P-HAL User Guide

This section describes first steps on launching and running a waveform in P-HAL. If you plan to develop applications or you just want to learn more about P-HAL, you should read the P-HAL Developer Guide? and the P-HAL Manual?.

Here you will learn how to download a waveform from our repository (you will need a user/pwd to access) and launch it. You will also get familiar with most of P-HAL commands.

At this point we assume that you have downloaded and installed P-HAL on your computer (see Install Guide?) and that your are familiar with Linux at user level.

Launching P-HAL

Before starting P-HAL, you must create a directory where Manager Daemons will look for configuration files, application definitions and executables (PhalManual?). This path will be passed as the first parameter to the P-HAL launcher. You can download a sample directory from our repository:

svn checkout http://147.83.118.229/svn/phal-apps/trunk/phal-repositories

You will see that this directory as, among others, the following mandatory subdirectories:

• logs: Here waveform's modules will store their logs
• swman_execs: Here modules' binaries can be reached (can contain symbolic links)
  • linux: Path for Linux modules' binaries
• swman_apps: Path for application definitions (e.g.: wimax.app)
• statsman: Initialization parameter definitions, separated by application
  • app_x: Parameters for app_x

If you follow this guide and plan to launch Wimax waveform (see next), you won't need to modify any of these files.

NOTE: Make sure that swman_execs/linux contains (or links to) the binaries for your waveform compiled for the platform you plan to launch them.

Now you can launch P-HAL console passing the phal-repositories path (just downloaded) as an argument:

runph phal-repositories

You just got into the P-HAL environment! By the moment, you can't do anything because you need to download an application first. This will be explained in the following section. After that, we will see how it can be loaded and run.

More optional arguments can be passed to runph in the shell. The command accepts the following arguments:

runph [repository_path] -c [platform_cfg_file] -i [xitf_cfg_file] -p [priority] -d [debug_level] -r [fifo_report]

Where:

• [repository_path]: Location where cofiguration, executables and applications subdirectories are found (see before).
• -c [platform_cfg_file]: Configuration file for platform parameters and list of daemons to launch, see Customizing your Platform, below. Default: /usr/local/etc/daemons.conf
• -i [xitf_cfg_file]: Configuration file for external interfaces, see Customizing your Platform. Default: /usr/local/etc/xitf.conf
• -p [priority]: Needs root privileges. Kernel priority level for waveform processes, see Performance Notes. Default: 20
• -d [debug_level]: Sets platform debug level. Currently only 2 modes are supported, level=0 or level!=0, where the first means normal operation and the second prevents EXEC daemon to kill processes which violated real time policies. Default: 0
• -r [fifo_report]: File where

Downloading a waveform: Wimax

You can download the latest version of the Wimax waveform from our repository: Remember that you will be prompted for a valid username.

svn checkout http://147.83.118.229/svn/phal-apps/trunk/wimax

This will download all the files to a directory called wimax. You can enter there and compile your files as usually, paying attention on linking them to the P-HAL SW API Library (see DeveloperGuide?).

Remember that you can commit your changes in the application using the Subversion service, just get into the wimax directory and type:

svn commit 

To download the latest version in the server type (again, from the downloaded directory):

svn update

These commands, however, can create conflicts if other users are working with the same files, we recommend to read Subversion Manual to learn more about this powerful tool.

Running a waveform: Basic P-HAL commands

PHAL can be controlled from a text console typing commands. Again, we recommend you to read PhalManual? if you are not familiar with the P-HAL environment. Basically, running a waveform compromises 3 steps: loading, initializing and running. You will do such by typing the appropiate commands in the input console. In the next example, we will load, initialize and run the example waveform Wimax:

Once P-HAL has been started with the appropriate arguments (see first section), we will load the waveform by typing in the prompt:

runph$: phload wimax

then initialize:

runph$: phinit wimax

and finally run:

runph$: phrun wimax

Now the waveform is running. We can see some hardware information or current processes information typing:

runph$: hwcmd info
runph$: hwcmd ps

You also can pause the execution or run a finite number of steps, type:

runph$: phpause wimax
runph$: phrun wimax 1000

Performance Notes

To get the best performance of your waveform, the following hints may be useful:

• Compile your modules with highest optimization and specify your processor architecture, e.g.:

   gcc -O3 -march=native -mfpmath=sse
  

  if you have a pentium/athlon processor with sse extensions.

• Disable statistics or logs. You can do that entering the following command in the P-HAL console:

   runph$: hwcmd stats_off
   runph$: hwcmd logs_off
  

  You can re-enable them substituting 'off' by 'on'.