hpux aries man page on unix.com

ARIES(5) File Formats Manual ARIES(5)

NAME
ARIES, aries - dynamically and transparently execute PA-RISC HP-UX applications on Integrity systems running HP-UX

DESCRIPTION
ARIES is a dynamic binary translator which transparently executes 32-bit and 64-bit PA-RISC HP-UX applications on Integrity systems running
HP-UX. The name expands to and

ARIES consists of the following four shared libraries:

is the shared library that contains the ARIES dynamic
translator for 32-bit applications. is the dynamic loader for Likewise, and are the 64-bit ARIES components.

The HP-UX operating system kernel on Integrity systems recognizes PA-RISC HP-UX executables and invokes ARIES to dynamically translate and
execute the application. For 32-bit PA-RISC HP-UX executables, the Integrity HP-UX kernel invokes which loads into memory, relocates it
and sets up internal memory segments. starts emulation at the program entry point. Likewise, and are loaded for 64-bit PA-RISC HP-UX exe-
cutables.

ARIES consists of two major sub-systems:

o Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) emulation engine

o Environment emulation engine

The ISA emulation engine is comprised of a fast interpreter and a dynamic translator. The interpreter emulates one instruction at a time.
After a sufficient number of iterations over a PA-RISC basic block, the dynamic translator is invoked to translate the basic block into
functionally equivalent IA64 native code, which is stored in translation buffer. Subsequent references to translated basic blocks do not
require further interpretation or translation.

The environment emulation engine is responsible for the emulation of PA-RISC application's system calls, signal delivery, threads manage-
ment. Interactions among various ARIES sub-systems are controlled and facilitated by the control system, which also keeps mapping between
the PA-RISC application's basic block and the translated code block addresses.

PA-RISC HP-UX GDB DEBUGGING SUPPORT
ARIES supports debugging of PA-RISC HP-UX applications on Integrity systems running HP-UX using the PA-RISC HP-UX the GNU debugger.

On Integrity HP-UX systems, contains the PA-RISC and executables. A symbolic link named points to The Integrity HP-UX system's debugger
recognizes the PA-RISC executable being debugged and launches under ARIES.

Debugging PA-RISC Applications on Integrity Systems
Use the following steps to debug PA-RISC HP-UX applications on Integrity HP-UX systems using PA-RISC

1. Set the environment variable to 1.

2. Set the environment variable to point to a PA-RISC shell, copied from a PA-RISC HP-UX system from path.

3. Add to the environment variable.

4. Invoke as:

NOTE: Make sure that the user has write permission on directory and that there is enough space to create a temporary file of one page size
as obtained by system call.

The rest of the debugging operations are the same as that on the PA-RISC HP-UX platform. All commands of the debugger are supported sub-
ject to limitations listed under the section in this manpage.

Attaching PA-RISC GDB to PA-RISC process under ARIES
An already running PA-RISC process can be debugged on Integrity systems by attaching PA-RISC debugger using following steps:

1. Perform the preparatory steps as described above for debugging PA-RISC application under ARIES using PA-RISC

2. Invoke as follows:

After debugging is finished, perform the following steps.

1. Unset the environment variable

2. Restore the original value of the environment variable.

Limitations of PA-RISC GDB Support
The limitations of PA-RISC emulation under ARIES are as follows:

1. No support for debuggers other than PA-RISC HP-UX for debugging PA-RISC applications on Integrity systems.

2. No support for old versions (of HP-UX 10.20 and earlier). However, debugging of HP-UX 10.20 applications using a HP-UX 11.0 (and
newer) PA-RISC is supported.

3. PA-RISC behaves differently for child processes created using and system calls. ARIES emulates and system calls identically. The
exact behavior shown by PA-RISC under ARIES may differ from that on a native PA-RISC HP-UX system.

4. If the debugged process is blocking in a system call, any attempt to get to the command prompt by pressing does not work. The process
needs to be killed from a different shell.

5. ARIES does not provide true emulation of MxN threads, and thus does not support debugging of PA-RISC applications that are linked with
pthreads library and create threads in MxN model.

NOTE: The PA-RISC applications linked with MxN pthreads library are emulated under ARIES as traditional 1x1 threads, and thus can only
be debugged under ARIES as any other non-MxN multi-threaded application. Refer to the section in this manpage for more information.

6. ARIES supports debugging of 32-bit and 64-bit PA-RISC HP-UX applications using 32-bit PA-RISC HP-UX 64-bit PA-RISC HP-UX is not sup-
ported under ARIES.

Generation of PA-RISC HP-UX Compatible Core File
ARIES supports creation of PA-RISC HP-UX compatible core files on Integrity systems. The size of the core file is limited by and/or val-
ues. See ulimit(2) and setrlimit(2).

The PA-RISC application core file generated by ARIES will have the name as

The PA-RISC HP-UX debugger is required to debug application core file generated by ARIES on an Integrity system. Alternately, the applica-
tion's core file can be transferred to a PA-RISC system and debugged using a PA-RISC debugger. Refer to help on the command.

After ARIES has successfully written a core file for the PA-RISC application, it will print the following message on

If the resulting core file is named as or it will be an ARIES core file, not useful for application debugging.

The ARIES-generated PA-RISC HP-UX compatible core file is recognized by the command on PA-RISC and Integrity HP-UX systems. See file(1).

1. As per the default core file format on HP-UX 11i Version 3, ARIES generates PA-RISC application core file in new format using large
utsname structure. See uname(2) for more details on the large utsname structure. You need to use latest version of tools like to work
with new format core file.

Use the ARIES option to generate PA-RISC application core files in the old format. Refer to the section in this manpage for more
information.

2. If the core file pattern and settings have been modified by the system call or by settings, then ARIES will follow the same naming pat-
tern instead of writing the application core file to Refer to coreadm(2) and init(1M).

ARIES RESOURCE CONFIGURATION (RC) FILE: PASSING OPTIONS TO ARIES
Options to ARIES are passed through a resource configuration (RC) file.

o For 32-bit ARIES, resource configuration file name is

o For 64-bit ARIES, resource configuration file name is

Refer to the section in this manpage for details on location and search order for ARIES resource configuration file.

ARIES Resource Configuration File Format
The ARIES resource configuration file may contain multiple lines each with the following format:

<full-path-of-PA-RISC-application1> <aries-options>
<full-path-of-PA-RISC-application2> <aries-options>
<PA-RISC-application3-path-with-wild-cards> <aries-options>
...
...

Refer to the section in this manpage for examples on ARIES resource configuration file.

ARIES Resource Configuration File Processing Rules
1. Application path name and ARIES options must be separated by one or more white spaces.

2. Each non empty line must begin from first column.

3. ARIES options may be specified for multiple applications, each beginning on a separate line.

4. Relative paths and shell variables are not allowed.

5. An invalid ARIES option will result in process termination with error.

6. in first column is treated as comment and rest of the line is ignored.

7. is treated as wild card character and can be used in application path name.

8. ARIES wild card matching is based on simple text pattern match with no expansion of directory or file name.

9. When using wild cards it is possible for multiple lines to match the current application. If this behavior is not expected, then
change your ARIES resource configuration file accordingly.

10. Application path name field must be one of following:

o Full absolute path of PA-RISC application executable.

o Root directory ARIES options on this line will be applied to all PA-RISC processes on the system.

o PA-RISC application path with wild cards

o There can be only one wild card in directory path and executable name each.

o More than one wild card in either part of the pathname will result in process termination with error.

o Valid examples are of such patterns as: and

o Patterns of type and which have more than one wild card in directory part or application name part are not allowed.

NOTE: In above points is only an example and not an actual pattern.

ARIES RC File Search Path
ARIES searches for the resource configuration (RC) file in the following locations in the following order:

o Root directory system wide ARIES RC file

o Application directory: all directories in the full absolute path of the PA-RISC application

o User's home directory (value of environment variable

In regards to the ARIES RC file search, here are a few points:

1. ARIES option processing is additive in nature. ARIES continues to search the RC file in all search paths. ARIES options found in ear-
lier RC file matches are overwritten by option values in later RC file matches.

2. If the value of environment variable is or the path is not accessible, ARIES will ignore the user's private RC file.

3. If ARIES cannot find or access the RC file in any of the search paths, it will continue with default values of options.

4. The ARIES RC file search in application directories enables application vendors to ship custom ARIES RC files with ARIES options values
suitable for their particular applications.

Advanced ARIES Options
Most PA-RISC applications run as expected under ARIES with the default values of options. The following ARIES options are useful for
advanced users who may want to control ARIES resource management and/or to tune ARIES for their PA-RISC applications.

o To enable or disable ARIES option flags you do not need to specify or keywords. Such ARIES option flags have optional negation
with added at the beginning of the ARIES option name.

For example, will enable and will disable strong memory ordering in ARIES.

o Certain ARIES options which expect numeric values may be passed a case insensitive keyword to reset the corresponding option
value to ARIES default value.

o ARIES options which require a numeric value in kbytes for size do not require kbytes keyword.

For example, is valid and or are not valid, and will result in an error.

o is part of the ARIES option format and must be specified.

[Disables]
enables the creation of separate address map data structure for dynamically generated code by PA-RISC application. Enabling this
option flag may provide optimal performance for JVM-like applications.

The default state of this option flag is enabled

[Disables]
enables the dynamic patching of branch targets in ARIES translated code blocks.

WARNING: Disabling this option flag will cause significant performance slowdown.

The default state of this option flag is enabled

[Disables]
enables the scheduling and optimization of ARIES translated code. Enabling this option flag is useful only for reducing the
ARIES dynamic translation time although the overall performance may become slower.