small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the utilities
you usually find in fileutils, shellutils, findutils, textutils, grep, gzip,
tar, etc. BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX environment for any small or
-emdedded system. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options then
+embedded system. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than
their full featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are included provide
the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts.
BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in mind.
It is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude commands (or
features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize your embedded
-systems. To create a working system, just add a kernel, a shell (such as ash),
-and an editor (such as elvis-tiny or ae).
+systems. To create a working system, just add /dev, a shell, and a kernel. For
+a really minimal system, you can even use the busybox shell (not Bourne
+compatible, but very small and quite usable) and the busybox vi editor.
-Busybox was originally written to support the Debian Rescue/Install disks, but
+BusyBox was originally written to support the Debian Rescue/Install disks, but
it also makes an excellent environment for any small or embedded system.
-As of version 0.20 there is a version number. : ) Also as of version 0.20,
+As of version 0.20 there is now a version number. : ) Also as of version 0.20,
BusyBox is now modularized to easily allow you to build only the components you
-need, thereby reducing binary size. To turn off unwanted Busybox components,
-simply edit the file busybox.def.h and comment out the components you do not
-need using C++ style (//) comments.
+need, thereby reducing binary size. To turn off unwanted BusyBox components,
+simply edit the file "Config.h" and comment out the components you do not need
+using C++ style (//) comments.
-After the build is complete a busybox.links file is generated which is then
+After the build is complete, a busybox.links file is generated. This is
used by 'make install' to create symlinks to the busybox binary for all
compiled in functions. By default, 'make install' will place the symlink
forest into `pwd`/_install unless you have defined the PREFIX environment
-variable (i.e. make PREFIX="/tmp/foo" install)
+variable (i.e., 'make PREFIX=/tmp/foo install')
----------------
+
+Supported architectures:
+
+ Busybox in general will build on any architecture supported by gcc. It has
+ a few specialized features added for __sparc__ and __alpha__. insmod
+ functionality is currently limited to x86, ARM, SH3/4, powerpc, and MIPS.
+
+Supported libcs:
+
+ glibc-2.0.x, glibc-2.1.x, Linux-libc5, uClibc. People are looking at
+ newlib and diet-libc, but consider them unsupported, untested, or worse.
+
+Supported kernels:
+
+ Full functionality requires Linux 2.0.x, 2.2.x, or 2.4.x. A large fraction
+ of the code should run on just about anything.
+
+----------------
+
Getting help:
+
When you find you need help, you can check out the BusyBox mailing list
archives at http://opensource.lineo.com/lists/busybox/ or even join
the mailing list if you are interested.
----------------
+
Bugs:
-If you find bugs, follow the instructions at http://bugs.lineo.com/Reporting.html
-and submit a bug report. This way, we can be sure nothing falls through the
-cracks...
+
+If you find bugs, please submit a bug report. Full instructions on how to
+report a bug are found at http://bugs.lineo.com/Reporting.html.
+
+For the impatient: To submit a bug, simply send an email describing the problem
+to submit@bugs.lineo.com. Bug reports should look something like this:
+
+ To: submit@bugs.lineo.com
+ From: diligent@testing.linux.org
+ Subject: /bin/true doesn't work
+
+ Package: busybox
+ Version: 0.51
+
+ When I invoke '/bin/true' it doesn't work. I expected it to return
+ a "0" but it returned a "1" instead. Here is the transcript:
+ $ /bin/true ; echo $?
+ 1
+ With GNU /bin/true, I get the following output:
+ $ /bin/true ; echo $?
+ 0
+ I am using Debian 2.2r2, kernel version 2.2.18, and the latest
+ uClibc from CVS. Thanks for the wonderful program!
+ -Diligent
+
+Note the careful description and use of examples showing not only what BusyBox
+does, but also a counter example showing what an equivalent GNU app does. Bug
+reports lacking such detail may take a _long_ time to be fixed... Thanks for
+understanding.
----------------
+
FTP:
+
Source for the latest released version can always be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox.
----------------
+
CVS:
-BusyBox now has its own publically browsable CVS tree at:
+
+BusyBox now has its own publicly browsable CVS tree at:
http://opensource.lineo.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/
Anonymous CVS access is available. For instructions, check out:
For those that are actively contributing there is even CVS write access:
http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_write.html
-
----------------
Please feed suggestions, bug reports, insults, and bribes back to:
Erik Andersen
<andersen@lineo.com>
<andersee@debian.org>
+ <andersee@codepoet.org>
-<blatent plug>
+<blatant plug>
Many thanks to go to Lineo for paying me to work on busybox.
-</blatent plug>
+</blatant plug>
projects / oweals / busybox.git / blobdiff