1 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
8 <body text="#000000" alink="#660000" link="#660000" bgcolor="#dee2de" vlink="#660000">
10 <basefont face="lucida, helvetica, arial" size="3">
14 <TABLE BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=1 CELLPADDING=2>
16 <td bgcolor="#000000">
17 <FONT FACE="lucida, helvetica" COLOR="#ccccc0">
18 <B>B u s y B o x</B>
23 <a href="/"><IMG SRC="images/busybox2.jpg" alt="BusyBox" border="0" width="360" height="230"></a><BR>
26 <!-- Begin Introduction section -->
29 <TABLE WIDTH="95%" CELLSPACING=1 CELLPADDING=4 BORDER=1>
30 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
31 <A NAME="intro"> <BIG><B>
32 The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux
35 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
37 BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single
38 small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the utilities
39 you usually find in fileutils, shellutils, findutils, textutils, grep, gzip,
40 tar, etc. BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX environment for any small or
41 embedded system. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than
42 their full featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are included provide
43 the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts.
45 BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in mind.
46 It is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude commands (or
47 features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize your embedded
48 systems. To create a working system, just add /dev, a kernel, and a shell.
49 For a really minimal system, you can even use the busybox shell (not Bourne compatible, but very small and quite usable), and the busybox vi editor.
52 BusyBox is now maintained by
53 <a href="http://codepoet.org/andersen/erik/erik.html">
54 Erik Andersen</a>, and its ongoing development is being sponsored by
55 <a href="http://www.lineo.com/">Lineo</a>.
57 BusyBox is licensed under the
58 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE</a>
64 <p> Because everybody loves screenshots, a screenshot of BusyBox
65 is now available <a href="screenshot.html"> right here</a>
68 <H3>Mailing List Information</h3>
69 BusyBox now has a <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/lists/busybox/">mailing list</a>!
70 To subscribe, go and visit <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/mailman/listinfo/busybox">this page</a>.
72 <!-- Begin Latest News section -->
74 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
81 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
85 <li> <b>10 April 2001 -- BusyBox 0.51 released</b>
88 BusyBox 0.51 (the "rock-solid release") is now out there. This
89 release adds only 2 new applets: env and vi. The vi applet,
90 contributed by Sterling Huxley, is very functional, and is only
91 22k. This release fixes 3 critical bugs in the 0.50 release.
92 There were 2 potential segfaults in lash (the busybox shell) in
93 the 0.50 release which are now fixed. Another critical bug in
94 0.50 which is now fixed: syslogd from 0.50 could potentially
95 deadlock the init process and thereby break your entire system.
98 There are a number of improvements in this release as well. For
99 one thing, the wget applet is greatly improved. Dmitry Zakharov
100 added FTP support, and Laurence Anderson make wget fully RFC
101 compliant for HTTP 1.1. The mechanism for including utility
102 functions in previous releases was clumsy and error prone. Now
103 all utility functions are part of a new libbb library, which makes
104 maintaining utility functions much simpler. And BusyBox now
105 compiles on itanium systems (thanks to the Debian itanium porters
106 for letting me use their system!).
109 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a> for
110 complete details. BusyBox 0.51 can be downloaded from
111 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
115 <li> <b>Busybox Boot-Floppy Image</b>
117 <p>Because you asked for it, we have made available a <a href=
118 "ftp://opensource.lineo.com/busybox/busybox.floppy.img"> Busybox boot floppy
119 image</a>. Here's how you use it:
123 <li> <a href= "ftp://opensource.lineo.com/busybox/busybox.floppy.img">
124 Download the image</a>
126 <li> dd it onto a floppy like so: <tt> dd if=busybox.floppy.img
127 of=/dev/fd0 ; sync </tt>
129 <li> Pop it in a machine and boot up.
133 <p> If you want to look at the contents of the initrd image, do this:
136 mount ./busybox.floppy.img /mnt -o loop -t msdos
137 cp /mnt/initrd.gz /tmp
139 gunzip /tmp/initrd.gz
140 mount /tmp/initrd /mnt -o loop -t minix
144 <li> <b>15 March 2001 -- BusyBox 0.50 released</b>
147 This release adds several new applets including ifconfig, route, pivot_root, stty,
148 and tftp, and also fixes tons of bugs. Tab completion in the
149 shell is now working very well, and the shell's environment variable
150 expansion was fixed. Tons of other things were fixed or made
151 smaller. For a fairly complete overview, see the
152 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a>.
154 lash (the busybox shell) is still with us, fixed up a bit so it
155 now behaves itself quite nicely. It really is quite usable as
156 long as you don't expect it to provide Bourne shell grammer.
157 Standard things like pipes, redirects, command line editing, and
158 environment variable expansion work great. But we have found that
159 this shell, while very usable, does not provide an extensible
160 framework for adding in full Bourne shell behavior. So the first order of
161 business as we begin working on the next BusyBox release will be to merge in the new shell
162 currently in progress at
163 <a href="http://doolittle.faludi.com/~larry/parser.html">Larry Doolittle's website</a>.
167 <li> <b>27 January 2001 -- BusyBox 0.49 released</b>
170 Several new applets, lots of bug fixes, cleanups, and many smaller
171 things made nicer. Several cleanups and improvements to the shell.
172 For a list of the most interesting changes
173 you might want to look at the <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a>.
175 Special thanks go out to Matt Kraai and Larry Doolittle for all their
176 work on this release, and for keeping on top of things while I've been
179 <em>Special Note</em><br>
181 BusyBox 0.49 was supposed to have replaced lash, the BusyBox
182 shell, with a new shell that understands full Bourne shell/Posix shell grammer.
183 Well, that simply didn't happen in time for this release. A new
184 shell that will eventually replace lash is already under
185 construction. This new shell is being developed by Larry
186 Doolittle, and could use all of our help. Please see the work in
187 progress on <a href="http://doolittle.faludi.com/~larry/parser.html">Larry's website</a>
188 and help out if you can. This shell will be included in the next
192 <li> <b>13 December 2000 -- BusyBox 0.48 released</b>
195 This release fixes lots and lots of bugs. This has had some very
196 rigorous testing, and looks very, very clean. The usual tar
197 update of course: tar no longer breaks hardlinks, tar -xzf is
198 optionally supported, and the LRP folks will be pleased to know
199 that 'tar -X' and 'tar --exclude' are both now in. Applets are
200 now looked up using a binary search making lash (the busybox
201 shell) much faster. For the new debian-installer (for Debian
202 woody) a .udeb can now be generated.
204 The curious can get a list of some of the more interesting changes by reading
205 the <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a>.
207 Many thanks go out to the many many people that have contributed to
208 this release, especially Matt Kraai, Larry Doolittle, and Kent Robotti.
214 For the old news, visit <a href="http://busybox.lineo.com/oldnews.html">the old news page</a>.
218 <!-- Begin Download section -->
220 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
221 <A NAME="download"><BIG><B>
225 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
228 <li> Source for the latest release can always be downloaded from
229 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
231 <li> A new snapshot of the source is made daily and is available as a GNU
232 gzipped tarball <a href="busybox.tar.gz"> right here</a>.
234 <li> BusyBox now has its own publically browsable
235 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/">CVS tree</a>,
237 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_anon.html">CVS access</a>, and
238 for those that are actively contributing there is even
239 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_write.html">CVS write access</a>.
244 <!-- Begin Docs section -->
246 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
247 <A NAME="docs"><BIG><B>
251 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
252 Current documentation for BusyBox includes:
254 <li> <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/BusyBox.html">BusyBox.html</a>.
255 This is a list of the all the available commands in BusyBox with
256 complete usage information and examples of how to use each app. I
257 have spent a <em>lot</em> of time updating these docs and trying to
258 make them fairly comprehensive. If you find any errors (factual,
259 grammatical, whatever) please let me know.
260 <li> <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/README">README</a>.
261 This is the README file included in the busybox source release.
262 <li> <a href="http://bugs.lineo.com/db/pa/lbusybox.html">BusyBox Bugs</a>.
263 Need to report a bug? Need to check if a bug has been filed?
264 <li> If you need more help, the BusyBox
265 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/lists/busybox/">mailing list</a> is
266 a good place to start.
270 <!-- Begin Links section -->
272 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
279 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
283 <li> <A HREF="http://perens.com/FreeSoftware/">
284 Free Software from Bruce Perens</A><br>
285 The original idea for BusyBox, and all versions up to 0.26 were written
286 by <A HREF="mailto:bruce@perens.com">Bruce Perens</a>. This is his BusyBox website.
289 <li> <A HREF="http://freshmeat.net/projects/busybox/">
290 Freshmeat AppIndex record for BusyBox</A>
292 <li><a href="http://tinylogin.lineo.com/">TinyLogin</a>
293 is a nice embedded tool for handling authentication, changing passwords,
294 and similar tasks which nicely complements BusyBox.
297 <li><a href="http://cvs.uclinux.org/uClibc.html">uClibc</a>
298 is a C library for embedded systems. You can actually statically link
299 a "Hello World" application under x86 that only takes 4k (as opposed to
300 200k under GNU libc). It can do dynamic linking too and works nicely with
301 BusyBox to create very small embedded systems.
304 <li> <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/software.html">Other cool embedded software</a>.
307 <li> <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/">opensource.lineo.com</a>.
310 <li> <A HREF="http://www.lineo.com/">Lineo</A> is sponsoring BusyBox development.
316 <!-- Begin Projects section -->
318 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
319 <A NAME="projects"><BIG><B>
320 Products/Projects Using BusyBox
323 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
325 <p> I know of the following products and/or projects that use BusyBox --
326 listed in the order I happen to add them to the web page:
329 <li> <a href="http://www.lineo.com/products/embedix_linux/">Lineo Embedix Linux</a>
330 <li> <a href="http://cvs.debian.org/boot-floppies/">Debian installer (boot floppies) project</a>
331 <li> <a href="http://www.linuxrouter.org/">Linux Router Project </a>
332 <li> <a href="http://linux-embedded.org/">LEM</a>
333 <li> <a href="http://www.toms.net/rb/">tomsrtbt</a>
334 <li> <a href="http://www.stormix.com/">Stormix Installer</a>
335 <li> <a href="http://www.emacinc.com/linux2_sbc.htm">EMAC Linux 2.0 SBC</a>
336 <li> <a href="http://www.trinux.org/">Trinux</a>
337 <li> <a href="http://oddas.sourceforge.net/">ODDAS project</a>
338 <li> <a href="http://www.kerbango.com/">The Kerbango Internet Radio</a>
339 <li> <a href="http://www.linuxmagic.com/vpn/">LinuxMagic VPN Firewall</a>
340 <li> <a href="http://byld.sourceforge.net/">Build Your Linux Disk</a>
341 <li> <a href="http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~ichi/baslinux.html">BasicLinux</a>
342 <li> <a href="http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/recovery">Zdisk</a>
343 <li> <a href="http://www.adtran.com">AdTran - VPN/firewall VPN Linux Distribution</a>
344 <li> <a href="http://mkcdrec.ota.be/">mkCDrec - make CD-ROM recovery</a>
345 <li> <a href="http://recycle.lbl.gov/~ldoolitt/bse/">Linux on nanoEngine</a>
346 <li> <a href="http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/"> Floppyfw</a>
348 <li> <a href="http://midori.transmeta.com/"> Midori Linux</a> - <a href=
349 "http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42399,00.html"> Article on
350 Midori Linux</a> on <a href= "http://www.wired.com"> Wired</a>. Quote from
351 Erik at the top of <a href=
352 "http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42399-2,00.html"> this
357 <p> Do you use BusyBox? I'd love to know about it and I'd be happy to link to
362 <!-- End of Table -->
374 <font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">
375 Mail all comments, insults, suggestions and bribes to
376 <a href="mailto:andersen@lineo.com">Erik Andersen</a><BR>
377 The Busybox logo is copyright 1999,2000,2001, Erik Andersen.
382 <a href="http://www.vim.org"><img border=0 width=88 height=32
383 src="images/anim.written.in.vi.gif"
384 alt="This site created with the vi editor"></a>
388 <a href="http://www.gimp.org/"><img border=0 width=88 height=38
389 src="images/gfx_by_gimp.gif" alt="Graphics by GIMP"></a>
393 <a href="http://www.linuxtoday.com"><img width=90 height=36
394 src="images/ltbutton2.jpg" alt="Linux Today"></a>
398 <p><a href="http://slashdot.org"><img width=90 height=36
399 src="images/sdsmall.gif" alt="Slashdot"></a>
403 <a href="http://freshmeat.net"><img width=90 height=36
404 src="images/fm.mini.jpg" alt="Freshmeat"></a>