Index of /Tools/Emulators/Apout/
Apout -- Simulate PDP-11 Unix a.out binaries
Version 2.3 Beta
Warren Toomey wkt@tuhs.org
January 2002
Introduction
------------
This program is a user-level simulator for UNIX a.out binaries. Binaries
for V1, V2, V5, V6, V7, 2.9BSD and 2.11BSD can be run with this simulator.
The user-mode PDP-11 instructions are simulated, and TRAP instructions
are emulated by calling equivalent native-mode system calls.
The advantages of an a.out simulator over a full-blown PDP-11 simulator are:
+ system calls can be done natively, thus speeding up execution
+ the simulator is less of a CPU-hog than a full-blown PDP-11 simulator
+ you don't need a simulated operating system or a simulated file system
Apout can be obtained via anonymous ftp at minnie.tuhs.org in the
directory pub/PDP-11/Sims/Apout. The directory pub/PDP-11/Sims/Apout/UnixBins
contains tar archives of a.out binaries from several versions of UNIX.
Status
------
The program is now at release 2.3 Alpha2. Most of the binaries from V5, V6
and V7 run fine. All of the V5/V6/V7 system calls are caught, but some are
ignored and some generate EPERM errors. The V1, V2, 2.9BSD and 2.11BSD
environments are still under construction: see the file LIMITATIONS for
details. Finally, the simulator won't run on a big-endian machine.
INSTALLATION
------------
I have only tested this program on FreeBSD 2.x and 3.x, and on RedHat
Linux 2.2. It should compile on a 32-bit little-endian machine with
some form of Unix; you may need to change some header file includes etc.
See `defines.h' for the details. In particular, if your system doesn't have
types for:
int8_t, int16_t, int32_t, u_int8_t, u_int16_t, u_int32_t
or if your compiler doesn't have char=1 byte, short= 2 bytes, int=4 bytes,
then alter the relevant typedefs in `defines.h'.
The Makefile has two sets of CFLAGS/LDFLAGS: one set is for debugging, and
the other set is for speed. If you define the C pre-processor macro `DEBUG',
then this includes debugging code into the program. I use it quite heavily
when trying to fix niggling problems.
If you remove the -DEMU211 macro definition from the Makefile, the emulation
of 2.11BSD will not be compiled in to the simulator. Similarly, if you remove
the -DEMUV1 macro definition from the Makefile, the emulation of 1st and 2nd
Edition UNIX will not be compiled in to the simulator. By default, EMUV1
is disabled.
Once you have configured apout, now type `make'. Hopefully, things will
compile ok. You will eventually get the `apout' program.
Now go find an old PDP-11 UNIX binary, e.g 7th Edition cal, and say:
% setenv APOUT_ROOT / # for now
% apout cal 1970
If the simulator is working, the calendar for 1970 will be printed out.
The V7 shell works, and from there, you can run other programs.
% apout sh
# ls -l
output of ls
#
Finally, install apout in /usr/local/bin, and the manual page apout.1 in
the appropriate place. If you can't use the man page because of incompatible
macros, then apout.0 is a text file which has the pre-formatted man page.
DEBUG OPTIONS
-------------
When debugging is compiled in, the program has several options:
-inst turns on instruction tracing, which is _very_ verbose
-trap turns on TRAP tracing; not all syscalls have debugging code
-jsr prints out the details of each jsr and rts
-fp prints out some details of floating-point instructions
All debugging output goes out to the file `apout.dbg'. These debugging options
are mainly used for testing apout, and so the output in apout.dbg may not be
very useful to you.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
---------------------
Apout has the concept of a simulated root filesystem for the simulated PDP-11
binaries. When working with filenames, if the filenames are relative, they
stay relative. If the filenames are absolute (i.e /usr/...), then apout
prepends the value of the environment variable APOUT_ROOT to the filename.
This allows you to say:
# setenv APOUT_ROOT /usr/misc/v7root
before running apout to set the `root' of the filesystem wherever you want.
You MUST set APOUT_ROOT before running apout.
TODO
----
There's lots to do. Here's what I'd like to do, in a somewhat ordered list.
+ Verify that the instruction simulation and high priority
the syscalls all work correctly
+ Complete some of the syscalls that are med priority
not fully simulated
+ Speed the simulator up med priority
SOURCE ORGANISATION
-------------------
main.c parses any arguments, loads the binary and calls run()
cpu.c holds the main instruction decode/execute loop
itab.c holds function lookup tables for all instructions
ea.c holds functions to decode the PDP-11 addressing modes
debug.c holds strings for all emulated opcodes
single.c single.c, double.c and branch.c hold most of the functions
double.c which perform the PDP-11 user-mode instructions. The code
branch.c in these files comes from a PDP-11 simulator by Eric Edwards
fp.c partially emulates FP instructions
aout.c determines what type of a.out the binary is, and what UNIX
magic.c environment to set up. If V5/V6/V7, trap instructions fall
v7trap.c into v7trap.c which runs them using native system calls
v7trap.h
v1trap.c if the binary is a 1st or 2nd Edition binary, traps fall
v1trap.h into v1trap.c, which likewise does the syscalls natively
ke11a.c emulates the KE11A extended arithmetic unit, used by V1/V2
bsdtrap.c if the binary is a 2.11BSD binary, trap instructions fall
bsdtrap.h into bsdtrap.c, which likewise does the syscalls natively
bsd_ioctl.c 2.11BSD ioctl calls are handled with this file
defines.h holds function & typedef prototypes and useful cpp macros