Name
ss20 – CHARON-SSP/V8 32-bit SPARC Virtual Machine
e450 – CHARON-SSP/V9 64-bit SPARC Virtual Machine
Synopsis
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Description
The sma utility is the lowest level access to the CHARON-AXP/SMA virtual machine software. It can be started in four different modes:
- Utility,
- Foreground,
- Background, and
- Interactive.
In utility mode it is possible to specify the -l and -k options to list and terminate running instances. In both foreground and background mode, the sma software can be used to start a running Alpha virtual machine. The difference between the two being that background mode will run the virtual machine as a daemon, releasing the controlling terminal. Lastly, interactive mode will run a virtual machine as well as start an interactive command line described in the section Interactive Mode
The following table describes all the options that can be passed to the sma command line utility.
sma Command Line Utility Options| Option | Description |
|---|---|
-a alias_name | Assign If this option is not specified, a name of the form |
-d | Run the virtual machine as a daemon. This option cannot be specified with |
-f config_file | When starting a new instance, use this option to specify the location of the virtual machine configuration file. For further details of the format of this file see the /wiki/spaces/DocCHAXPSMAv2240L/pages/32473949 section. This is not an optional argument. |
-s | Start the This option cannot be specified with |
-h | Display a brief usage message. |
-k pid | Stop the virtual machine instance specified by This option cannot be specified with an others. |
-l | This option lists the currently running CHARON-AXP/SMA instances. The list is constructed of the following columns:
This option cannot be specified with any others. |
Interactive Mode
Running the sma virtual machine with the -s option will, as well as starting a virtual machine, start an interactive command line on the controlling terminal. This command line is indicated by the CHARON-AXP/SMA> prompt and allows the user to query and manipulate the operation of the running virtual machine. The terminal output shown below shows the tail end of the virtual machine start up messages before displaying the prompt.
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Interactive Mode does not refer to running the Alpha SRM console in the current tty.
The following command reference describes the syntax and operation of the commands supported in this version of CHARON-AXP/SMA for GNU/Linux.
| Command | Description | ||
|---|---|---|---|
dit [ on | off | reset ] | Control the operation of the Dynamic Instruction Translation (DIT) engine. To display the current DIT execution counters do not specify any argument. | ||
| Arguments | |||
on | Enable the DIT engine. | ||
off | Disable the DIT engine. | ||
reset | Reset the DIT engine statistics counters. | ||
help [ command ] | Display command line help. | ||
| Arguments | |||
command | Specify a command name to return more specific help. This argument is optional. | ||
memory [ address size ] | Display a region of memory within the virtual machine. If no parameters are specified the command will use the previous values for address and size. | ||
| Arguments | |||
address | |||
size | |||
set address value | Set the 8-bit value at address to value. | ||
| Arguments | |||
address | Address of memory location to update. This address is specified in hexadecimal notation. | ||
value | 8 bit value to be stored at address. This value is specified in hexadecimal notation. | ||
quit | Exit the virtual machine. This is equivalent of executing power off from the Alpha SRM console. | ||
Exit Status
The sma virtual machine exits 0 on success and 255 if an error occurs.
Examples
The following is a very basic example configuration file.
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Assuming the configuration file above is stored in vm.config the following commands can be used to start the virtual machine and connect to the console.
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This will generate output similar to the following on the current terminal:
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The following shows the Alpha SRM console after the virtual machine has started:
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