5E(1) 5E(1)
NAME
5e - user-mode ARM emulation
SYNOPSIS
5e [ -npbF ] text [ arguments ]
DESCRIPTION
5e simulates the execution of an ARM binary in a Plan 9
environment. Unlike its predecessor vi(1) it supports,
among others, the syscalls rfork (see fork(2)) and exec(2),
which allows for the execution of threaded programs (e.g.,
rio(1) or catclock (see games(1)).
5e executes the specified binary text, which is prepended by
/bin if it does not begin with a slash, dot or hash sign.
Unless -n is specified, /bin is replaced by the union of
/arm/bin and /rc/bin.
Unlike vi(1), 5e(1) does not provide built-in debugging
facilities. It does provide emulation of the /proc direc-
tory, if the -p flag is specified, to attach a proper debug-
ger like acid(1). There is no equivalent of the profiling
facilities, no caches or TLBs are simulated, either.
5e(1) currently has three options.
-n By default, 5e(1) replaces /bin as mentioned above and
also sets the variables cputype and objtype to arm.
Supplying the -n option suppresses this behaviour.
-p The -p option activates emulation of a /proc file sys-
tem, which is mounted at /proc and also posted as
/srv/armproc, cf. srv(3).
-b Supplying -b causes failing processes to call abort(2)
instead of sysfatal. See below.
-F Disable emulation of VFP floating point instructions.
SOURCE
/sys/src/cmd/5e
SEE ALSO
vi(1)
BUGS
The host is required to be little endian and is assumed to
have a floating point implementation conforming to IEEE 754.
Broken processes are simulated in a rather unsatisfactory
5E(1) 5E(1)
manner. The -b option leaks memory. The emulator does not
post sys: notes.
Obscure opcodes, in particular uncommon operations on R15,
are not implemented.
Accesses spanning segment boundaries will be treated as page
faults. Many syscalls such as pread (see read(2)) will
shuffle data around (in most cases unnecessarily) if invoked
on potentially shared segments of variable length, in par-
ticular the bss segment.
FPA emulation leaves much to be desired, rounding modes are
ignored, all calculations are performed at extended preci-
sion. Floating point exceptions crash the emulator.
Several syscalls, most notably the segattach(2) family, are
not implemented (this should not be hard to fix). The emu-
lator notes the value of errstr(2) only under obvious cir-
cumstances; with most syscalls only if the return value is
negative.
/proc emulation is more than unsatisfactory.
The text argument should behave more like it would if it had
been entered as an argument to rc(1).
HISTORY
5e first appeared in 9front (June, 2011).