README revision 1905:178c8cd82a97 
1This is release m5_1.1 of the M5 simulator.
2
3This file contains brief "getting started" instructions.  For more
4information, see http://m5.eecs.umich.edu.  If you have questions,
5please send mail to m5sim-users@lists.sourceforge.net.
6
7WHAT'S INCLUDED (AND NOT)
8-------------------------
9
10The basic source release includes these subdirectories:
11 - m5: the simulator itself
12 - m5-test: regression tests
13 - ext: less-common external packages needed to build m5
14 - alpha-system: source for Alpha console and PALcode
15
16To run full-system simulations, you will need compiled console,
17PALcode, and kernel binaries and one or more disk images.  These files
18are collected in a separate archive, m5_system_1.1.tar.bz2.  This file
19is included on the CD release, or you can download it separately from
20Sourceforge.
21
22M5 supports Linux 2.4/2.6, FreeBSD, and the proprietary Compaq/HP
23Tru64 version of Unix. We are able to distribute Linux and FreeBSD
24bootdisks, but we are unable to distribute bootable disk images of
25Tru64 Unix. If you have a Tru64 license and are interested in
26obtaining disk images, contact us at m5-dev@eecs.umich.edu.
27
28The CD release includes a few extra goodies, such as a tar file
29containing doxygen-generated HTML documentation (html-docs.tar.gz), a
30set of Linux source patches (linux_m5-2.6.8.1.diff), and the scons
31program needed to build M5.  If you do not have the CD, the same HTML
32documentation is available online at http://m5.eecs.umich.edu/docs,
33the Linux source patches are available at
34http://m5.eecs.umich.edu/dist/linux_m5-2.6.8.1.diff, and the scons
35program is available from http://www.scons.org.
36
37WHAT'S NEEDED
38-------------
39- GCC version 3.3 or newer
40- Python 2.3 or newer
41- SCons 0.96.1 or newer (see http://www.scons.org)
42
43WHAT'S RECOMMENDED
44------------------
45- MySQL (for statistics complex statistics storage/retrieval)
46- Python-MysqlDB (for statistics analysis) 
47
48GETTING STARTED
49---------------
50
51There are two different build targets and three optimizations levels:
52
53Target:
54-------
55ALPHA_SE - Syscall emulation simulation
56ALPHA_FS - Full system simulation
57
58Optimization:
59-------------
60m5.debug - debug version of the code with tracing and without optimization
61m5.opt   - optimized version of code with tracing
62m5.fast  - optimized version of the code without tracing and asserts
63
64Different targets are built in different subdirectories of m5/build.
65Binaries with the same target but different optimization levels share
66the same directory.  Note that you can build m5 in any directory you
67choose;p just configure the target directory using the 'mkbuilddir'
68script in m5/build.
69
70The following steps will build and test the simulator.  The variable
71"$top" refers to the top directory where you've unpacked the files,
72i.e., the one containing the m5, m5-test, and ext directories.  If you
73have a multiprocessor system, you should give scons a "-j N" argument (like
74make) to run N jobs in parallel.
75
76To build and test the syscall-emulation simulator:
77
78	cd $top/m5/build
79	scons ALPHA_SE/test/opt/quick
80
81This process takes under 10 minutes on a dual 3GHz Xeon system (using
82the '-j 4' option).
83
84To build and test the full-system simulator:
85
861. Unpack the full-system binaries from m5_system_1.1.tar.bz2.  (See
87   above for directions on obtaining this file if you don't have it.)
88   This package includes disk images and kernel, palcode, and console
89   binaries for Linux and FreeBSD.
902. Edit the SYSTEMDIR search path in $top/m5-test/SysPaths.py to
91   include the path to your local copy of the binaries.
923. In $top/m5/build, run "scons ALPHA_FS/test/opt/quick".
93
94This process also takes under 10 minutes on a dual 3GHz Xeon system
95(again using the '-j 4' option).
96
97