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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 -->
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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, /etc, and a kernel.
51 BusyBox is maintained by
52 <a href="http://codepoet.org/andersen/erik/erik.html">
53 Erik Andersen</a>, and licensed under the
54 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE</a>.
60 <p> Because everybody loves screenshots, a screenshot of BusyBox
61 is now available <a href="screenshot.html">right here</a>.
64 <H3>Mailing List Information</h3>
65 BusyBox now has a <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/lists/busybox/">mailing list</a>!
66 To subscribe, go and visit <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/mailman/listinfo/busybox">this page</a>.
68 <!-- Begin Latest News section -->
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81 <li> <b>23 August 2001 -- BusyBox 0.60.1 released</b>
84 This is a relatively minor bug fixing release that fixes
85 up the bugs that have shown up in the stable release in
86 the last few weeks. Fortunately, nothing <em>too</em>
87 serious has shown up. This release only fixes bugs -- no
88 new features, no new applets. So without further ado,
89 here it is. Come and get it.
92 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a> has all
93 the details. As usual BusyBox 0.60.1 can be downloaded from
94 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
99 <li> <b>2 August 2001 -- BusyBox 0.60.0 released</b>
101 I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of
102 BusyBox 0.60.0. I have personally tested this release with libc5, glibc,
103 and <a href="http://cvs.uclinux.org/uClibc.html">uClibc</a> on
104 x86, ARM, and powerpc using linux 2.2 and 2.4, and I know a number
105 of people using it on everything from ia64 to m68k with great success.
106 Everything seems to be working very nicely now, so getting a nice
107 stable bug-free(tm) release out seems to be in order. This releases fixes
108 a memory leak in syslogd, a number of bugs in the ash and msh shells, and
109 cleans up a number of things.
113 Those wanting an easy way to test the 0.60.0 release with uClibc can
114 use <a href="http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/">User-Mode Linux</a>
115 to give it a try by downloading and compiling
116 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/buildroot.tar.gz">buildroot.tar.gz</a>.
117 You don't have to be root or reboot your machine to run test this way.
118 Preconfigured User-Mode Linux kernel source is also on oss.lineo.com.
120 Another cool thing is the nifty <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/tutorial/index.html">
121 BusyBox Tutorial</a> contributed by K Computing. This requires
122 a ShockWave plugin (or standalone viewer), so you may want to grab the
123 the GPLed shockwave viewer from <a href="http://www.swift-tools.com/Flash/flash-0.4.10.tgz">here</a>
124 to view the tutorial.
127 Finally, In case you didn't notice anything odd about the
128 version number of this release, let me point out that this release
129 is <em>not</em> 0.53, because I bumped the version number up a
130 bit. This reflects the fact that this release is intended to form
131 a new stable BusyBox release series. If you need to rely on a
132 stable version of BusyBox, you should plan on using the stable
133 0.60.x series. If bugs show up then I will release 0.60.1, then
134 0.60.2, etc... This is also intended to deal with the fact that
135 the BusyBox build system will be getting a major overhaul for the
136 next release and I don't want that to break products that people
137 are shipping. To avoid that, the new build system will be
138 released as part of a new BusyBox development series that will
139 have some not-yet-decided-on odd version number. Once things
140 stabilize and the new build system is working for everyone, then
141 I will release that as a new stable release series.
145 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a> has all
146 the details. As usual BusyBox 0.60.0 can be downloaded from
147 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
152 <li> <b>7 July 2001 -- BusyBox 0.52 released</b>
155 I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of
156 BusyBox 0.52 (the "new-and-improved rock-solid release"). This
157 release is the result of <em>many</em> hours of work and has tons
158 of bugfixes, optimizations, and cleanups. This release adds
159 several new applets, including several new shells (such as hush, msh,
164 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a> covers
165 some of the more obvious details, but there are many many things that
166 are not mentioned, but have been improved in subtle ways. As usual,
167 BusyBox 0.52 can be downloaded from
168 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
173 <li> <b>10 April 2001 - Graph of Busybox Growth </b>
175 The illustrious Larry Doolittle has made a PostScript chart of the growth
176 of the Busybox tarball size over time. It is available for downloading /
177 viewing <a href= "busybox-growth.ps"> right here</a>.
179 <p> (Note that while the number of applets in Busybox has increased, you
180 can still configure Busybox to be as small as you want by selectively
181 turning off whichever applets you don't need.)
188 For the old news, visit <a href="http://busybox.lineo.com/oldnews.html">the old news page</a>.
192 <!-- Begin Download section -->
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195 <A NAME="download"><BIG><B>
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202 <li> Source for the latest release can always be downloaded from
203 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
205 <li> A new snapshot of the source is made daily and is available as a GNU
206 gzipped tarball <a href="busybox.tar.gz"> right here</a>.
208 <li> BusyBox now has its own publically browsable
209 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/">CVS tree</a>,
211 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_anon.html">CVS access</a>, and
212 for those that are actively contributing there is even
213 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_write.html">CVS write access</a>.
218 <!-- Begin Docs section -->
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221 <A NAME="docs"><BIG><B>
225 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
226 Current documentation for BusyBox includes:
228 <li> <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/BusyBox.html">BusyBox.html</a>.
229 This is a list of the all the available commands in BusyBox with
230 complete usage information and examples of how to use each app. I
231 have spent a <em>lot</em> of time updating these docs and trying to
232 make them fairly comprehensive. If you find any errors (factual,
233 grammatical, whatever) please let me know.
234 <li> <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/README">README</a>.
235 This is the README file included in the busybox source release.
236 <li> <a href="http://bugs.lineo.com/db/pa/lbusybox.html">BusyBox Bugs</a>.
237 Need to report a bug? Need to check if a bug has been filed?
238 <li> If you need more help, the BusyBox
239 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/lists/busybox/">mailing list</a> is
240 a good place to start.
244 <!-- Begin Links section -->
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257 <li> <A HREF="http://perens.com/FreeSoftware/">
258 Free Software from Bruce Perens</A><br>
259 The original idea for BusyBox, and all versions up to 0.26 were written
260 by <A HREF="mailto:bruce@perens.com">Bruce Perens</a>. This is his BusyBox website.
263 <li> <A HREF="http://freshmeat.net/projects/busybox/">
264 Freshmeat AppIndex record for BusyBox</A>
266 <li><a href="http://tinylogin.lineo.com/">TinyLogin</a>
267 is a nice embedded tool for handling authentication, changing passwords,
268 and similar tasks which nicely complements BusyBox.
271 <li><a href="http://cvs.uclinux.org/uClibc.html">uClibc</a>
272 is a C library for embedded systems. You can actually statically link
273 a "Hello World" application under x86 that only takes 4k (as opposed to
274 200k under GNU libc). It can do dynamic linking too and works nicely with
275 BusyBox to create very small embedded systems.
278 <li> <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/software.html">Other cool embedded software</a>.
284 <!-- Begin Projects section -->
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287 <A NAME="projects"><BIG><B>
288 Products/Projects Using BusyBox
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293 <p> I know of the following products and/or projects that use BusyBox --
294 listed in the order I happen to add them to the web page:
297 <li> <a href="http://cvs.debian.org/boot-floppies/">Debian installer (boot floppies) project</a>
298 <li> <a href="ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-8.0/source/rootdsks/">Slackware 8.0 installer</a>
299 <li> <a href="http://www.linuxrouter.org/">Linux Router Project </a>
300 <li> <a href="http://linux-embedded.org/">LEM</a>
301 <li> <a href="http://www.toms.net/rb/">tomsrtbt</a>
302 <li> <a href="http://www.stormix.com/">Stormix Installer</a>
303 <li> <a href="http://www.emacinc.com/linux2_sbc.htm">EMAC Linux 2.0 SBC</a>
304 <li> <a href="http://www.trinux.org/">Trinux</a>
305 <li> <a href="http://oddas.sourceforge.net/">ODDAS project</a>
306 <li> <a href="http://www.kerbango.com/">The Kerbango Internet Radio</a>
307 <li> <a href="http://www.linuxmagic.com/vpn/">LinuxMagic VPN Firewall</a>
308 <li> <a href="http://byld.sourceforge.net/">Build Your Linux Disk</a>
309 <li> <a href="http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~ichi/baslinux.html">BasicLinux</a>
310 <li> <a href="http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/recovery">Zdisk</a>
311 <li> <a href="http://www.adtran.com">AdTran - VPN/firewall VPN Linux Distribution</a>
312 <li> <a href="http://mkcdrec.ota.be/">mkCDrec - make CD-ROM recovery</a>
313 <li> <a href="http://recycle.lbl.gov/~ldoolitt/bse/">Linux on nanoEngine</a>
314 <li> <a href="http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/"> Floppyfw</a>
316 <li> <a href="http://midori.transmeta.com/"> Midori Linux</a> - <a href=
317 "http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42399,00.html"> Article on
318 Midori Linux</a> on <a href= "http://www.wired.com"> Wired</a>. Quote from
319 Erik at the top of <a href=
320 "http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42399-2,00.html"> this
323 <li> <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">Linux Terminal Server Project</a>
324 <li> <a href="http://www.devil-linux.org/">Devil-Linux</a>
325 <li> <a href="http://dutnux.sourceforge.net/">DutNux</a>
326 <li> <a href="http://www.cachier.com/">Cachier</a>
327 <li> <a href="http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/mindi/">Mindi</a>
331 <p> Do you use BusyBox? I'd love to know about it and I'd be happy to link to
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348 <font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">
349 Mail all comments, insults, suggestions and bribes to
350 <a href="mailto:andersen@codepoet.org">Erik Andersen</a><BR>
351 The Busybox logo is copyright 1999,2000,2001, Erik Andersen.
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