Installing OS/161 On Your Own Machine

The following instructions describe how to install OS/161 on machines that are outside of the student.cs computing environment. These instructions assume that the target machine is running Linux.

If you are trying to install OS/161 in the student.cs computing environment, then these are not the instructions for you. There is another set of instructions, much simpler than this set, for working in the student.cs environment.

For marking purposes, your code will be compiled and executed in the CSCF undergraduate (student.cs) environment. You are responsible for ensuring that your code runs there.

Getting OS/161 and related tools running on your Linux machine should not be too difficult. However, this is not a guarantee - there are too many variables beyond our control. Ensuring that OS/161 runs in the student.cs environment is our responsibility. Getting it running on your machine is yours.

Setting up OS/161 on your own machine is more involved than setting it up in your account in the student.cs environment. In the student.cs enviroment, both the sys/161 simulator (on which OS/161 runs) and the associated toolchain (compiler, debugger, binary utilities) are set up in the CS350 course account and can be used from there. To run OS/161 on your home machine, you will need to download and build your own copies of the simulator and the toolchain before you can work with OS/161.

Step 0: Please be aware of the FAQ

If things go wrong please have a look at the FAQ for answers and solutions. In particular most systems require the installation of additional software and/or libraries. This will vary by Linux distro and/or Mac OS X version and we'll try to collect information in the FAQ.
OS161 and Toolchain FAQ

Step 1: Download

Start by downloading the necessary files, which are described in the following table:

What	Download Link	Approx. Download Size (MB)	Approx. Unpacked Size (MB)
Binutils for MIPS	os161-binutils.tar.gz	18	113
GCC MIPS Cross-Compiler	os161-gcc.tar.gz	23	95
GDB for Use with OS/161	os161-gdb.tar.gz	20	116
bmake for use with OS/161	os161-bmake.tar.gz	1	2
mk for use with OS/161	os161-mk.tar.gz	1	1
sys/161	sys161.tar.gz	1	2
OS/161	os161.tar.gz	1	3

NOTE: It may take some time to download some of these files and if you try to proceed (e.g., run tar before all of the file has been downloaded it will fail). Please check that your browser has finished downloading the file you are going to work with before working with it.

A Virtual Machine May Help

Step 2: Build and Install the Binary Utilities (Binutils)

Step 3: Adjust Your Shell's Command Path

Note that you may need to log out and log back in again so that this PATH change will take effect. You can check the current setting of the PATH environment variable using the command

printenv PATH

Step 4: Install the GCC MIPS Cross-Compiler

Step 5: Install GDB

Note: Compiling this version of GDB may fail when newer versions of the texinfo package are installed (version 5.2-1, for instance). If you encounter an issue with this step, you can either include MAKEINFO=missing when you run the make command, or you can install an older version of texinfo (such as 4.13-4) and try again. You may also need to install the libncurses-devel library.

Step 6: Install bmake

Run the commands printed by boot-strap in the order in which they are listed.

Step 7: Set Up Links for Toolchain Binaries

Cygwin Users: Shells under Cygwin sometimes have difficulty handling shell commands in a string input as given above. If you find yourself unable to get the second command to work, copy and paste the entire second line into a shell script in $HOME/sys161/tools/bin and run it from there. You will likely need to change the permissions on the shell script to allow it to run, as follows:

When you are finished with these steps, a listing of the directory $HOME/sys161/bin should look similar to this:

bmake@            cs350-gcc@        cs350-ld@       cs350-run@
cs350-addr2line@  cs350-gcc-4.1.2@  cs350-nm@       cs350-size@
cs350-ar@         cs350-gccbug@     cs350-objcopy@  cs350-strings@
cs350-as@         cs350-gcov@       cs350-objdump@  cs350-strip@
cs350-c++filt@    cs350-gdb@        cs350-ranlib@
cs350-cpp@        cs350-gdbtui@     cs350-readelf@

Step 8: Build and Install the sys161 Simulator

Step 9: Install OS/161

Step 10: Cleanup (optional)

Optionally, you may also remove the directory $HOME/sys161/tools/bin from your shell command path, as it is needed only during the process of building the toolchain. However, you be sure to leave $HOME/sys161/bin in your path, as that is the home of the toolchain binaries that you will be using as you work with OS/161.