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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 -->
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, /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 -->
70 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
77 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
81 <li> <b>20 November 2001 -- BusyBox 0.60.2 released</b>
84 I am very pleased to announce that the BusyBox 0.60.2 (stable)
85 is now released to the world. This one is primarily a bugfix
86 release for the stable series, and it believe it should take care
87 of most everyone's needs till we can get the nice new stuff we have
88 been working on in CVS (with the wonderful new buildsystem) ready
89 to release. The biggest change in this release (beyond bugfixes)
90 is the fact that msh (the minix shell) has been re-worked by
91 Vladimir N. Oleynik (vodz) and so it no longer crashes when told to
92 do complex things with backticks.
95 I've personally tested this release out
96 on x86, ARM, and powerpc using glibc 2.2.4, libc5, and uClibc, so
97 it should work with just about any Linux system you throw it at.
98 See the <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a>
99 for <small>most of</small> the details. The last release was
100 <em>very</em> solid for people, and this one should be even better.
102 As usual BusyBox 0.60.2 can be downloaded from
103 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
105 And please read the news item for the 18th as well. Have Fun.<br> -Erik
108 <li> <b>18 November 2001 -- Help us buy busybox.net!</b>
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116 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Support Busybox/Buy busybox.net">
117 <input type="hidden" name="image_url" value="https://https://busybox.lineo.com/images/busybox2.jpg">
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124 I've contacted the current owner of busybox.net and he is willing
125 to sell the domain name -- for $250. He also owns busybox.org but
126 will not part with it... I will then need to pay the registry fee
127 for a couple of years and start paying for bandwidth, so this will
128 initially cost about $300. I would like to host busybox.net on my
129 home machine (codepoet.org) so I have full control over the system,
130 but to do that would require that I increase the level of bandwidth
131 I am paying for. Did you know that so far this month, there
132 have been over 1.4 Gigabytes of busybox ftp downloads? I don't
133 even <em>know</em> how much CVS bandwidth it requires. For the
134 time being, Lineo has continued to graciously provide this
135 bandwidth, despite the fact that I no longer work for them. If I
136 start running this all on my home machine, paying for the needed bandwidth
137 will start costing some money.
140 I was going to pay it all myself, but my wife didn't like that
141 idea at all (big surprise). It turns out <insert argument
142 where she wins and I don't> she has better ideas
143 about what we should spend our money on that don't involve
144 busybox. She suggested I should ask for contributions on the
145 mailing list and web page. So...
148 I am hoping that if everyone could contribute a bit, we could pick
149 up the busybox.net domain name and cover the bandwidth costs. I
150 know that busybox is being used by a lot of companies as well as
151 individuals -- hopefully people and companies that are willing to
152 contribute back a bit. So if everyone could please help out, that
157 <li> <b>23 August 2001 -- BusyBox 0.60.1 released</b>
160 This is a relatively minor bug fixing release that fixes
161 up the bugs that have shown up in the stable release in
162 the last few weeks. Fortunately, nothing <em>too</em>
163 serious has shown up. This release only fixes bugs -- no
164 new features, no new applets. So without further ado,
165 here it is. Come and get it.
168 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a> has all
169 the details. As usual BusyBox 0.60.1 can be downloaded from
170 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
175 <li> <b>2 August 2001 -- BusyBox 0.60.0 released</b>
177 I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of
178 BusyBox 0.60.0. I have personally tested this release with libc5, glibc,
179 and <a href="http://cvs.uclinux.org/uClibc.html">uClibc</a> on
180 x86, ARM, and powerpc using linux 2.2 and 2.4, and I know a number
181 of people using it on everything from ia64 to m68k with great success.
182 Everything seems to be working very nicely now, so getting a nice
183 stable bug-free(tm) release out seems to be in order. This releases fixes
184 a memory leak in syslogd, a number of bugs in the ash and msh shells, and
185 cleans up a number of things.
189 Those wanting an easy way to test the 0.60.0 release with uClibc can
190 use <a href="http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/">User-Mode Linux</a>
191 to give it a try by downloading and compiling
192 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/buildroot.tar.gz">buildroot.tar.gz</a>.
193 You don't have to be root or reboot your machine to run test this way.
194 Preconfigured User-Mode Linux kernel source is also on oss.lineo.com.
196 Another cool thing is the nifty <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/tutorial/index.html">
197 BusyBox Tutorial</a> contributed by K Computing. This requires
198 a ShockWave plugin (or standalone viewer), so you may want to grab the
199 the GPLed shockwave viewer from <a href="http://www.swift-tools.com/Flash/flash-0.4.10.tgz">here</a>
200 to view the tutorial.
203 Finally, In case you didn't notice anything odd about the
204 version number of this release, let me point out that this release
205 is <em>not</em> 0.53, because I bumped the version number up a
206 bit. This reflects the fact that this release is intended to form
207 a new stable BusyBox release series. If you need to rely on a
208 stable version of BusyBox, you should plan on using the stable
209 0.60.x series. If bugs show up then I will release 0.60.1, then
210 0.60.2, etc... This is also intended to deal with the fact that
211 the BusyBox build system will be getting a major overhaul for the
212 next release and I don't want that to break products that people
213 are shipping. To avoid that, the new build system will be
214 released as part of a new BusyBox development series that will
215 have some not-yet-decided-on odd version number. Once things
216 stabilize and the new build system is working for everyone, then
217 I will release that as a new stable release series.
221 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a> has all
222 the details. As usual BusyBox 0.60.0 can be downloaded from
223 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
228 <li> <b>7 July 2001 -- BusyBox 0.52 released</b>
231 I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of
232 BusyBox 0.52 (the "new-and-improved rock-solid release"). This
233 release is the result of <em>many</em> hours of work and has tons
234 of bugfixes, optimizations, and cleanups. This release adds
235 several new applets, including several new shells (such as hush, msh,
240 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a> covers
241 some of the more obvious details, but there are many many things that
242 are not mentioned, but have been improved in subtle ways. As usual,
243 BusyBox 0.52 can be downloaded from
244 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
249 <li> <b>10 April 2001 - Graph of Busybox Growth </b>
251 The illustrious Larry Doolittle has made a PostScript chart of the growth
252 of the Busybox tarball size over time. It is available for downloading /
253 viewing <a href= "busybox-growth.ps"> right here</a>.
255 <p> (Note that while the number of applets in Busybox has increased, you
256 can still configure Busybox to be as small as you want by selectively
257 turning off whichever applets you don't need.)
264 For the old news, visit <a href="http://busybox.lineo.com/oldnews.html">the old news page</a>.
268 <!-- Begin Download section -->
270 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
271 <A NAME="download"><BIG><B>
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278 <li> Source for the latest release can always be downloaded from
279 <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
281 <li> A new snapshot of the source is made daily and is available as a GNU
282 gzipped tarball <a href="busybox.tar.gz"> right here</a>.
284 <li> BusyBox now has its own publically browsable
285 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/">CVS tree</a>,
287 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_anon.html">CVS access</a>, and
288 for those that are actively contributing there is even
289 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_write.html">CVS write access</a>.
294 <!-- Begin Docs section -->
296 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
297 <A NAME="docs"><BIG><B>
301 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
302 Current documentation for BusyBox includes:
304 <li> <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/BusyBox.html">BusyBox.html</a>.
305 This is a list of the all the available commands in BusyBox with
306 complete usage information and examples of how to use each app. I
307 have spent a <em>lot</em> of time updating these docs and trying to
308 make them fairly comprehensive. If you find any errors (factual,
309 grammatical, whatever) please let me know.
310 <li> <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/README">README</a>.
311 This is the README file included in the busybox source release.
312 <li> <a href="http://bugs.lineo.com/db/pa/lbusybox.html">BusyBox Bugs</a>.
313 Need to report a bug? Need to check if a bug has been filed?
314 <li> If you need more help, the BusyBox
315 <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/lists/busybox/">mailing list</a> is
316 a good place to start.
320 <!-- Begin Links section -->
322 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
329 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
333 <li> <A HREF="http://perens.com/FreeSoftware/">
334 Free Software from Bruce Perens</A><br>
335 The original idea for BusyBox, and all versions up to 0.26 were written
336 by <A HREF="mailto:bruce@perens.com">Bruce Perens</a>. This is his BusyBox website.
339 <li> <A HREF="http://freshmeat.net/projects/busybox/">
340 Freshmeat AppIndex record for BusyBox</A>
342 <li><a href="http://tinylogin.lineo.com/">TinyLogin</a>
343 is a nice embedded tool for handling authentication, changing passwords,
344 and similar tasks which nicely complements BusyBox.
347 <li><a href="http://cvs.uclinux.org/uClibc.html">uClibc</a>
348 is a C library for embedded systems. You can actually statically link
349 a "Hello World" application under x86 that only takes 4k (as opposed to
350 200k under GNU libc). It can do dynamic linking too and works nicely with
351 BusyBox to create very small embedded systems.
354 <li> <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/software.html">Other cool embedded software</a>.
360 <!-- Begin Projects section -->
362 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
363 <A NAME="projects"><BIG><B>
364 Products/Projects Using BusyBox
367 <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
369 <p> I know of the following products and/or projects that use BusyBox --
370 listed in the order I happen to add them to the web page:
373 <li> <a href="http://cvs.debian.org/boot-floppies/">Debian installer (boot floppies) project</a>
374 <li> <a href="http://redhat.com/">Red Hat 7.2 installer</a>
375 <li> <a href="http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/slackware/source/rootdsks/">Slackware Installer</a>
376 <li> <a href="http://www.linuxrouter.org/">Linux Router Project </a>
377 <li> <a href="http://linux-embedded.org/">LEM</a>
378 <li> <a href="http://www.toms.net/rb/">tomsrtbt</a>
379 <li> <a href="http://www.stormix.com/">Stormix Installer</a>
380 <li> <a href="http://www.emacinc.com/linux2_sbc.htm">EMAC Linux 2.0 SBC</a>
381 <li> <a href="http://www.trinux.org/">Trinux</a>
382 <li> <a href="http://oddas.sourceforge.net/">ODDAS project</a>
383 <li> <a href="http://www.kerbango.com/">The Kerbango Internet Radio</a>
384 <li> <a href="http://www.linuxmagic.com/vpn/">LinuxMagic VPN Firewall</a>
385 <li> <a href="http://byld.sourceforge.net/">Build Your Linux Disk</a>
386 <li> <a href="http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~ichi/baslinux.html">BasicLinux</a>
387 <li> <a href="http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/recovery">Zdisk</a>
388 <li> <a href="http://www.adtran.com">AdTran - VPN/firewall VPN Linux Distribution</a>
389 <li> <a href="http://mkcdrec.ota.be/">mkCDrec - make CD-ROM recovery</a>
390 <li> <a href="http://recycle.lbl.gov/~ldoolitt/bse/">Linux on nanoEngine</a>
391 <li> <a href="http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/"> Floppyfw</a>
393 <li> <a href="http://midori.transmeta.com/"> Midori Linux</a> - <a href=
394 "http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42399,00.html"> Article on
395 Midori Linux</a> on <a href= "http://www.wired.com"> Wired</a>. Quote from
396 Erik at the top of <a href=
397 "http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42399-2,00.html"> this
400 <li> <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">Linux Terminal Server Project</a>
401 <li> <a href="http://www.devil-linux.org/">Devil-Linux</a>
402 <li> <a href="http://dutnux.sourceforge.net/">DutNux</a>
403 <li> <a href="http://www.cachier.com/">Cachier</a>
404 <li> <a href="http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/mindi/">Mindi</a>
408 <p> Do you use BusyBox? I'd love to know about it and I'd be happy to link to
413 <!-- End of Table -->
425 <font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">
426 Mail all comments, insults, suggestions and bribes to
427 <a href="mailto:andersen@codepoet.org">Erik Andersen</a><BR>
428 The Busybox logo is copyright 1999,2000,2001, Erik Andersen.
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