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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>
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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://busybox.net/lists/busybox/">mailing list</a>!
66 To subscribe, go and visit <a href="http://busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox">this page</a>.
68 <!-- Begin Latest News section -->
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81 <li> <b>3 January 2002 -- Welcome to busybox.net!</b>
84 Thanks to the generosity of a number of busybox users, we have been
85 able to purchase busybox.net (which is where you are probably
86 reading this). Right now, busybox.net and uclibc.org are both
87 living on my home system (at the end of my DSL line). I
88 appologize for the abrupt move off of busybox.line.com.
89 Unfortunately, I no longer have the access needed to keep that
90 system updated (for example, you might notice the daily snapshots
91 there stopped some time ago).
93 <p> My DSL line (where busybox.net is living) is currently
94 struggling a bit under the load. To address this, I'm making
95 arrangements to get busybox.net co-located directly at an ISP
96 belonging to a friend of mine.
97 <a href="http://www.codepoet.org/~markw">Mark Whitley</a> (author
98 of busybox sed, cut, and grep) has donated his <a
99 href="http://www.netwinder.org/">NetWinder</a> computer
100 for hosting busybox.net and uclibc.org on. Once the system is
101 co-located, that should should completely eliminate the current
102 speed problems. Hopefully, too, we can get some mirror sites set
103 up soon, to help distribute to load a bit.
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108 Click here to help support busybox.net!
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120 Since some people expressed concern over busybox donations. Let me
121 assure you that no one is getting rich here. All busybox and
122 uclibc donations will be spent paying for bandwidth, and paying for
123 needed hardware upgrades (Mark's NetWinder currently has just 64Meg
124 of memory -- I'm going to be ordering 256Megs of ram and a larger
125 hard drive for the box today). As demonstrated when google
126 spidered the site the other day, the extra ram should really
127 help... So far, donations received have been sufficient to cover
128 almost all expenses. A <b>HUGE thank-you</b> goes out to everyone
129 that has contributed! Right now, I have enough to keep
130 busybox.net running for the time being. I'll keep you posted if
136 <li> <b>20 November 2001 -- BusyBox 0.60.2 released</b>
139 We am very pleased to announce that the BusyBox 0.60.2 (stable) is now
140 released to the world. This one is primarily a bugfix release for the
141 stable series, and it should take care of most everyone's needs
142 till we can get the nice new stuff we have been working on in CVS ready to
143 release (with the wonderful new buildsystem). The biggest change in this
144 release (beyond bugfixes) is the fact that msh (the minix shell) has been
145 re-worked by Vladimir N. Oleynik (vodz) and so it no longer crashes when
146 told to do complex things with backticks.
149 This release has been tested on x86, ARM, and powerpc using glibc 2.2.4,
150 libc5, and uClibc, so it should work with just about any Linux system you throw it at.
151 See the <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/Changelog">changelog</a>
152 for <small>most of</small> the details. The last release was
153 <em>very</em> solid for people, and this one should be even better.
155 As usual BusyBox 0.60.2 can be downloaded from
156 <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads">http://busybox.net/downloads</a>.
165 For the old news, visit <a href="http://busybox.net/oldnews.html">the old news page</a>.
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172 <A NAME="download"><BIG><B>
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179 <li> Source for the latest release can always be downloaded from
180 <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads">http://busybox.net/downloads</a>.
182 <li> A new snapshot of the source is made daily and is available as a GNU
183 gzipped tarball <a href="busybox.tar.gz"> right here</a>.
185 <li> BusyBox now has its own publically browsable
186 <a href="http://busybox.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/">CVS tree</a>,
188 <a href="http://busybox.net/cvs_anon.html">CVS access</a>, and
189 for those that are actively contributing there is even
190 <a href="http://busybox.net/cvs_write.html">CVS write access</a>.
195 <!-- Begin Docs section -->
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198 <A NAME="docs"><BIG><B>
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203 Current documentation for BusyBox includes:
205 <li> <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/BusyBox.html">BusyBox.html</a>.
206 This is a list of the all the available commands in BusyBox with
207 complete usage information and examples of how to use each app. I
208 have spent a <em>lot</em> of time updating these docs and trying to
209 make them fairly comprehensive. If you find any errors (factual,
210 grammatical, whatever) please let me know.
211 <li> <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/README">README</a>.
212 This is the README file included in the busybox source release.
213 <li> <a href="http://bugs.busybox.net/db/pa/lbusybox.html">BusyBox Bugs</a>.
214 Need to report a bug? Need to check if a bug has been filed?
215 <li> If you need more help, the BusyBox
216 <a href="http://busybox.net/lists/busybox/">mailing list</a> is
217 a good place to start.
221 <!-- Begin Links section -->
223 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
230 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
234 <li> <A HREF="http://perens.com/FreeSoftware/">
235 Free Software from Bruce Perens</A><br>
236 The original idea for BusyBox, and all versions up to 0.26 were written
237 by <A HREF="mailto:bruce@perens.com">Bruce Perens</a>. This is his BusyBox website.
240 <li> <A HREF="http://freshmeat.net/projects/busybox/">
241 Freshmeat AppIndex record for BusyBox</A>
243 <li><a href="http://tinylogin.busybox.net/">TinyLogin</a>
244 is a nice embedded tool for handling authentication, changing passwords,
245 and similar tasks which nicely complements BusyBox.
248 <li><a href="http://udhcp.busybox.net/">udhcp</a>
249 is a tiny dhcp client and/or server which is ideal for embedded systems.
252 <li><a href="http://uclibc.org/">uClibc</a>
253 is a C library for embedded systems. You can actually statically link
254 a "Hello World" application under x86 that only takes 4k (as opposed to
255 200k under GNU libc). It can do dynamic linking too and works nicely with
256 BusyBox to create very small embedded systems.
259 <li> <a href="http://busybox.net/software.html">Other cool embedded software</a>.
265 <!-- Begin Projects section -->
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268 <A NAME="projects"><BIG><B>
269 Products/Projects Using BusyBox
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274 <p> I know of the following products and/or projects that use BusyBox --
275 listed in the order I happen to add them to the web page:
278 <li> <a href="http://cvs.debian.org/boot-floppies/">Debian installer (boot floppies) project</a>
279 <li> <a href="http://redhat.com/">Red Hat 7.2 installer</a>
280 <li> <a href="http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/slackware/source/rootdsks/">Slackware Installer</a>
281 <li> <a href="http://www.linuxrouter.org/">Linux Router Project </a>
282 <li> <a href="http://linux-embedded.org/">LEM</a>
283 <li> <a href="http://www.toms.net/rb/">tomsrtbt</a>
284 <li> <a href="http://www.stormix.com/">Stormix Installer</a>
285 <li> <a href="http://www.emacinc.com/linux2_sbc.htm">EMAC Linux 2.0 SBC</a>
286 <li> <a href="http://www.trinux.org/">Trinux</a>
287 <li> <a href="http://oddas.sourceforge.net/">ODDAS project</a>
288 <li> <a href="http://www.kerbango.com/">The Kerbango Internet Radio</a>
289 <li> <a href="http://www.linuxmagic.com/vpn/">LinuxMagic VPN Firewall</a>
290 <li> <a href="http://byld.sourceforge.net/">Build Your Linux Disk</a>
291 <li> <a href="http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~ichi/baslinux.html">BasicLinux</a>
292 <li> <a href="http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/recovery">Zdisk</a>
293 <li> <a href="http://www.adtran.com">AdTran - VPN/firewall VPN Linux Distribution</a>
294 <li> <a href="http://mkcdrec.ota.be/">mkCDrec - make CD-ROM recovery</a>
295 <li> <a href="http://recycle.lbl.gov/~ldoolitt/bse/">Linux on nanoEngine</a>
296 <li> <a href="http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/"> Floppyfw</a>
298 <li> <a href="http://midori.transmeta.com/"> Midori Linux</a> - <a href=
299 "http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42399,00.html"> Article on
300 Midori Linux</a> on <a href= "http://www.wired.com"> Wired</a>. Quote from
301 Erik at the top of <a href=
302 "http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42399-2,00.html"> this
305 <li> <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">Linux Terminal Server Project</a>
306 <li> <a href="http://www.devil-linux.org/">Devil-Linux</a>
307 <li> <a href="http://dutnux.sourceforge.net/">DutNux</a>
308 <li> <a href="http://www.cachier.com/">Cachier</a>
309 <li> <a href="http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/mindi/">Mindi</a>
313 <p> Do you use BusyBox? I'd love to know about it and I'd be happy to link to
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330 <font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">
331 Mail all comments, insults, suggestions and bribes to
332 <a href="mailto:andersen@codepoet.org">Erik Andersen</a><BR>
333 The Busybox logo is copyright 1999,2000,2001, Erik Andersen.
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