1 Please see the LICENSE file for details on copying and usage.
3 BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single
4 small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the utilities
5 you usually find in GNU coreutils, util-linux, etc. The utilities in BusyBox
6 generally have fewer options than their full-featured GNU cousins; however, the
7 options that are included provide the expected functionality and behave very
8 much like their GNU counterparts. BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX
9 environment for any small or embedded system.
11 BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in mind.
12 It is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude commands (or
13 features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize your embedded
14 systems. To create a working system, just add /dev, /etc, and a Linux kernel.
16 BusyBox is extremely configurable. This allows you to include only the
17 components you need, thereby reducing binary size. Run 'make config' or
18 'make menuconfig' for select the functionality that you wish to enable.
20 After the build is complete, a busybox.links file is generated. This is
21 used by 'make install' to create symlinks to the BusyBox binary for all
22 compiled in functions. By default, 'make install' will place the symlink
23 forest into `pwd`/_install unless you have defined the PREFIX environment
24 variable (i.e., 'make PREFIX=/tmp/foo install')
26 If you wish to install hard links, rather than symlinks, you can use
27 'make PREFIX=/tmp/foo install-hardlinks' instead.
31 Supported architectures:
33 BusyBox in general will build on any architecture supported by gcc. It has
34 a few specialized features added for __sparc__ and __alpha__. insmod
35 functionality is currently limited to x86, ARM, SH3/4, powerpc, m68k,
36 MIPS, cris, and v850e.
38 Supported C Libraries:
40 glibc-2.0.x, glibc-2.1.x, glibc-2.2.x, glibc-2.3.x, uClibc. People
41 are looking at newlib and diet-libc, but consider them unsupported,
42 untested, or worse. Linux-libc5 is no longer supported -- you
43 should probably use uClibc instead if you want a small C library.
47 Full functionality requires Linux 2.2.x or better. A large fraction of the
48 code should run on just about anything. While the current code is fairly
49 Linux specific, it should be fairly easy to port the majority of the code
50 to, say, FreeBSD or Solaris, or MacOsX, or even Windows (if you are into that
57 When you find you need help, you can check out the BusyBox mailing list
58 archives at http://busybox.net/lists/busybox/ or even join
59 the mailing list if you are interested.
65 If you find bugs, please submit a detailed bug report to the BusyBox mailing
66 list at busybox@mail.busybox.net. A well-written bug report should include a
67 transcript of a shell session that demonstrates the bad behavior and enables
68 anyone else to duplicate the bug on their own machine. The following is such
71 To: busybox@mail.busybox.net
72 From: diligent@testing.linux.org
73 Subject: /bin/date doesn't work
78 When I execute BusyBox 'date' it produces unexpected results.
79 With GNU date I get the following output:
82 Sat Mar 27 14:19:41 MST 2004
84 But when I use BusyBox date I get this instead:
89 I am using Debian unstable, kernel version 2.4.25-vrs2 on a Netwinder,
90 and the latest uClibc from CVS. Thanks for the wonderful program!
94 Note the careful description and use of examples showing not only what BusyBox
95 does, but also a counter example showing what an equivalent GNU app does. Bug
96 reports lacking such detail may never be fixed... Thanks for understanding.
102 Source for the latest released version, as well as daily snapshots, can always
104 http://busybox.net/downloads/
110 BusyBox now has its own publicly browsable CVS tree at:
111 http://busybox.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/
113 Anonymous CVS access is available. For instructions, check out:
114 http://busybox.net/cvs_anon.html
116 For those that are actively contributing there is even CVS write access:
117 http://busybox.net/cvs_write.html
121 Please feed suggestions, bug reports, insults, and bribes back to:
123 <andersen@codepoet.org>