4] is the closest project to user space QEMU (and QEMU still uses some of its code, in particular the ELF file loader). EM86 was limited to an alpha host and used a proprietary and slow interpreter (the interpreter part of the FX!32 Digital Win32 code translator [5]). TWIN [6] is a Windows API emulator like Wine. It is less accurate than Wine but includes a protected mode x86 interpreter to launch x86 Windows executables. Such an approach as greater potential because most of the Windows API is executed natively but it is far more difficult to develop because all the data structures and function parameters exchanged between the API and the x86 code must be converted. User mode Linux [7] was the only solution before QEMU to launch a Linux kernel as a process while not needing any host kernel patches. However, user mode Linux requires heavy kernel patches while QEMU accepts unpatched Linux kernels. It would be interesting to compare the performance of the two approaches. The new Plex86 [8] PC virtualizer is done in the same spirit as the QEMU system emulator. It requires a patched Linux kernel to work (you cannot launch the same kernel on your PC), but the patches are really small. As it is a PC virtualizer (no emulation is done except for some priveledged instructions), it has the potential of being faster than QEMU. The downside is that a complicated (and potentially unsafe) host kernel patch is needed. @section Portable dynamic translation QEMU is a dynamic translator. When it first encounters a piece of code, it converts it to the host instruction set. Usually dynamic translators are very complicated and highly CPU dependent. QEMU uses some tricks which make it relatively easily portable and simple while achieving good performances. The basic idea is to split every x86 instruction into fewer simpler instructions. Each simple instruction is implemented by a piece of C code (see @file{op-i386.c}). Then a compile time tool (@file{dyngen}) takes the corresponding object file (@file{op-i386.o}) to generate a dynamic code generator which concatenates the simple instructions to build a function (see @file{op-i386.h:dyngen_code()}). In essence, the process is similar to [1], but more work is done at compile time. A key idea to get optimal performances is that constant parameters can be passed to the simple operations. For that purpose, dummy ELF relocations are generated with gcc for each constant parameter. Then, the tool (@file{dyngen}) can locate the relocations and generate the appriopriate C code to resolve them when building the dynamic code. That way, QEMU is no more difficult to port than a dynamic linker. To go even faster, GCC static register variables are used to keep the state of the virtual CPU. @section Register allocation Since QEMU uses fixed simple instructions, no efficient register allocation can be done. However, because RISC CPUs have a lot of register, most of the virtual CPU state can be put in registers without doing complicated register allocation. @section Condition code optimisations Good CPU condition codes emulation (@code{EFLAGS} register on x86) is a critical point to get good performances. QEMU uses lazy condition code evaluation: instead of computing the condition codes after each x86 instruction, it just stores one operand (called @code{CC_SRC}), the result (called @code{CC_DST}) and the type of operation (called @code{CC_OP}). @code{CC_OP} is almost never explicitely set in the generated code because it is known at translation time. In order to increase performances, a backward pass is performed on the generated simple instructions (see @code{translate-i386.c:optimize_flags()}). When it can be proved that the condition codes are not needed by the next instructions, no condition codes are computed at all. @section CPU state optimisations The x86 CPU has many internal states which change the way it evaluates instructions. In order to achieve a good speed, the translation phase considers that some state information of the virtual x86 CPU cannot change in it. For example, if the SS, DS and ES segments have a zero base, then the translator does not even generate an addition for the segment base. [The FPU stack pointer register is not handled that way yet]. @section Translation cache A 2MByte cache holds the most recently used translations. For simplicity, it is completely flushed when it is full. A translation unit contains just a single basic block (a block of x86 instructions terminated by a jump or by a virtual CPU state change which the translator cannot deduce statically). @section Direct block chaining After each translated basic block is executed, QEMU uses the simulated Program Counter (PC) and other cpu state informations (such as the CS segment base value) to find the next basic block. In order to accelerate the most common cases where the new simulated PC is known, QEMU can patch a basic block so that it jumps directly to the next one. The most portable code uses an indirect jump. An indirect jump makes it easier to make the jump target modification atomic. On some architectures (such as PowerPC), the @code{JUMP} opcode is directly patched so that the block chaining has no overhead. @section Self-modifying code and translated code invalidation Self-modifying code is a special challenge in x86 emulation because no instruction cache invalidation is signaled by the application when code is modified. When translated code is generated for a basic block, the corresponding host page is write protected if it is not already read-only (with the system call @code{mprotect()}). Then, if a write access is done to the page, Linux raises a SEGV signal. QEMU then invalidates all the translated code in the page and enables write accesses to the page. Correct translated code invalidation is done efficiently by maintaining a linked list of every translated block contained in a given page. Other linked lists are also maintained to undo direct block chaining. Althought the overhead of doing @code{mprotect()} calls is important, most MSDOS programs can be emulated at reasonnable speed with QEMU and DOSEMU. Note that QEMU also invalidates pages of translated code when it detects that memory mappings are modified with @code{mmap()} or @code{munmap()}. @section Exception support longjmp() is used when an exception such as division by zero is encountered. The host SIGSEGV and SIGBUS signal handlers are used to get invalid memory accesses. The exact CPU state can be retrieved because all the x86 registers are stored in fixed host registers. The simulated program counter is found by retranslating the corresponding basic block and by looking where the host program counter was at the exception point. The virtual CPU cannot retrieve the exact @code{EFLAGS} register because in some cases it is not computed because of condition code optimisations. It is not a big concern because the emulated code can still be restarted in any cases. @section Linux system call translation QEMU includes a generic system call translator for Linux. It means that the parameters of the system calls can be converted to fix the endianness and 32/64 bit issues. The IOCTLs are converted with a generic type description system (see @file{ioctls.h} and @file{thunk.c}). QEMU supports host CPUs which have pages bigger than 4KB. It records all the mappings the process does and try to emulated the @code{mmap()} system calls in cases where the host @code{mmap()} call would fail because of bad page alignment. @section Linux signals Normal and real-time signals are queued along with their information (@code{siginfo_t}) as it is done in the Linux kernel. Then an interrupt request is done to the virtual CPU. When it is interrupted, one queued signal is handled by generating a stack frame in the virtual CPU as the Linux kernel does. The @code{sigreturn()} system call is emulated to return from the virtual signal handler. Some signals (such as SIGALRM) directly come from the host. Other signals are synthetized from the virtual CPU exceptions such as SIGFPE when a division by zero is done (see @code{main.c:cpu_loop()}). The blocked signal mask is still handled by the host Linux kernel so that most signal system calls can be redirected directly to the host Linux kernel. Only the @code{sigaction()} and @code{sigreturn()} system calls need to be fully emulated (see @file{signal.c}). @section clone() system call and threads The Linux clone() system call is usually used to create a thread. QEMU uses the host clone() system call so that real host threads are created for each emulated thread. One virtual CPU instance is created for each thread. The virtual x86 CPU atomic operations are emulated with a global lock so that their semantic is preserved. Note that currently there are still some locking issues in QEMU. In particular, the translated cache flush is not protected yet against reentrancy. @section Self-virtualization QEMU was conceived so that ultimately it can emulate itself. Althought it is not very useful, it is an important test to show the power of the emulator. Achieving self-virtualization is not easy because there may be address space conflicts. QEMU solves this problem by being an executable ELF shared object as the ld-linux.so ELF interpreter. That way, it can be relocated at load time. @section MMU emulation For system emulation, QEMU uses the mmap() system call to emulate the target CPU MMU. It works as long the emulated OS does not use an area reserved by the host OS (such as the area above 0xc0000000 on x86 Linux). It is planned to add a slower but more precise MMU emulation with a software MMU. @section Bibliography @table @asis @item [1] @url{http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/piumarta98optimizing.html}, Optimizing direct threaded code by selective inlining (1998) by Ian Piumarta, Fabio Riccardi. @item [2] @url{http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/}, Valgrind, an open-source memory debugger for x86-GNU/Linux, by Julian Seward. @item [3] @url{http://bochs.sourceforge.net/}, the Bochs IA-32 Emulator Project, by Kevin Lawton et al. @item [4] @url{http://www.cs.rose-hulman.edu/~donaldlf/em86/index.html}, the EM86 x86 emulator on Alpha-Linux. @item [5] @url{http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix-nt97/full_papers/chernoff/chernoff.pdf}, DIGITAL FX!32: Running 32-Bit x86 Applications on Alpha NT, by Anton Chernoff and Ray Hookway. @item [6] @url{http://www.willows.com/}, Windows API library emulation from Willows Software. @item [7] @url{http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/}, The User-mode Linux Kernel. @item [8] @url{http://www.plex86.org/}, The new Plex86 project. @end table @chapter Regression Tests In the directory @file{tests/}, various interesting testing programs are available. There are used for regression testing. @section @file{hello-i386} Very simple statically linked x86 program, just to test QEMU during a port to a new host CPU. @section @file{hello-arm} Very simple statically linked ARM program, just to test QEMU during a port to a new host CPU. @section @file{test-i386} This program executes most of the 16 bit and 32 bit x86 instructions and generates a text output. It can be compared with the output obtained with a real CPU or another emulator. The target @code{make test} runs this program and a @code{diff} on the generated output. The Linux system call @code{modify_ldt()} is used to create x86 selectors to test some 16 bit addressing and 32 bit with segmentation cases. The Linux system call @code{vm86()} is used to test vm86 emulation. Various exceptions are raised to test most of the x86 user space exception reporting. @section @file{sha1} It is a simple benchmark. Care must be taken to interpret the results because it mostly tests the ability of the virtual CPU to optimize the @code{rol} x86 instruction and the condition code computations.