100 lines
3.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
100 lines
3.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
.. _hv-console:
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Hypervisor console, hypervisor shell, and virtual UART
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######################################################
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Hypervisor console
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******************
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The hypervisor console is a text-based terminal accessible from UART.
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:numref:`console-processing` shows the workflow of the console:
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.. figure:: images/console-image93.png
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:align: center
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:name: console-processing
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Periodic console processing
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A periodic timer is set on initialization to trigger console processing every 40ms.
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Processing behavior depends on whether the vUART
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is active:
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- If it is not active, the hypervisor shell is kicked to handle
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inputs from the physical UART, if there are any.
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- If the vUART is active, the bytes from
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the physical UART are redirected to the RX fifo of the vUART, and those
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in the vUART TX fifo to the physical UART.
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.. note:: The console is only available in the debug version of the hypervisor,
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configured at compile time. In the release version, the console is
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disabled and the physical UART is not used by the hypervisor or SOS.
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Hypervisor shell
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****************
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For debugging, the hypervisor shell provides commands to list some
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internal states and statistics of the hypervisor. It is accessible on
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the physical UART only when the vUART is deactivated. See
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:ref:`acrnshell` for the list of available hypervisor shell commands.
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Virtual UART
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************
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Currently UART 16550 is owned by the hypervisor itself and used for
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debugging purposes. Properties are configured by hypervisor command
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line. Hypervisor emulates a UART device with 0x3F8 address to SOS that
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acts as the console of SOS with these features:
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- The vUART is exposed via I/O port 0x3f8.
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- Incorporate a 256-byte RX buffer and 65536 TX buffer.
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- Full emulation of input/output bytes and related interrupts.
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- For other read-write registers the value is stored without effects
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and reads get the latest stored value. For read-only registers
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writes are ignored.
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- vUART activation via shell command and deactivate via hotkey.
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The following diagram shows the activation state transition of vUART.
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.. figure:: images/console-image41.png
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:align: center
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Periodic console processing
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Specifically:
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- After initialization vUART is disabled.
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- The vUART is activated after the command "vm_console" is executed on
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the hypervisor shell. Inputs to the physical UART will be
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redirected to the vUART starting from the next timer event.
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- The vUART is deactivated after a :kbd:`Ctrl + Space` hotkey is received
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from the physical UART. Inputs to the physical UART will be
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handled by the hypervisor shell starting from the next timer
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event.
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The workflows are described as follows:
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- RX flow:
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- Characters are read from UART HW into a sbuf whose size is 2048
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bytes, triggered by console_read
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- Characters are read from this sbuf and put to rxFIFO,
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triggered by vuart_console_rx_chars
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- A virtual interrupt is sent to SOS, triggered by a read from
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SOS. Characters in rxFIFO are sent to SOS by emulation of
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read of register UART16550_RBR
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- TX flow:
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- Characters are put to txFIFO by emulation of write of register
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UART16550_THR
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- Characters in txFIFO are read out one by one and sent to console
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by printf, triggered by vuart_console_tx_chars
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- Implementation of printf is based on console, which finally sends
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characters to UART HW by writing to register UART16550_RBR
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