I found a solution after some headache, however this is great for those who are looking to learn mips quickly on linux.
test.asm:
.text
main:
li $t1, 100
li $t2, 50
add $t3, $t1, $t2
li $t4, 25
With your asm file do the following to assemble it to machine code by installing spim which is oddly enough mips spelled backwards:
apt-get update
apt-get install spim
spim
(spim) load "test.asm"
(spim) dumpnative "test.bin"
This will dump a bin files for you with the machine code. Yes you need the quotes around the files names or spim will throw a fit.
To disassemble your code do this:
apt-get update
apt-get install radare2
radare2 -a mips test.bin
[0x00000000]>b 32
[0x00000000]>aa
[0x00000000]>af
[0x00000000]>pd
Though this is a quick way to do this with qemu and it's much more accurate than spim:
First download DTC here. *Note: The reason this has to be done is because the way qemu is setup it only looks for DTC in the folder contained in the DTC folder that comes with the source not within /usr/lib or /usr/include etc.
Let's start compiling qemu:
apt-get update
apt-get -y install git build-essential
git clone git://git.qemu-project.org/qemu.git
tar -xzvf dtc-1760e7c.tar.gz
cd dtc-1760e7c
cp * ../qemu/dtc
cp -r Documentation/ ../qemu/dtc
cp -r libfdt/ ../qemu/dtc
cp -r scripts/ ../qemu/dtc
cp -r tests/ ../qemu/dtc
cd ..
cd qemu/dtc
make
cd ..
./configure
make
make install
After qemu is installed let's now create a virtual machine that qemu can use it will be the mips version of Debian Squeeze.
First let's get the required files:
wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/dists/squeeze/main/installer-mips/current/images/malta/netboot/initrd.gz
wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/dists/squeeze/main/installer-mips/current/images/malta/netboot/vmlinux-2.6.32-5-4kc-malta
Now make the virtual drive for qemu:
qemu-img create -f qcow2 debian_mips.qcow2 2G
Run the installer:
qemu-system-mips -hda debian_mips.qcow2 -kernel vmlinux-2.6.32-5-4kc-malta -initrd initrd.gz -append "root=/dev/ram console=ttyS0" -nographic
Follow all the prompts and install to your preference.
To boot into Debian Squeeze running emulated mips do the following:
qemu-system-mips -hda debian_mips.qcow2 -kernel vmlinux-2.6.32-5-4kc-malta -append "root=/dev/sda1 console=ttyS0" -nographic
While in here login with your credentials you setup during the installation and do the following to setup ssh for ease of use:
apt-get update
apt-get -y install ssh
Close this instance of qemu and launch another with the following:
qemu-system-mips -hda debian_mips.qcow2 -kernel vmlinux-2.6.32-5-4kc-malta -append "root=/dev/sda1 console=ttyS0" -nographic -redir tcp:10022::22
Connect to ssh doing the following on the host computer:
ssh -p 10022 localhost
Now once logged in let's now install the things we need to do mips assembly:
apt-get update
apt-get -y install build-essential gdb
Now let's write a simple mips asm file assemble it and disassemble it and compare the code.
nano test.asm
--start test.asm--
.global __start
.text
__start:
li $t0, 100
li $t1, 50
add $t2, $t0, $t1
--end test.asm--
CTRL + O, CTRL + X
as -march=mips32 -o test.o test.asm
objdump -d test.o
--start objdump output--
0: 24080064 li t0,100
4: 24090032 li t1,50
8: 01095020 add t2,t0,t1
c: 00000000 nop
--end objdump output--
You can see we do get the exact commands this way where as spim sometimes doesn't match.
Your disassembler will interpret it to it's best and output the assembly instructions some may not look exactly the same based on the decompiler however it works very good for most instructions and still should be valid.
The reason this is great is you don't have to have Mars open to do this. Mars is a good tool to simulate getting the machine code for mips but spim and qemu certainly is lightweight and keeps it in the terminal for you. I hope this helps someone else as well.
--lillypad
