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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
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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 an editor,
49 such as nano, e3, or elvis-tiny. For a really minimal system, you can even use
50 the busybox shell (not Bourne compatible, but very small and quite usable).
53 BusyBox is now maintained by
54 <a href="http://codepoet.org/andersen/erik/erik.html">
55 Erik Andersen</a>, and its ongoing development is being sponsored by
56 <a href="http://www.lineo.com/">Lineo</a>.
58 BusyBox is licensed under the
59 <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>
67 <H3>Mailing List Information</h3>
68 BusyBox now has a <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/lists/busybox/">mailing list</a>!
69 To subscribe, go and visit <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/mailman/listinfo/busybox">this page</a>.
71 <!-- Begin Latest News section -->
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84 <li> <b>15 March 2001 -- BusyBox 0.50 released</b>
87 This release adds several new applets including ifconfig, route, pivot_root, stty,
88 and tftp, and also fixes tons of bugs. Tab completion in the
89 shell is now working very well, and the shell's environment variable
90 expansion was fixed. Tons of other things were fixed or made
91 smaller. For a fairly complete overview, see the
92 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a>.
94 lash (the busybox shell) is still with us, fixed up a bit so it
95 now behaves itself quite nicely. It really is quite usable as
96 long as you don't expect it to provide Bourne shell grammer.
97 Standard things like pipes, redirects, command line editing, and
98 environment variable expansion work great. But we have found that
99 this shell, while very usable, does not provide an extensible
100 framework for adding in full Bourne shell behavior. So the first order of
101 business as we begin working on the next BusyBox release will be to merge in the new shell
102 currently in progress at
103 <a href="http://doolittle.faludi.com/~larry/parser.html">Larry Doolittle's website</a>.
106 <li> <b>27 January 2001 -- BusyBox 0.49 released</b>
109 Several new applets, lots of bug fixes, cleanups, and many smaller
110 things made nicer. Several cleanups and improvements to the shell.
111 For a list of the most interesting changes
112 you might want to look at the <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a>.
114 Special thanks go out to Matt Kraai and Larry Doolittle for all their
115 work on this release, and for keeping on top of things while I've been
118 <em>Special Note</em><br>
120 BusyBox 0.49 was supposed to have replaced lash, the BusyBox
121 shell, with a new shell that understands full Bourne shell/Posix shell grammer.
122 Well, that simply didn't happen in time for this release. A new
123 shell that will eventually replace lash is already under
124 construction. This new shell is being developed by Larry
125 Doolittle, and could use all of our help. Please see the work in
126 progress on <a href="http://doolittle.faludi.com/~larry/parser.html">Larry's website</a>
127 and help out if you can. This shell will be included in the next
130 <li> <b>13 December 2000 -- BusyBox 0.48 released</b>
133 This release fixes lots and lots of bugs. This has had some very
134 rigorous testing, and looks very, very clean. The usual tar
135 update of course: tar no longer breaks hardlinks, tar -xzf is
136 optionally supported, and the LRP folks will be pleased to know
137 that 'tar -X' and 'tar --exclude' are both now in. Applets are
138 now looked up using a binary search making lash (the busybox
139 shell) much faster. For the new debian-installer (for Debian
140 woody) a .udeb can now be generated.
142 The curious can get a list of some of the more interesting changes by reading
143 the <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a>.
145 Many thanks go out to the many many people that have contributed to
146 this release, especially Matt Kraai, Larry Doolittle, and Kent Robotti.
151 For the old news, visit <a href="http://busybox.lineo.com/oldnews.html">the old news page</a>.
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165 <li> Source for the latest release can always be downloaded from
166 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
168 <li> A new snapshot of the source is made daily and is available as a GNU
169 gzipped tarball <a href="busybox.tar.gz"> right here</a>.
171 <li> BusyBox now has its own publically browsable
172 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/">CVS tree</a>,
174 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_anon.html">CVS access</a>, and
175 for those that are actively contributing there is even
176 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_write.html">CVS write access</a>.
181 <!-- Begin Docs section -->
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189 Current documentation for BusyBox includes:
191 <li> <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/BusyBox.html">BusyBox.html</a>.
192 This is a list of the all the available commands in BusyBox with
193 complete usage information and examples of how to use each app. I
194 have spent a <em>lot</em> of time updating these docs and trying to
195 make them fairly comprehensive. If you find any errors (factual,
196 grammatical, whatever) please let me know.
197 <li> <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/README">README</a>.
198 This is the README file included in the busybox source release.
199 <li> <a href="http://bugs.lineo.com/db/pa/lbusybox.html">BusyBox Bugs</a>.
200 Need to report a bug? Need to check if a bug has been filed?
201 <li> If you need more help, the BusyBox
202 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/lists/busybox/">mailing list</a> is
203 a good place to start.
207 <!-- Begin Links section -->
209 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
216 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
220 <li> <A HREF="http://perens.com/FreeSoftware/">
221 Free Software from Bruce Perens</A><br>
222 The original idea for BusyBox, and all versions up to 0.26 were written
223 by <A HREF="mailto:bruce@perens.com">Bruce Perens</a>. This is his BusyBox website.
226 <li> <A HREF="http://freshmeat.net/projects/busybox/">
227 Freshmeat AppIndex record for BusyBox</A>
229 <li><a href="http://tinylogin.lineo.com/">TinyLogin</a>
230 is a nice embedded tool for handling authentication, changing passwords,
231 and similar tasks which nicely complements BusyBox.
234 <li><a href="http://cvs.uclinux.org/uClibc.html">uCLibc</a>
235 is a C library for embedded systems. You can actually statically link
236 a "Hello World" application under x86 that only takes 4k (as opposed to
237 200k under GNU libc). It can do dynamic linking too and works nicely with
238 BusyBox. to create very small embedded systems.
241 <li> <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/software.html">Other cool embedded software</a>.
244 <li> <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/">opensource.lineo.com</a>.
247 <li> <A HREF="http://www.lineo.com/">Lineo</A> is sponsoring BusyBox development.
253 <!-- Begin Projects section -->
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256 <A NAME="projects"><BIG><B>
257 Products/Projects Using BusyBox
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262 <p> I know of the following products and/or projects that use BusyBox --
263 listed in the order I happen to add them to the web page:
266 <li> <a href="http://www.lineo.com/products/embedix_linux/">Lineo Embedix Linux</a>
267 <li> <a href="http://cvs.debian.org/boot-floppies/">Debian installer (boot floppies) project</a>
268 <li> <a href="http://www.linuxrouter.org/">Linux Router Project </a>
269 <li> <a href="http://linux-embedded.org/">LEM</a>
270 <li> <a href="http://www.toms.net/rb/">tomsrtbt</a>
271 <li> <a href="http://www.stormix.com/">Stormix Installer</a>
272 <li> <a href="http://www.emacinc.com/linux2_sbc.htm">EMAC Linux 2.0 SBC</a>
273 <li> <a href="http://www.trinux.org/">Trinux</a>
274 <li> <a href="http://oddas.sourceforge.net/">ODDAS project</a>
275 <li> <a href="http://www.kerbango.com/">The Kerbango Internet Radio</a>
276 <li> <a href="http://www.linuxmagic.com/vpn/">LinuxMagic VPN Firewall</a>
277 <li> <a href="http://byld.sourceforge.net/">Build Your Linux Disk</a>
278 <li> <a href="http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~ichi/baslinux.html">BasicLinux</a>
279 <li> <a href="http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/recovery">Zdisk</a>
280 <li> <a href="http://www.adtran.com">AdTran - VPN/firewall VPN Linux Distribution</a>
281 <li> <a href="http://mkcdrec.ota.be/">mkCDrec - make CD-ROM recovery</a>
282 <li> <a href="http://recycle.lbl.gov/~ldoolitt/bse/">Linux on nanoEngine</a>
283 <li> <a href="http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/"> Floppyfw</a>
284 <li> <a href="http://midori.transmeta.com/"> Midori Linux</a>
288 <p> Do you use BusyBox? I'd love to know about it and I'd be happy to link to
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305 <font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">
306 Mail all comments, insults, suggestions and bribes to
307 <a href="mailto:andersen@lineo.com">Erik Andersen</a><BR>
308 The Busybox logo is copyright 1999,2000, Erik Andersen.
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