1 <!--#include file="header.html" -->
5 <li><b>31 October 2005 -- 1.1.0-pre1</b>
6 <p>The development branch of busybox is stable enough for wider testing, so
8 <a href="http://www.busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.1.0-pre1.tar.bz2">download</a>,
9 the first prerelease of 1.1.0. This prerelease includes a lot of
10 <a href="http://www.busybox.net/downloads/BusyBox.html">new
11 functionality</a>: new applets, new features, and extensive rewrites of
12 several existing applets. This prerelease should be noticeably more
13 <a href="http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/">standards
14 compliant</a> than earlier versions of busybox, although we're
15 still working out the <a href="http://bugs.busybox.net">bugs</a>.</p>
17 <li><b>16 August 2005 -- 1.01 is out</b>
19 <p>A new stable release (<a href="http://www.busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.01.tar.bz2">BusyBox
20 1.01</a>) is now available for download, containing over a hundred
21 <a href="http://www.busybox.net/lists/busybox/2005-August/015424.html">small
22 fixes</a> that have cropped up since the 1.00 release.</p>
24 <li><b>13 January 2005 -- Bug and Patch Tracking</b><p>
26 Bug reports sometimes get lost when posted to the mailing list. The
27 developers of BusyBox are busy people, and have only so much they can keep
28 in their brains at a time. In my case, I'm lucky if I can remember my own
29 name, much less a bug report posted last week... To prevent your bug report
30 from getting lost, if you find a bug in BusyBox, please use the
31 <a href="http://bugs.busybox.net/">shiny new Bug and Patch Tracking System</a>
32 to post all the gory details.
36 The same applies to patches... Regardless of whether your patch
37 is a bug fix or adds spiffy new features, please post your patch
38 to the Bug and Patch Tracking System to make certain it is
43 <li><b>13 October 2004 -- BusyBox 1.00 released</b><p>
45 When you take a careful look at nearly every embedded Linux device or
46 software distribution shipping today, you will find a copy of BusyBox.
47 With countless routers, set top boxes, wireless access points, PDAs, and
48 who knows what else, the future for Linux and BusyBox on embedded devices
49 is looking very bright.
53 It is therefore with great satisfaction that I declare each and every
54 device already shipping with BusyBox is now officially out of date.
55 The highly anticipated release of BusyBox 1.00 has arrived!
59 Over three years in development, BusyBox 1.00 represents a tremendous
60 improvement over the old 0.60.x stable series. Now featuring a Linux
61 KernelConf based configuration system (as used by the Linux kernel),
62 Linux 2.6 kernel support, many many new applets, and the development
63 work and testing of thousands of people from around the world.
67 If you are already using BusyBox, you are strongly encouraged to upgrade to
68 BusyBox 1.00. If you are considering developing an embedded Linux device
69 or software distribution, you may wish to investigate if using BusyBox is
70 right for your application. If you need help getting started using
71 BusyBox, if you wish to donate to help cover expenses, or if you find a bug
72 and need help reporting it, you are invited to visit the <a
73 href="FAQ.html">BusyBox FAQ</a>.
77 As usual you can <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
82 <li><b>Old News</b><p>
83 <a href="/oldnews.html">Click here to read older news</a>
86 <li><b>16 August 2004 -- BusyBox 1.0.0-rc3 released</b><p>
88 Here goes release candidate 3...
90 The <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all the details.
91 And as usual you can <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
96 <li><b>26 July 2004 -- BusyBox 1.0.0-rc2 released</b><p>
98 Here goes release candidate 2...
100 The <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all the details.
101 And as usual you can <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
106 <li><b>20 July 2004 -- BusyBox 1.0.0-rc1 released</b><p>
108 Here goes release candidate 1... This fixes all (most?) of the problems
109 that have turned up since -pre10. In particular, loading and unloading of
110 kernel modules with 2.6.x kernels should be working much better.
113 I <b>really</b> want to get BusyBox 1.0.0 released soon and I see no real
114 reason why the 1.0.0 release shouldn't happen with things pretty much as
115 is. BusyBox is in good shape at the moment, and it works nicely for
116 everything that I'm doing with it. And from the reports I've been getting,
117 it works nicely for what most everyone else is doing with it as well.
118 There will eventually be a 1.0.1 anyway, so we might as well get on with
119 it. No, BusyBox is not perfect. No piece of software ever is. And while
120 there is still plenty that can be done to improve things, most of that work
121 is waiting till we can get a solid 1.0.0 release out the door....
124 Please do not bother to send in patches adding cool new features at this
125 time. Only bug-fix patches will be accepted. If you have submitted a
126 bug-fixing patch to the busybox mailing list and no one has emailed you
127 explaining why your patch was rejected, it is safe to say that your patch
128 has been lost or forgotten. That happens sometimes. Please re-submit your
129 bug-fixing patch to the BusyBox mailing list, and be sure to put "[PATCH]"
130 at the beginning of the email subject line!
133 The <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all the details.
134 And as usual you can <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
139 On a less happy note, My 92 year old grandmother (my dad's mom) passed away
140 yesterday (June 19th). The funeral will be Thursday in a little town about
141 2 hours south of my home. I've checked and there is absolutely no way I
142 could be back in time for the funeral if I attend <a
143 href="http://www.linuxsymposium.org/2004/">OLS</a> and give my presentation
146 As such, it is with great reluctance and sadness that I have come
147 to the conclusion I will have to make my appologies and skip OLS
153 <li><b>13 April 2004 -- BusyBox 1.0.0-pre10 released</b><p>
155 Ok, I lied. It turns out that -pre9 will not be the final BusyBox
156 pre-release. With any luck however -pre10 will be, since I <b>really</b>
157 want to get BusyBox 1.0.0 released very soon. As usual, please do not
158 bother to send in patches adding cool new features at this time. Only
159 bug-fix patches will be accepted. It would also be <b>very</b> helpful if
160 people could continue to review the BusyBox documentation and submit
164 The <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all the details.
165 And as usual you can <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
172 <li><b>6 April 2004 -- BusyBox 1.0.0-pre9 released</b><p>
174 Here goes the final BusyBox pre-release... This is your last chance for
175 bug fixes. With luck this will be released as BusyBox 1.0.0 later this
176 week. Please do not bother to send in patches adding cool new features at
177 this time. Only bug-fix patches will be accepted. It would also be
178 <b>very</b> helpful if people could help review the BusyBox documentation
179 and submit improvements. I've spent a lot of time updating the
180 documentation to make it better match reality, but I could really use some
181 assistance in checking that the features supported by the various applets
182 match the features listed in the documentation.
185 I had hoped to get this released a month ago, but
186 <a href="http://codepoet.org/gallery/baby_peter/img_1796">
187 another release on 1 March 2004</a> has kept me busy...
190 The <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all the details.
191 And as usual you can <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
198 <li><b>23 February 2004 -- BusyBox 1.0.0-pre8 released</b><p>
200 Here goes yet another BusyBox pre-release... Please do not bother to send
201 in patches supplying new features at this time. Only bug-fix patches will
202 be accepted. If you have a cool new feature you would like to see
203 supported, or if you have an amazing new applet you would like to submit,
204 please wait and submit such things later. We really want to get a release
205 out we can all be proud of. We are still aiming to finish off the -pre
206 series in February and move on to the final 1.0.0 release... So if you
207 spot any bugs, now would be an excellent time to send in a fix to the
208 busybox mailing list. It would also be <b>very</b> helpful if people could
209 help review the BusyBox documentation and submit improvements. It would be
210 especially helpful if people could check that the features supported by the
211 various applets match the features listed in the documentation.
215 The <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all the details.
216 And as usual you can <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
222 <li><b>4 February 2004 -- BusyBox 1.0.0-pre7 released</b><p>
224 There was a bug in -pre6 that broke argument parsing for a
225 number of applets, since a variable was not being zeroed out
226 properly. This release is primarily intended to fix that one
227 problem. In addition, this release fixes several other
228 problems, including a rewrite by mjn3 of the code for parsing
229 the busybox.conf file used for suid handling, some shell updates
230 from vodz, and a scattering of other small fixes. We are still
231 aiming to finish off the -pre series in February and move on to
232 the final 1.0.0 release... If you see any problems, of have
233 suggestions to make, as always, please feel free to email the
234 busybox mailing list.
238 The <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all
239 the details. And as usual you can
240 <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
247 <li><b>30 January 2004 -- BusyBox 1.0.0-pre6 released</b><p>
249 Here goes the next pre-release for the new BusyBox stable
250 series. This release adds a number of size optimizations,
251 updates udhcp, fixes up 2.6 modutils support, updates ash
252 and the shell command line editing, and the usual pile of
253 bug fixes both large and small. Things appear to be
254 settling down now, so with a bit of luck and some testing
255 perhaps we can finish off the -pre series in February and
256 move on to the final 1.0.0 release... If you see any
257 problems, of have suggestions to make, as always, please
258 feel free to email the busybox mailing list.
262 People who rely on the <a href= "downloads/snapshots/">daily BusyBox snapshots</a>
263 should be aware that snapshots of the old busybox 0.60.x
264 series are no longer available. Daily snapshots are now
265 only available for the BusyBox 1.0.0 series and now use
266 the naming scheme "busybox-<date>.tar.bz2". Please
267 adjust any build scripts using the old naming scheme accordingly.
271 The <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all
272 the details. And as usual you can
273 <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
280 <li><b>23 December 2003 -- BusyBox 1.0.0-pre5 released</b><p>
282 Here goes the next pre-release for the new BusyBox stable
283 series. The most obvious thing in this release is a fix for
284 a terribly stupid bug in mount that prevented it from working
285 properly unless you specified the filesystem type. This
286 release also fixes a few compile problems, updates udhcp,
287 fixes a silly bug in fdisk, fixes ifup/ifdown to behave like
288 the Debian version, updates devfsd, updates the 2.6.x
289 modutils support, add a new 'rx' applet, removes the obsolete
290 'loadacm' applet, fixes a few tar bugs, fixes a sed bug, and
291 a few other odd fixes.
295 If you see any problems, of have suggestions to make, as
296 always, please feel free to send an email to the busybox
301 The <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all
302 the details. And as usual you can
303 <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
310 <li><b>10 December 2003 -- BusyBox 1.0.0-pre4 released</b><p>
312 Here goes the fourth pre-release for the new BusyBox stable
313 series. This release includes major rework to sed, lots of
314 rework on tar, a new tiny implementation of bunzip2, a new
315 devfsd applet, support for 2.6.x kernel modules, updates to
316 the ash shell, sha1sum and md5sum have been merged into a
317 common applet, the dpkg applets has been cleaned up, and tons
318 of random bugs have been fixed. Thanks everyone for all the
319 testing, bug reports, and patches! Once again, a big
320 thank-you goes to Glenn McGrath (bug1) for stepping in and
321 helping get patches merged!
325 And of course, if you are reading this, you might have noticed
326 the busybox website has been completely reworked. Hopefully
327 things are now somewhat easier to navigate... If you see any
328 problems, of have suggestions to make, as always, please feel
329 free to send an email to the busybox mailing list.
333 The <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all
334 the details. And as usual you can
335 <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
342 <li><b>12 Sept 2003 -- BusyBox 1.0.0-pre3 released</b><p>
344 Here goes the third pre-release for the new BusyBox stable
345 series. The last prerelease has held up quite well under
346 testing, but a number of problems have turned up as the number
347 of people using it has increased. Thanks everyone for all
348 the testing, bug reports, and patches!
352 If you have submitted a patch or a bug report to the busybox
353 mailing list and no one has emailed you explaining why your
354 patch was rejected, it is safe to say that your patch has
355 somehow gotten lost or forgotten. That happens sometimes.
356 Please re-submit your patch or bug report to the BusyBox
361 The point of the "-preX" versions is to get a larger group of
362 people and vendors testing, so any problems that turn up can be
363 fixed prior to the final 1.0.0 release. The main feature
364 (besides additional testing) that is still still on the TODO
365 list before the final BusyBox 1.0.0 release is sorting out the
366 modutils issues. For the new 2.6.x kernels, we already have
367 patches adding insmod and rmmod support and those need to be
368 integrated. For 2.4.x kernels, for which busybox only supports
369 a limited number of architectures, we may want to invest a bit
370 more work before we cut 1.0.0. Or we may just leave 2.4.x
371 module loading alone.
375 I had hoped this release would be out a month ago. And of
376 course, it wasn't since Erik became busy getting a release of
377 <a href="http://www.uclibc.org/">uClibc</a>
378 out the door. Many thanks to Glenn McGrath (bug1) for
379 stepping in and helping get a bunch of patches merged! I am
380 not even going to state a date for releasing BusyBox 1.0.0
381 -pre4 (or the final 1.0.0). We're aiming for late September...
382 But if this release proves as to be exceptionally stable (or
383 exceptionally unstable!), the next release may be very soon
388 The <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all
389 the details. And as usual you can
390 <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
396 <li><b>30 July 2003 -- BusyBox 1.0.0-pre2 released</b><p>
398 Here goes another pre release for the new BusyBox stable
399 series. The last prerelease (pre1) was given quite a lot of
400 testing (thanks everyone!) which has helped turn up a number of
401 bugs, and these problems have now been fixed.
405 Highlights of -pre2 include updating the 'ash' shell to sync up
406 with the Debian 'dash' shell, a new 'hdparm' applet was added,
407 init again supports pivot_root, The 'reboot' 'halt' and
408 'poweroff' applets can now be used without using busybox init.
409 an ifconfig buffer overflow was fixed, losetup now allows
410 read-write loop devices, uClinux daemon support was added, the
411 'watchdog', 'fdisk', and 'kill' applets were rewritten, there were
412 tons of doc updates, and there were many other bugs fixed.
415 If you have submitted a patch and it is not included in this
416 release and Erik has not emailed you explaining why your patch
417 was rejected, it is safe to say that he has lost your patch.
418 That happens sometimes. Please re-submit your patch to the
419 BusyBox mailing list.
422 The point of the "-preX" versions is to get a larger group of
423 people and vendors testing, so any problems that turn up can be
424 fixed prior to the final 1.0.0 release. The main feature that
425 is still still on the TODO list before the final BusyBox 1.0.0
426 release is adding module support for the new 2.6.x kernels. If
427 necessary, a -pre3 BusyBox release will happen on August 6th.
428 Hopefully (i.e. unless some horrible catastrophic problem
429 turns up) the final BusyBox 1.0.0 release will be ready by
433 The <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all
434 the details. As usual you can <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
440 <li><b>15 July 2003 -- BusyBox 1.0.0-pre1 released</b><p>
442 The busybox development series has been under construction for
443 nearly two years now. Which is just entirely too long... So
444 it is with great pleasure that I announce the imminent release
445 of a new stable series. Due to the huge number of changes
446 since the last stable release (and the usual mindless version
447 number inflation) I am branding this new stable series verison
451 The point of "-preX" versions is to get a larger group of
452 people and vendors testing, so any problems that turn up can be
453 fixed prior to the magic 1.0.0 release (which should happen
454 later this month)... I plan to release BusyBox 1.0.0-pre2 next
455 Monday (July 21st), and, if necessary, -pre3 on July 28th.
456 Hopefully (i.e. unless some horrible catastrophic problem turns
457 up) the final BusyBox 1.0.0 release should be ready by the end
461 If you have submitted patches, and they are not in this release
462 and I have not emailed you explaining why your patch was
463 rejected, it is safe to say that I have lost your patch. That
464 happens sometimes. Please do <B>NOT</b> send all your patches,
465 support questions, etc, directly to Erik. I get hundreds of
466 emails every day (which is why I end up losing patches
467 sometimes in the flood)... The busybox mailing list is the
468 right place to send your patches, support questions, etc.
471 I would like to especially thank Vladimir Oleynik (vodz), Glenn
472 McGrath (bug1), Robert Griebl (sandman), and Manuel Novoa III
473 (mjn3) for their significant efforts and contributions that
474 have made this release possible.
477 As usual you can <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
478 You don't really need to bother with the
479 <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a>, as the changes
480 vs the stable version are way too extensive to easily enumerate.
481 But you can take a look if you really want too.
489 <li><b>26 October 2002 -- BusyBox 0.60.5 released</b><p>
491 I am very pleased to announce that the BusyBox 0.60.5 (stable)
492 is now available for download. This is a bugfix release for
493 the stable series to address all the problems that have turned
494 up since the last release. Unfortunately, the previous release
495 had a few nasty bugs (i.e. init could deadlock, gunzip -c tried
496 to delete source files, cp -a wouldn't copy symlinks, and init
497 was not always providing controlling ttys when it should have).
498 I know I said that the previous release would be the end of the
499 0.60.x series. Well, it turns out I'm a liar. But this time I
500 mean it (just like last time ;-). This will be the last
501 release for the 0.60.x series -- all further development work
502 will be done for the development busybox tree. Expect the development
503 version to have its first real release very very soon now...
506 The <a href="downloads/Changelog.full">changelog</a> has all
507 the details. As usual you can <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
512 <li><b>18 September 2002 -- BusyBox 0.60.4 released</b><p>
514 I am very pleased to announce that the BusyBox 0.60.4
515 (stable) is now available for download. This is primarily
516 a bugfix release for the stable series to address all
517 the problems that have turned up since the last
518 release. This will be the last release for the 0.60.x series.
519 I mean it this time -- all further development work will be done
520 on the development busybox tree, which is quite solid now and
521 should soon be getting its first real release.
524 The <a href="downloads/Changelog.full">changelog</a> has all
525 the details. As usual you can <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
531 <li><b>27 April 2002 -- BusyBox 0.60.3 released</b><p>
533 I am very pleased to announce that the BusyBox 0.60.3 (stable) is
534 now available for download. This is primarily a bugfix release
535 for the stable series. A number of problems have turned up since
536 the last release, and this should address most of those problems.
537 This should be the last release for the 0.60.x series. The
538 development busybox tree has been progressing nicely, and will
539 hopefully be ready to become the next stable release.
542 The <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all
543 the details. As usual you can <a href="downloads">download busybox here</a>.
549 <li><b>6 March 2002 -- busybox.net now has mirrors!</b><p>
551 Busybox.net is now much more available, thanks to
552 the fine folks at <a href= "http://i-netinnovations.com/">http://i-netinnovations.com/</a>
553 who are providing hosting for busybox.net and
554 uclibc.org. In addition, we now have two mirrors:
555 <a href= "http://busybox.linuxmagic.com/">http://busybox.linuxmagic.com/</a>
557 <a href= "http://busybox.csservers.de/">http://busybox.csservers.de/</a>
558 in Germany. I hope this makes things much more
559 accessible for everyone!
563 <b>3 January 2002 -- Welcome to busybox.net!</b>
565 <p>Thanks to the generosity of a number of busybox
566 users, we have been able to purchase busybox.net
567 (which is where you are probably reading this).
568 Right now, busybox.net and uclibc.org are both
569 living on my home system (at the end of my DSL
570 line). I apologize for the abrupt move off of
571 busybox.lineo.com. Unfortunately, I no longer have
572 the access needed to keep that system updated (for
573 example, you might notice the daily snapshots there
574 stopped some time ago).</p>
576 <p>Busybox.net is currently hosted on my home
577 server, at the end of a DSL line. Unfortunately,
578 the load on them is quite heavy. To address this,
579 I'm trying to make arrangements to get busybox.net
580 co-located directly at an ISP. To assist in the
581 co-location effort, <a href=
582 "http://www.codepoet.org/~markw">Mark Whitley</a>
583 (author of busybox sed, cut, and grep) has donated
585 "http://www.netwinder.org/">NetWinder</a> computer
586 for hosting busybox.net and uclibc.org. Once this
587 system is co-located, the current speed problems
588 should be completely eliminated. Hopefully, too,
589 some of you will volunteer to set up some mirror
590 sites, to help to distribute the load a bit.</p>
594 Click here to help support busybox.net!
595 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
596 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
597 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="andersen@codepoet.org">
598 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Support Busybox">
599 <input type="hidden" name="image_url" value="https://codepoet-consulting.com/images/busybox2.jpg">
600 <input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="1">
601 <input type="image" src="images/donate.png" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make donation using PayPal">
605 Since some people expressed concern over BusyBox
606 donations, let me assure you that no one is getting
607 rich here. All BusyBox and uClibc donations will be
608 spent paying for bandwidth and needed hardware
609 upgrades. For example, Mark's NetWinder currently
610 has just 64Meg of memory. As demonstrated when
611 google spidered the site the other day, 64 Megs in
612 not enough, so I'm going to be ordering 256Megs of
613 ram and a larger hard drive for the box today. So
614 far, donations received have been sufficient to
615 cover almost all expenses. In the future, we may
616 have co-location fees to worry about, but for now
617 we are ok. A <b>HUGE thank-you</b> goes out to
618 everyone that has contributed!<br>
623 <b>20 November 2001 -- BusyBox 0.60.2 released</b>
625 <p>We am very pleased to announce that the BusyBox
626 0.60.2 (stable) is now released to the world. This
627 one is primarily a bugfix release for the stable
628 series, and it should take care of most everyone's
629 needs till we can get the nice new stuff we have
630 been working on in CVS ready to release (with the
631 wonderful new buildsystem). The biggest change in
632 this release (beyond bugfixes) is the fact that msh
633 (the minix shell) has been re-worked by Vladimir N.
634 Oleynik (vodz) and so it no longer crashes when
635 told to do complex things with backticks.</p>
637 <p>This release has been tested on x86, ARM, and
638 powerpc using glibc 2.2.4, libc5, and uClibc, so it
639 should work with just about any Linux system you
640 throw it at. See the <a href=
641 "downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> for <small>most
642 of</small> the details. The last release was
643 <em>very</em> solid for people, and this one should
646 <p>As usual BusyBox 0.60.2 can be downloaded from
648 "downloads">http://www.busybox.net/downloads</a>.</p>
654 <li> <b>18 November 2001 -- Help us buy busybox.net!</b>
656 <!-- Begin PayPal Logo -->
658 Click here to help buy busybox.net!
659 <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
660 <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
661 <input type="hidden" name="business" value="andersen@codepoet.org">
662 <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Support Busybox">
663 <input type="hidden" name="image_url" value="https://busybox.net/images/busybox2.jpg">
664 <input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="1">
665 <input type="image" src="images/donate.png" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make donation using PayPal">
668 <!-- End PayPal Logo -->
670 I've contacted the current owner of busybox.net and he is willing
671 to sell the domain name -- for $250. He also owns busybox.org but
672 will not part with it... I will then need to pay the registry fee
673 for a couple of years and start paying for bandwidth, so this will
674 initially cost about $300. I would like to host busybox.net on my
675 home machine (codepoet.org) so I have full control over the system,
676 but to do that would require that I increase the level of bandwidth
677 I am paying for. Did you know that so far this month, there
678 have been over 1.4 Gigabytes of busybox ftp downloads? I don't
679 even <em>know</em> how much CVS bandwidth it requires. For the
680 time being, Lineo has continued to graciously provide this
681 bandwidth, despite the fact that I no longer work for them. If I
682 start running this all on my home machine, paying for the needed bandwidth
683 will start costing some money.
686 I was going to pay it all myself, but my wife didn't like that
687 idea at all (big surprise). It turns out <insert argument
688 where she wins and I don't> she has better ideas
689 about what we should spend our money on that don't involve
690 busybox. She suggested I should ask for contributions on the
691 mailing list and web page. So...
694 I am hoping that if everyone could contribute a bit, we could pick
695 up the busybox.net domain name and cover the bandwidth costs. I
696 know that busybox is being used by a lot of companies as well as
697 individuals -- hopefully people and companies that are willing to
698 contribute back a bit. So if everyone could please help out, that
703 <li> <b>23 August 2001 -- BusyBox 0.60.1 released</b>
706 This is a relatively minor bug fixing release that fixes
707 up the bugs that have shown up in the stable release in
708 the last few weeks. Fortunately, nothing <em>too</em>
709 serious has shown up. This release only fixes bugs -- no
710 new features, no new applets. So without further ado,
711 here it is. Come and get it.
714 <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all
715 the details. As usual BusyBox 0.60.1 can be downloaded from
716 <a href="downloads">http://busybox.net/downloads</a>.
721 <li> <b>2 August 2001 -- BusyBox 0.60.0 released</b>
723 I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of
724 BusyBox 0.60.0. I have personally tested this release with libc5, glibc,
725 and <a href="http://uclibc.org/">uClibc</a> on
726 x86, ARM, and powerpc using linux 2.2 and 2.4, and I know a number
727 of people using it on everything from ia64 to m68k with great success.
728 Everything seems to be working very nicely now, so getting a nice
729 stable bug-free(tm) release out seems to be in order. This releases fixes
730 a memory leak in syslogd, a number of bugs in the ash and msh shells, and
731 cleans up a number of things.
735 Those wanting an easy way to test the 0.60.0 release with uClibc can
736 use <a href="http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/">User-Mode Linux</a>
737 to give it a try by downloading and compiling
738 <a href="ftp://busybox.net/buildroot.tar.gz">buildroot.tar.gz</a>.
739 You don't have to be root or reboot your machine to run test this way.
740 Preconfigured User-Mode Linux kernel source is also on busybox.net.
742 Another cool thing is the nifty <a href="downloads/tutorial/index.html">
743 BusyBox Tutorial</a> contributed by K Computing. This requires
744 a ShockWave plugin (or standalone viewer), so you may want to grab the
745 the GPLed shockwave viewer from <a href="http://www.swift-tools.com/Flash/flash-0.4.10.tgz">here</a>
746 to view the tutorial.
749 Finally, In case you didn't notice anything odd about the
750 version number of this release, let me point out that this release
751 is <em>not</em> 0.53, because I bumped the version number up a
752 bit. This reflects the fact that this release is intended to form
753 a new stable BusyBox release series. If you need to rely on a
754 stable version of BusyBox, you should plan on using the stable
755 0.60.x series. If bugs show up then I will release 0.60.1, then
756 0.60.2, etc... This is also intended to deal with the fact that
757 the BusyBox build system will be getting a major overhaul for the
758 next release and I don't want that to break products that people
759 are shipping. To avoid that, the new build system will be
760 released as part of a new BusyBox development series that will
761 have some not-yet-decided-on odd version number. Once things
762 stabilize and the new build system is working for everyone, then
763 I will release that as a new stable release series.
767 <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> has all
768 the details. As usual BusyBox 0.60.0 can be downloaded from
769 <a href="downloads">http://busybox.net/downloads</a>.
774 <li> <b>7 July 2001 -- BusyBox 0.52 released</b>
777 I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of
778 BusyBox 0.52 (the "new-and-improved rock-solid release"). This
779 release is the result of <em>many</em> hours of work and has tons
780 of bugfixes, optimizations, and cleanups. This release adds
781 several new applets, including several new shells (such as hush, msh,
786 <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> covers
787 some of the more obvious details, but there are many many things that
788 are not mentioned, but have been improved in subtle ways. As usual,
789 BusyBox 0.52 can be downloaded from
790 <a href="downloads">http://busybox.net/downloads</a>.
795 <li> <b>10 April 2001 - Graph of Busybox Growth </b>
797 The illustrious Larry Doolittle has made a PostScript chart of the growth
798 of the Busybox tarball size over time. It is available for downloading /
799 viewing <a href= "busybox-growth.ps"> right here</a>.
801 <p> (Note that while the number of applets in Busybox has increased, you
802 can still configure Busybox to be as small as you want by selectively
803 turning off whichever applets you don't need.)
807 <li> <b>10 April 2001 -- BusyBox 0.51 released</b>
810 BusyBox 0.51 (the "rock-solid release") is now out there. This
811 release adds only 2 new applets: env and vi. The vi applet,
812 contributed by Sterling Huxley, is very functional, and is only
813 22k. This release fixes 3 critical bugs in the 0.50 release.
814 There were 2 potential segfaults in lash (the busybox shell) in
815 the 0.50 release which are now fixed. Another critical bug in
816 0.50 which is now fixed: syslogd from 0.50 could potentially
817 deadlock the init process and thereby break your entire system.
820 There are a number of improvements in this release as well. For
821 one thing, the wget applet is greatly improved. Dmitry Zakharov
822 added FTP support, and Laurence Anderson make wget fully RFC
823 compliant for HTTP 1.1. The mechanism for including utility
824 functions in previous releases was clumsy and error prone. Now
825 all utility functions are part of a new libbb library, which makes
826 maintaining utility functions much simpler. And BusyBox now
827 compiles on itanium systems (thanks to the Debian itanium porters
828 for letting me use their system!).
831 <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> for
832 complete details. BusyBox 0.51 can be downloaded from
833 <a href="downloads">http://busybox.net/downloads</a>.
837 <li> <b>Busybox Boot-Floppy Image</b>
839 <p>Because you asked for it, we have made available a <a href=
840 "downloads/busybox.floppy.img"> Busybox boot floppy
841 image</a>. Here's how you use it:
845 <li> <a href= "downloads/busybox.floppy.img">
846 Download the image</a>
848 <li> dd it onto a floppy like so: <tt> dd if=busybox.floppy.img
849 of=/dev/fd0 ; sync </tt>
851 <li> Pop it in a machine and boot up.
855 <p> If you want to look at the contents of the initrd image, do this:
858 mount ./busybox.floppy.img /mnt -o loop -t msdos
859 cp /mnt/initrd.gz /tmp
861 gunzip /tmp/initrd.gz
862 mount /tmp/initrd /mnt -o loop -t minix
866 <li> <b>15 March 2001 -- BusyBox 0.50 released</b>
869 This release adds several new applets including ifconfig, route, pivot_root, stty,
870 and tftp, and also fixes tons of bugs. Tab completion in the
871 shell is now working very well, and the shell's environment variable
872 expansion was fixed. Tons of other things were fixed or made
873 smaller. For a fairly complete overview, see the
874 <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a>.
876 lash (the busybox shell) is still with us, fixed up a bit so it
877 now behaves itself quite nicely. It really is quite usable as
878 long as you don't expect it to provide Bourne shell grammer.
879 Standard things like pipes, redirects, command line editing, and
880 environment variable expansion work great. But we have found that
881 this shell, while very usable, does not provide an extensible
882 framework for adding in full Bourne shell behavior. So the first order of
883 business as we begin working on the next BusyBox release will be to merge in the new shell
884 currently in progress at
885 <a href="http://doolittle.faludi.com/~larry/parser.html">Larry Doolittle's website</a>.
889 <li> <b>27 January 2001 -- BusyBox 0.49 released</b>
892 Several new applets, lots of bug fixes, cleanups, and many smaller
893 things made nicer. Several cleanups and improvements to the shell.
894 For a list of the most interesting changes
895 you might want to look at the <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a>.
897 Special thanks go out to Matt Kraai and Larry Doolittle for all their
898 work on this release, and for keeping on top of things while I've been
901 <em>Special Note</em><br>
903 BusyBox 0.49 was supposed to have replaced lash, the BusyBox
904 shell, with a new shell that understands full Bourne shell/Posix shell grammer.
905 Well, that simply didn't happen in time for this release. A new
906 shell that will eventually replace lash is already under
907 construction. This new shell is being developed by Larry
908 Doolittle, and could use all of our help. Please see the work in
909 progress on <a href="http://doolittle.faludi.com/~larry/parser.html">Larry's website</a>
910 and help out if you can. This shell will be included in the next
914 <li> <b>13 December 2000 -- BusyBox 0.48 released</b>
917 This release fixes lots and lots of bugs. This has had some very
918 rigorous testing, and looks very, very clean. The usual tar
919 update of course: tar no longer breaks hardlinks, tar -xzf is
920 optionally supported, and the LRP folks will be pleased to know
921 that 'tar -X' and 'tar --exclude' are both now in. Applets are
922 now looked up using a binary search making lash (the busybox
923 shell) much faster. For the new debian-installer (for Debian
924 woody) a .udeb can now be generated.
926 The curious can get a list of some of the more interesting changes by reading
927 the <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a>.
929 Many thanks go out to the many many people that have contributed to
930 this release, especially Matt Kraai, Larry Doolittle, and Kent Robotti.
932 <p> <li> <b>26 September 2000 -- BusyBox 0.47 released</b>
935 This release fixes lots of bugs (including an ugly bug in 0.46
936 syslogd that could fork-bomb your system). Added several new
937 apps: rdate, wget, getopt, dos2unix, unix2dos, reset, unrpm,
938 renice, xargs, and expr. syslogd now supports network logging.
939 There are the usual tar updates. Most apps now use getopt for
940 more correct option parsing.
941 See the <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a>
942 for complete details.
945 <p> <li> <b>11 July 2000 -- BusyBox 0.46 released</b>
948 This release fixes several bugs (including a ugly bug in tar,
949 and fixes for NFSv3 mount support). Added a dumpkmap to allow
950 people to dump a binary keymaps for use with 'loadkmap', and a
951 completely reworked 'grep' and 'sed' which should behave better.
952 BusyBox shell can now also be used as a login shell.
953 See the <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a>
954 for complete details.
957 <p> <li> <b>21 June 2000 -- BusyBox 0.45 released</b>
960 This release has been slow in coming, but is very solid at this
961 point. BusyBox now supports libc5 as well as GNU libc. This
962 release provides the following new apps: cut, tr, insmod, ar,
963 mktemp, setkeycodes, md5sum, uuencode, uudecode, which, and
964 telnet. There are bug fixes for just about every app as well (see
965 the <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> for
968 Also, some exciting infrastructure news! Busybox now has its own
969 <a href="lists/busybox/">mailing list</a>,
971 <a href="/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/trunk/busybox/">CVS tree</a>,
973 <a href="cvs_anon.html">CVS access</a>, and
974 for those that are actively contributing there is even
975 <a href="cvs_write.html">CVS write access</a>.
976 I think this will be a huge help to the ongoing development of BusyBox.
978 Also, for the curious, there is no 0.44 release. Somehow 0.44 got announced
979 a few weeks ago prior to its actually being released. To avoid any confusion
980 we are just skipping 0.44.
982 Many thanks go out to the many people that have contributed to this release
983 of BusyBox (esp. Pavel Roskin)!
986 <p> <li> <b>19 April 2000 -- syslogd bugfix</b>
988 Turns out that there was still a bug in busybox syslogd.
989 For example, with the following test app:
991 #include <syslog.h>
993 int do_log(char* msg, int delay)
995 openlog("testlog", LOG_PID, LOG_DAEMON);
997 syslog(LOG_ERR, "%s: testing one, two, three\n", msg);
1011 it should be logging stuff from both "A" and "B". As released in 0.43 only stuff
1012 from "A" would have been logged. This means that if init tries to log something
1013 while say ppp has the syslog open, init would block (which is bad, bad, bad).
1015 Karl M. Hegbloom has created a fix for the problem.
1019 <p> <li> <b>18 April 2000 -- BusyBox 0.43 released (finally!)</b>
1021 I have finally gotten everything into a state where I feel pretty
1022 good about things. This is definitely the most stable, solid release
1023 so far. A lot of bugs have been fixed, and the following new apps
1024 have been added: sh, basename, dirname, killall, uptime,
1025 freeramdisk, tr, echo, test, and usleep. Tar has been completely
1026 rewritten from scratch. Bss size has also been greatly reduced.
1027 More details are available in the
1028 <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a>.
1029 Oh, and as a special bonus, I wrote some fairly comprehensive
1030 <em>documentation</em>, complete with examples and full usage information.
1033 Many thanks go out to the fine people that have helped by submitting patches
1034 and bug reports; particularly instrumental in helping for this release were
1035 Karl Hegbloom, Pavel Roskin, Friedrich Vedder, Emanuele Caratti,
1036 Bob Tinsley, Nicolas Pitre, Avery Pennarun, Arne Bernin, John Beppu, and Jim Gleason.
1037 There were others so if I somehow forgot to mention you, I'm very sorry.
1040 You can grab BusyBox 0.43 tarballs <a href="downloads">here</a>.
1042 <p> <li> <b>9 April 2000 -- BusyBox 0.43 pre release</b>
1044 Unfortunately, I have not yet finished all the things I want to
1045 do for BusyBox 0.43, so I am posting this pre-release for people
1046 to poke at. This contains my complete rewrite of tar, which now weighs in at
1047 5k (7k with all options turned on) and works for reading and writing
1048 tarballs (which it does correctly for everything I have been able to throw
1049 at it). Tar also (optionally) supports the "--exclude" option (mainly because
1050 the Linux Router Project folks asked for it). This also has a pre-release
1051 of the micro shell I have been writing. This pre-release should be stable
1052 enough for production use -- it just isn't a release since I have some structural
1053 changes I still want to make.
1055 The pre-release can be found <a href="downloads">here</a>.
1056 Please let me know ASAP if you find <em>any</em> bugs.
1058 <p> <li> <b>28 March 2000 -- Andersen Baby Boy release</b>
1060 I am pleased to announce that on Tuesday March 28th at 5:48pm, weighing in at 7
1061 lbs. 12 oz, Micah Erik Andersen was born at LDS Hospital here in Salt Lake City.
1062 He was born in the emergency room less then 5 minutes after we arrived -- and
1063 it was such a relief that we even made it to the hospital at all. Despite the
1064 fact that I was driving at an amazingly unlawful speed and honking at everybody
1065 and thinking decidedly unkind thoughts about the people in our way, my wife
1066 (inconsiderate of my feelings and complete lack of medical training) was lying
1067 down in the back seat saying things like "I think I need to start pushing now"
1068 (which she then proceeded to do despite my best encouraging statements to the
1071 Anyway, I'm glad to note that despite the much-faster-than-we-were-expecting
1072 labor, both Shaunalei and our new baby boy are doing wonderfully.
1074 So now that I am done with my excuse for the slow release cycle...
1075 Progress on the next release of BusyBox has been slow but steady. I expect
1076 to have a release sometime during the first week of April. This release will
1077 include a number of important changes, including the addition of a shell, a
1078 re-write of tar (to accommodate the Linux Router Project), and syslogd can now
1079 accept multiple concurrent connections, fixing lots of unexpected blocking
1083 <p> <li> <b>11 February 2000 -- BusyBox 0.42 released</b>
1086 This is the most solid BusyBox release so far. Many, many
1087 bugs have been fixed. See the
1088 <a href="downloads/Changelog">changelog</a> for details.
1090 Of particular interest, init will now cleanly unmount
1091 filesystems on reboot, cp and mv have been rewritten and
1092 behave much better, and mount and umount no longer leak
1093 loop devices. Many thanks go out to Randolph Chung,
1094 Karl M. Hegbloom, Taketoshi Sano, and Pavel Roskin for
1095 their hard work on this release of BusyBox. Please pound
1096 on it and let me know if you find any bugs.
1098 <p> <li> <b>19 January 2000 -- BusyBox 0.41 released</b>
1101 This release includes bugfixes to cp, mv, logger, true, false,
1102 mkdir, syslogd, and init. New apps include wc, hostid,
1103 logname, tty, whoami, and yes. New features include loop device
1104 support in mount and umount, and better TERM handling by init.
1105 The changelog can be found <a href="downloads/Changelog">here</a>.
1107 <p> <li> <b>7 January 2000 -- BusyBox 0.40 released</b>
1110 This release includes bugfixes to init (now includes inittab support),
1111 syslogd, head, logger, du, grep, cp, mv, sed, dmesg, ls, kill, gunzip, and mknod.
1112 New apps include sort, uniq, lsmod, rmmod, fbset, and loadacm.
1113 In particular, this release fixes an important bug in tar which
1114 in some cases produced serious security problems.
1115 As always, the changelog can be found <a href="downloads/Changelog">here</a>.
1117 <p> <li> <b>11 December 1999 -- BusyBox Website</b>
1119 I have received permission from Bruce Perens (the original author of BusyBox)
1120 to set up this site as the new primary website for BusyBox. This website
1121 will always contain pointers to the latest and greatest, and will also
1122 contain the latest documentation on how to use BusyBox, what it can do,
1123 what arguments its apps support, etc.
1125 <p> <li> <b>10 December 1999 -- BusyBox 0.39 released</b>
1127 This release includes fixes to init, reboot, halt, kill, and ls, and contains
1128 the new apps ping, hostname, mkfifo, free, tail, du, tee, and head. A full
1129 changelog can be found <a href="downloads/Changelog">here</a>.
1130 <p> <li> <b>5 December 1999 -- BusyBox 0.38 released</b>
1132 This release includes fixes to tar, cat, ls, dd, rm, umount, find, df,
1133 and make install, and includes new apps syslogd/klogd and logger.
1139 <!--#include file="footer.html" -->