Using DS-5 Streamline with Mali on Google Nexus 10

ABSTRACT

This guide will show how to get ARM® DS-5™ Streamline™ support working on a production Google Nexus 10 device, with minimal modifications.

The resulting files generated will be a gatord, gator.ko and a boot.img file.

This guide is written with both Android version 4.3 (JellyBean MR2) and 4.4.2 (KitKat MR1) in mind.

PREREQUISITE

Device Requirements

It is required that the Nexus 10 device has root access.

This is required in order to install gator and to insert the kernel module.

You will also be flashing and/or booting a custom kernel.

Software Requirements

ARM DS-5 software is required to be installed. This is required in order to do any capturing of data and also contains the source code for gator.

The community edition of DS-5 can be obtained for free from the ds5 website.

This guide has been tested with DS-5 version 5.17 on Linux.

In addition, you will need the Android SDK (for adb and fastboot) and Android NDK (for building gator daemon).

Finally, you will need abootimg or equivalent scripts to modify the boot.img.

KERNEL

Toolchain

The toolchain to be used for building the kernel can be obtained from the following public git repository:

git clone https://android.googlesource.com/platform/prebuilts/gcc/linux-x86/arm/arm-eabi-4.6/

In order to setup your build environment to use this toolchain, and to target cross compilation, do the following:

export PATH=$PATH:$(pwd)/arm-eabi-4.6/bin
export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-eabi-
export ARCH=arm
export SUBARCH=arm

Source Code

The kernel source code can be obtained from the following public git repository:

git clone https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/exynos kernel
cd kernel

Either checkout jb-mr2 (Android 4.3) or kitkat-mr1 (Android 4.4.2) branch depending on what version of Android your device is running:

git checkout android-exynos-manta-3.4-jb-mr2
git checkout android-exynos-manta-3.4-kitkat-mr1

Building

To build the kernel, do the following:

make manta_defconfig
make

In order to build the gator driver however, you will need to make modifications to the kernel.

make menuconfig

[*] Enable loadable module support -->

[*] Forced module loading

[*] Module unloading

[*]   Forced module unloading

General setup -->

[*] Profiling support

Device Drivers -->

Graphics Support -->

ARM GPU Configuration -->

Mali-T6XX support -->

[*] Streamline Debug support

If you are targeting Android 4.3, you will need to make the following modifications before you can successfully build:

diff --git a/drivers/gpu/arm/t6xx/kbase/src/Kbuild b/drivers/gpu/arm/t6xx/kbase/src/Kbuild
index 584d5f2..e6eadd6 100644
--- a/drivers/gpu/arm/t6xx/kbase/src/Kbuild
+++ b/drivers/gpu/arm/t6xx/kbase/src/Kbuild
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ DEFINES = \
        -DMALI_ERROR_INJECT_ON=$(MALI_ERROR_INJECT_ON) \
        -DMALI_MOCK_TEST=$(MALI_MOCK_TEST) \
        -DMALI_COVERAGE=$(MALI_COVERAGE) \
-       -DMALI_KBASE_SRC_LINUX_PATH=$(src)/linux \
+       -DMALI_KBASE_SRC_LINUX_PATH=../../$(src)/linux \
        -DMALI_KBASE_THIRDPARTY_PATH=../../$(src)/platform/$(CONFIG_MALI_PLATFORM_THIRDPARTY_NAME) \
        -DMALI_INSTRUMENTATION_LEVEL=$(MALI_INSTRUMENTATION_LEVEL) \
        -DMALI_RELEASE_NAME=\"$(MALI_RELEASE_NAME)\"
diff --git a/drivers/gpu/arm/t6xx/kbase/src/platform/manta/mali_kbase_platform.c b/drivers/gpu/arm/t6xx/kbase/src/p
index 6140252..ad4adfe 100644
--- a/drivers/gpu/arm/t6xx/kbase/src/platform/manta/mali_kbase_platform.c
+++ b/drivers/gpu/arm/t6xx/kbase/src/platform/manta/mali_kbase_platform.c
@@ -220,7 +220,7 @@ int kbase_platform_cmu_pmu_control(struct kbase_device *kbdev, int control)
        spin_lock_irqsave(&platform->cmu_pmu_lock, flags);


#ifdef CONFIG_MALI_GATOR_SUPPORT
-       kbase_trace_mali_timeline_event(GATOR_MAKE_EVENT(ACTIVITY_RTPM_CHANGED, ACTIVITY_RTPM) | control);
+//     kbase_trace_mali_timeline_event(GATOR_MAKE_EVENT(ACTIVITY_RTPM_CHANGED, ACTIVITY_RTPM) | control);
#endif
        /* off */
        if (control == 0) {

You can now build the kernel with make.

BOOT IMAGE

In order to get this modified kernel onto the device, you need to modify a boot.img file.

A boot image file consists (mainly) of a kernel and a ramdisk.

boot.img

You can easily download this from google’s website:

https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images#mantaray

Extract the files for either 4.3 or 4.4.2, and obtain the boot.img file.

In order to generate a new boot.img with your newly built kernel, do the following:

abootimg -u boot.img -k kernel/arch/arm/boot/zImage

Alternative scripts method:

./unpackbootimg -i boot.img
./mkbootimg --kernel kernel/arch/arm/boot/zImage --ramdisk boot.img-ramdisk.gz -o boot.img

Booting

At this stage, you can either flash the new boot image over the original stock boot image, or you can boot the image directly without flashing. With the latter option, after a reboot of the device, the original boot image will be used instead. This is useful for testing purposes.

In order to do either, you first need to boot the device into bootloader mode. This is easily done via adb:

adb reboot bootloader

To just boot directly, do:

fastboot boot boot.img

To flash the image, do:

fastboot flash boot boot.img

Your device should now boot using the custom kernel.

This can be tested by looking at Settings -> About tablet -> Kernel version

GATOR

You can obtain the driver and daemon source files from your DS-5 installation directory:

<DS-5 Installation Directory>/arm/gator/

Driver

Build the driver by doing the following, from within the gator-driver directory:

GATOR_WITH_MALI_SUPPORT=MALI_T6xx make -C <path_to>/kernel M=`pwd` modules

You should now have gator.ko.

Daemon

First, you will need to modify the structure of the gator-daemon directory in order to build for Android.

Create a folder called jni inside gator-daemon and move all files and folder to this location:

mkdir jni
mv * jni/

Then, build the daemon by doing the following, from within the gator-daemon directory:

ndk-build

You should now have gatord.

Device Setup

Unfortunately you cannot simply push these two gator files directly into the system directory on the device, due to permission issues with a secure adb device.

The way around this is to do the following. First, remount the system partition as read/write access:

adb shell su -c 'mount -o remount /system'

Next, push the files to the sdcard:

adb push gator.ko /sdcard/
adb push gatord /sdcard/

Then copy these files from the sdcard to the system directory:

adb shell su -c 'cp /sdcard/gator* /system/bin/'

Finally, give full permissions to the daemon:

adb shell su -c 'chmod 777 /system/bin/gatord'

You are now ready to use the device with Streamline support.

Using Gator

The normal procedure for using gator is as follows – and is required to be done each time the device restarts:

adb shell su -c 'mount -o remount /system'

Setup forwarding through usb instead of network (optional):

adb forward tcp:8080 tcp:8080

Launch the daemon from within an adb shell:

adb shell su -c 'gatord &'

Launch DS-5, and enter localhost (or the ip address if you didn’t do the forward command) in the connection box.

Select the counters you are interested in capturing, and you are now ready to begin capturing.