How to create ARC Linux Virtual appliance

This document is obsolete. Linux Virtual appliance is not available to external users. Please use ARC HS VDK.

This is a manual how to create a Virtual Machine using Virtual Box that would have everything required to run and debug ARC Linux running on the SystemC model based on nSIM simulator. This document is mostly intended for the internal use.

Specifications

• Use latest available Ubuntu LTS release. Lubuntu is suggested as it has least requirements. Unity-based ubuntu is not a good idea, because it doesn't work fast enough without HW 3D acceleration, which might be a problem on Linux-based servers
• Number of cores: 2; RAM: 1GiB. Those can be changed when user imports appliance
• Login: arc. Password: arc. Ligin automatically. There are not secrets to hide here
• Synopsys' files are in ~/snps directory
• Virtual platform in the ~/snps/virtual-platform`
• Prebuilt SystemC libraries. No need for source code. Versions at the moment of this writing: SystemC 2.3.0 and SCML 2.1.3. Directories in ~/snps:
  • systemc-2.3.0-install
  • scml-2.1.3-install
• ARC 700 single code model is a prebuilt one by default
• Use https://github.com/foss-for-synopsys-dwc-arc-processors/toolchain/wiki/Building-nSIM-OSCI-Linux-Virtual-Platform as guide to build libraries and default model
• nSIM in ~/snps/nSIM_64
• ARC uClibc toolchain in ~/snps/toolchain. Add it to the PATH in the ~/.bashrc
• ARC Linux should be able to reach out the big world of Internet, using the host (read: Virtual appliance) as a router. Use Configuring NAT for the Linux Virtual Platform as a guide how to do that
• Vmlinux images included should already have netoworking parts preconfigured on them for this to work out of the box
• Vmlinux should mount NFS share from ~/snps/pub. Don't forget to create one
• Do not set LM_LICENSE_FILE to any value. This should be set by the end user
• Disable USB 2.0 in the VM settings. It is of no use for us, but it requires user to install VirtualBox Extensions. User can enable this if required.

Verifying

User should be able to do at least following:

1. Import virtual appliance
2. Start it
3. Set LM_LICENSE_FILE to a valid value
4. Start Virtual platform by: $ cd ~/snps/virtual-platform $ SC_SIGNAL_WRITE_CHECK=DISABLE ./sc_top
5. When target ARC Linux starts following should be work:

• Downloading Synopsys.com via wget: wget synopsys.com
• Reading/executing files from NFS share
• Running gdbserver with subsequent connection from the host.