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>
17 <FONT FACE="lucida, helvetica" SIZE=+5>
23 <a href="/"><IMG SRC="images/busybox1.png" alt="BusyBox"
24 border="0" width="164" height="116"></a><BR>
27 <!-- Begin Introduction section -->
30 <TABLE WIDTH="95%" CELLSPACING=1 CELLPADDING=4 BORDER=1>
31 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
32 <A NAME="intro"> <BIG><B>
33 The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux
36 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
38 BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single
39 small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the utilities
40 you usually find in fileutils, shellutils, findutils, textutils, grep, gzip,
41 tar, etc. BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX environment for any small or
42 embedded system. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than
43 their full featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are included provide
44 the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts.
46 BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in mind.
47 It is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude commands (or
48 features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize your embedded
49 systems. To create a working system, just add /dev, /etc, and a kernel.
52 BusyBox is maintained by
53 <a href="http://codepoet.org/andersen/erik/erik.html">
54 Erik Andersen</a>, and licensed under the
55 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE</a>.
61 <p> Because everybody loves screenshots, a screenshot of BusyBox
62 is now available <a href="screenshot.html">right here</a>.
65 <H3>Mailing List Information</h3>
66 BusyBox now has a <a href="http://www.busybox.net/lists/busybox/">mailing list</a>!
67 To subscribe, go and visit <a href="http://www.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox">this page</a>.
69 <!-- Begin Latest News section -->
71 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
78 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
82 <li> <b>3 January 2002 -- Welcome to busybox.net!</b>
85 Thanks to the generosity of a number of busybox users, we have been
86 able to purchase busybox.net (which is where you are probably
87 reading this). Right now, busybox.net and uclibc.org are both
88 living on my home system (at the end of my DSL line). I
89 apologize for the abrupt move off of busybox.lineo.com.
90 Unfortunately, I no longer have the access needed to keep that
91 system updated (for example, you might notice the daily snapshots
92 there stopped some time ago).
96 Busybox.net is currently hosted on my home server, at the end of a
97 DSL line. Unfortunately, the load on them is quite heavy. To address
98 this, I'm trying to make arrangements to get busybox.net co-located
99 directly at an ISP. To assist in the co-location effort, <a
100 href="http://www.codepoet.org/~markw">Mark Whitley</a> (author of
101 busybox sed, cut, and grep) has donated his <a
102 href="http://www.netwinder.org/">NetWinder</a> computer for hosting
103 busybox.net and uclibc.org. Once this system is co-located, the
104 current speed problems should be completely eliminated. Hopefully,
105 too, some of you will volunteer to set up some mirror sites, to help
106 to distribute the load a bit.
111 Click here to help support busybox.net!
112 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
113 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
114 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="andersen@codepoet.org">
115 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Support Busybox">
116 <input type="hidden" name="image_url" value="https://codepoet-consulting.com/images/busybox2.jpg">
117 <input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="1">
118 <input type="image" src="images/donate.png" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make donation using PayPal">
123 Since some people expressed concern over BusyBox donations, let me
124 assure you that no one is getting rich here. All BusyBox and
125 uClibc donations will be spent paying for bandwidth and needed
126 hardware upgrades. For example, Mark's NetWinder currently has
127 just 64Meg of memory. As demonstrated when google spidered the site
128 the other day, 64 Megs in not enough, so I'm going to be ordering
129 256Megs of ram and a larger hard drive for the box today. So far,
130 donations received have been sufficient to cover almost all
131 expenses. In the future, we may have co-location fees to worry
132 about, but for now we are ok.
133 A <b>HUGE thank-you</b> goes out to everyone that has
140 <li> <b>20 November 2001 -- BusyBox 0.60.2 released</b>
143 We am very pleased to announce that the BusyBox 0.60.2 (stable) is now
144 released to the world. This one is primarily a bugfix release for the
145 stable series, and it should take care of most everyone's needs
146 till we can get the nice new stuff we have been working on in CVS ready to
147 release (with the wonderful new buildsystem). The biggest change in this
148 release (beyond bugfixes) is the fact that msh (the minix shell) has been
149 re-worked by Vladimir N. Oleynik (vodz) and so it no longer crashes when
150 told to do complex things with backticks.
153 This release has been tested on x86, ARM, and powerpc using glibc 2.2.4,
154 libc5, and uClibc, so it should work with just about any Linux system you throw it at.
155 See the <a href="http://www.busybox.net/downloads/Changelog">changelog</a>
156 for <small>most of</small> the details. The last release was
157 <em>very</em> solid for people, and this one should be even better.
159 As usual BusyBox 0.60.2 can be downloaded from
160 <a href="http://www.busybox.net/downloads">http://www.busybox.net/downloads</a>.
169 For the old news, visit <a href="http://www.busybox.net/oldnews.html">the old news page</a>.
173 <!-- Begin Download section -->
175 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
176 <A NAME="download"><BIG><B>
180 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
183 <li> Source for the latest release can always be downloaded from
184 <a href="http://www.busybox.net/downloads">http://www.busybox.net/downloads</a>.
186 <li> A new snapshot of the source is made daily and is available as a GNU
187 gzipped tarball <a href="busybox.tar.gz"> right here</a>.
189 <li> BusyBox now has its own publically browsable
190 <a href="http://www.busybox.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/">CVS tree</a>,
192 <a href="http://www.busybox.net/cvs_anon.html">CVS access</a>, and
193 for those that are actively contributing there is even
194 <a href="http://www.busybox.net/cvs_write.html">CVS write access</a>.
199 <!-- Begin Docs section -->
201 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
202 <A NAME="docs"><BIG><B>
206 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
207 Current documentation for BusyBox includes:
209 <li> <a href="http://www.busybox.net/downloads/BusyBox.html">BusyBox.html</a>.
210 This is a list of the all the available commands in BusyBox with
211 complete usage information and examples of how to use each app. I
212 have spent a <em>lot</em> of time updating these docs and trying to
213 make them fairly comprehensive. If you find any errors (factual,
214 grammatical, whatever) please let me know.
215 <li> <a href="http://www.busybox.net/downloads/README">README</a>.
216 This is the README file included in the busybox source release.
217 <li> <a href="http://bugs.busybox.net/db/pa/lbusybox.html">BusyBox Bugs</a>.
218 Need to report a bug? Need to check if a bug has been filed?
219 <li> If you need more help, the BusyBox
220 <a href="http://www.busybox.net/lists/busybox/">mailing list</a> is
221 a good place to start.
225 <!-- Begin Links section -->
227 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
234 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
238 <li> <A HREF="http://perens.com/FreeSoftware/">
239 Free Software from Bruce Perens</A><br>
240 The original idea for BusyBox, and all versions up to 0.26 were written
241 by <A HREF="mailto:bruce@perens.com">Bruce Perens</a>. This is his BusyBox website.
244 <li> <A HREF="http://freshmeat.net/projects/busybox/">
245 Freshmeat AppIndex record for BusyBox</A>
247 <li><a href="http://tinylogin.busybox.net/">TinyLogin</a>
248 is a nice embedded tool for handling authentication, changing passwords,
249 and similar tasks which nicely complements BusyBox.
252 <li><a href="http://udhcp.busybox.net/">udhcp</a>
253 is a tiny dhcp client and/or server which is ideal for embedded systems.
256 <li><a href="http://uclibc.org/">uClibc</a>
257 is a C library for embedded systems. You can actually statically link
258 a "Hello World" application under x86 that only takes 4k (as opposed to
259 200k under GNU libc). It can do dynamic linking too and works nicely with
260 BusyBox to create very small embedded systems.
263 <li> <a href="http://www.busybox.net/software.html">Other cool embedded software</a>.
269 <!-- Begin Projects section -->
271 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
272 <A NAME="projects"><BIG><B>
273 Products/Projects Using BusyBox
276 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
278 <p> I know of the following products and/or projects that use BusyBox --
279 listed in the order I happen to add them to the web page:
282 <li> <a href="http://cvs.debian.org/boot-floppies/">Debian installer (boot floppies) project</a>
283 <li> <a href="http://redhat.com/">Red Hat 7.2 installer</a>
284 <li> <a href="http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/slackware/source/rootdsks/">Slackware Installer</a>
285 <li> <a href="http://www.linuxrouter.org/">Linux Router Project </a>
286 <li> <a href="http://linux-embedded.org/">LEM</a>
287 <li> <a href="http://www.toms.net/rb/">tomsrtbt</a>
288 <li> <a href="http://www.stormix.com/">Stormix Installer</a>
289 <li> <a href="http://www.emacinc.com/linux2_sbc.htm">EMAC Linux 2.0 SBC</a>
290 <li> <a href="http://www.trinux.org/">Trinux</a>
291 <li> <a href="http://oddas.sourceforge.net/">ODDAS project</a>
292 <li> <a href="http://www.kerbango.com/">The Kerbango Internet Radio</a>
293 <li> <a href="http://www.linuxmagic.com/vpn/">LinuxMagic VPN Firewall</a>
294 <li> <a href="http://byld.sourceforge.net/">Build Your Linux Disk</a>
295 <li> <a href="http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~ichi/baslinux.html">BasicLinux</a>
296 <li> <a href="http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/recovery">Zdisk</a>
297 <li> <a href="http://www.adtran.com">AdTran - VPN/firewall VPN Linux Distribution</a>
298 <li> <a href="http://mkcdrec.ota.be/">mkCDrec - make CD-ROM recovery</a>
299 <li> <a href="http://recycle.lbl.gov/~ldoolitt/bse/">Linux on nanoEngine</a>
300 <li> <a href="http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/"> Floppyfw</a>
302 <li> <a href="http://midori.transmeta.com/"> Midori Linux</a> - <a href=
303 "http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42399,00.html"> Article on
304 Midori Linux</a> on <a href= "http://www.wired.com"> Wired</a>. Quote from
305 Erik at the top of <a href=
306 "http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42399-2,00.html"> this
309 <li> <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">Linux Terminal Server Project</a>
310 <li> <a href="http://www.devil-linux.org/">Devil-Linux</a>
311 <li> <a href="http://dutnux.sourceforge.net/">DutNux</a>
312 <li> <a href="http://www.cachier.com/">Cachier</a>
313 <li> <a href="http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/mindi/">Mindi</a>
317 <p> Do you use BusyBox? I'd love to know about it and I'd be happy to link to
322 <!-- End of Table -->
334 <font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">
335 Mail all comments, insults, suggestions and bribes to
336 <a href="mailto:andersen@codepoet.org">Erik Andersen</a><BR>
337 The Busybox logo is copyright 1999,2000,2001, Erik Andersen.
342 <a href="http://www.vim.org"><img border=0 width=90 height=36
343 src="images/written.in.vi.png"
344 alt="This site created with the vi editor"></a>
348 <a href="http://www.gimp.org/"><img border=0 width=90 height=36
349 src="images/gfx_by_gimp.png" alt="Graphics by GIMP"></a>
353 <a href="http://www.linuxtoday.com"><img width=90 height=36
354 src="images/ltbutton2.png" alt="Linux Today"></a>
358 <p><a href="http://slashdot.org"><img width=90 height=36
359 src="images/sdsmall.png" alt="Slashdot"></a>
363 <a href="http://freshmeat.net"><img width=90 height=36
364 src="images/fm.mini.png" alt="Freshmeat"></a>