Please see the LICENSE file for details on copying and usage.
-BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single
-small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the utilities
-you usually find in GNU coreutils, util-linux, etc. 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 /dev, /etc, and a Linux kernel.
-BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX environment for any small or embedded
-system.
-
-BusyBox is extremely configurable. This allows you to include only the
-components you need, thereby reducing binary size. Run 'make config' or
-'make menuconfig' to select the functionality that you wish to enable.
-
-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')
-
-If you wish to install hard links, rather than symlinks, you can use
-'make PREFIX=/tmp/foo install-hardlinks' instead.
+What is busybox:
+
+ BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single
+ small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the
+ utilities you usually find in bzip2, coreutils, file, findutils, gawk, grep,
+ inetutils, modutils, net-tools, procps, sed, shadow, sysklogd, sysvinit, tar,
+ util-linux, and vim. The utilities in BusyBox often have fewer options than
+ their full-featured cousins; however, the options that are included provide
+ the expected functionality and behave very much like their larger
+ counterparts.
+
+ BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in
+ mind, both to produce small binaries and to reduce run-time memory usage.
+ Busybox is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude
+ commands (or features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize
+ embedded systems; to create a working system, just add /dev, /etc, and a
+ Linux kernel. Busybox (usually together with uClibc) has also been used as
+ a component of "thin client" desktop systems, live-CD distributions, rescue
+ disks, installers, and so on.
+
+ BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX environment for any small system,
+ both embedded environments and more full featured systems concerned about
+ space. Busybox is slowly working towards implementing the full Single Unix
+ Specification V3 (http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/), but isn't
+ there yet (and for size reasons will probably support at most UTF-8 for
+ internationalization). We are also interested in passing the Linux Test
+ Project (http://ltp.sourceforge.net).
----------------
-Supported architectures:
+Using busybox:
- BusyBox in general will build on any architecture supported by gcc.
- Kernel module loading for 2.2 and 2.4 Linux kernels is currently
- limited to ARM, CRIS, H8/300, x86, ia64, x86_64, m68k, MIPS, PowerPC,
- S390, SH3/4/5, Sparc, v850e, and x86_64 for 2.4.x kernels. For 2.6.x
- kernels, kernel module loading support should work on all architectures.
+ BusyBox is extremely configurable. This allows you to include only the
+ components and options you need, thereby reducing binary size. Run 'make
+ config' or 'make menuconfig' to select the functionality that you wish to
+ enable.
+ The behavior of busybox is determined by the name it's called under: as
+ "cp" it behaves like cp, as "sed" it behaves like sed, and so on. Called
+ as "busybox" it takes the second argument as the name of the applet to
+ run (I.E. "./busybox ls -l /proc").
-Supported C Libraries:
+ The "standalone shell" mode is an easy way to try out busybox; this is a
+ command shell that calls the builtin applets without needing them to be
+ installed in the path. (Note that this requires /proc to be mounted, if
+ testing from a boot floppy or in a chroot environment.)
- uClibc and glibc are supported. People have been looking at newlib and
- dietlibc, but they are currently considered unsupported, untested, or
- worse. Linux-libc5 is no longer supported -- you should probably use uClibc
- instead if you want a small C library.
+ The build automatically generates a file "busybox.links", which is used by
+ 'make install' to create symlinks to the BusyBox binary for all compiled in
+ commands. Use the PREFIX environment variable to specify where to install
+ the busybox binary and symlink forest. (i.e., 'make PREFIX=/tmp/foo install',
+ or 'make PREFIX=/tmp/foo install-hardlinks' if you prefer hard links.)
-Supported kernels:
+----------------
- Full functionality requires Linux 2.2.x or better. A large fraction of the
- code should run on just about anything. While the current code is fairly
- Linux specific, it should be fairly easy to port the majority of the code
- to support, say, FreeBSD or Solaris, or Mac OS X, or even Windows (if you
- are into that sort of thing).
+Downloading the current source code:
-----------------
+ Source for the latest released version, as well as daily snapshots, can always
+ be downloaded from
-Getting help:
+ http://busybox.net/downloads/
-When you find you need help, you can check out the BusyBox mailing list
-archives at http://busybox.net/lists/busybox/ or even join
-the mailing list if you are interested.
+ You can browse the up to the minute source code and change history online
+ at:
-----------------
+http://www.busybox.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/branches/busybox_1_00_stable/busybox/
-Bugs:
+ Anonymous SVN access is available. For instructions, check out:
-If you find bugs, please submit a detailed bug report to the BusyBox mailing
-list at busybox@mail.busybox.net. A well-written bug report should include a
-transcript of a shell session that demonstrates the bad behavior and enables
-anyone else to duplicate the bug on their own machine. The following is such
-an example:
+ http://busybox.net/subversion.html
- To: busybox@mail.busybox.net
- From: diligent@testing.linux.org
- Subject: /bin/date doesn't work
+ For those that are actively contributing and would like to check files in,
+ see:
- Package: BusyBox
- Version: 1.00
+ http://busybox.net/developer.html
- When I execute BusyBox 'date' it produces unexpected results.
- With GNU date I get the following output:
+ The developers also have a bug and patch tracking system
+ (http://bugs.busybox.net) although posting a bug/patch to the mailing list
+ is generally a faster way of getting it fixed, and the complete archive of
+ what happened is the subversion changelog.
- $ date
- Fri Oct 8 14:19:41 MDT 2004
+----------------
- But when I use BusyBox date I get this instead:
+getting help:
- $ date
- illegal instruction
+ when you find you need help, you can check out the busybox mailing list
+ archives at http://busybox.net/lists/busybox/ or even join
+ the mailing list if you are interested.
- I am using Debian unstable, kernel version 2.4.25-vrs2 on a Netwinder,
- and the latest uClibc from CVS. Thanks for the wonderful program!
+----------------
- -Diligent
+bugs:
-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 never be fixed... Thanks for understanding.
+ if you find bugs, please submit a detailed bug report to the busybox mailing
+ list at busybox@busybox.net. a well-written bug report should include a
+ transcript of a shell session that demonstrates the bad behavior and enables
+ anyone else to duplicate the bug on their own machine. the following is such
+ an example:
-----------------
+ to: busybox@mail.busybox.net
+ from: diligent@testing.linux.org
+ subject: /bin/date doesn't work
-Downloads:
+ package: busybox
+ version: 1.00
-Source for the latest released version, as well as daily snapshots, can always
-be downloaded from
- http://busybox.net/downloads/
+ when i execute busybox 'date' it produces unexpected results.
+ with gnu date i get the following output:
-----------------
+ $ date
+ fri oct 8 14:19:41 mdt 2004
+
+ but when i use busybox date i get this instead:
+
+ $ date
+ illegal instruction
-CVS:
+ i am using debian unstable, kernel version 2.4.25-vrs2 on a netwinder,
+ and the latest uclibc from cvs. thanks for the wonderful program!
-BusyBox now has its own publicly browsable CVS tree at:
- http://busybox.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/
+ -diligent
-Anonymous CVS access is available. For instructions, check out:
- http://busybox.net/cvs_anon.html
+ note the careful description and use of examples showing not only what
+ busybox does, but also a counter example showing what an equivalent app
+ does (or pointing to the text of a relevant standard). Bug reports lacking
+ such detail may never be fixed... Thanks for understanding.
-For those that are actively contributing there is even CVS write access:
- http://busybox.net/cvs_write.html
+----------------
+
+Portability:
+
+ Busybox is developed and tested on Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, linked
+ against uClibc (0.9.27 or greater) and glibc (2.2 or greater). In such
+ an environment, the full set of busybox features should work (and if
+ anything doesn't we want to know about it so we can fix it). Note that
+ the 2.6 kernel can be trimmed down considerably with the aid of Matt
+ Mackall's -tiny work (http://www.selenic.com/tiny-about/).
+
+ Since busybox consists of a large number of more or less independent
+ applets, portability is a question of which features work where. Some
+ busybox applets (such as cat and rm) are highly portable and likely to work
+ just about anywhere, while others (such as insmod and losetup) are only
+ likely to work under fairly recent Linux kernels with recent C libraries.
+
+ Earlier versions of Linux and glibc may or may not work, for any given
+ configuration. Linux 2.2 or earlier should mostly work, but this is no
+ longer regularly tested and inherently won't support certain features (such
+ as long files and --bind mounts). The same is true for glibc 2.0 and 2.1,
+ expect a higher testing and debugging burden using such old infrastructure.
+ (The busybox developers are not very interested in supporting these older
+ versions, but can probably be talked into accepting small patches to fix
+ simple problems.)
+
+ Some environments are not recommended. Early versions of uClibc were buggy
+ and missing many features: upgrade. Linking against libc5 or dietlibc is
+ not supported and not interesting to the busybox developers. (The first is
+ obsolete and has no known size or feature advantages over uClibc, the second
+ has known bugs that its developers have actively refused to fix.) Ancient
+ Linux kernels (2.0.x and earlier) are similarly uninteresting.
+
+ In theory it's possible to use Busybox under other operating systems (such as
+ MacOS X, Solaris, Cygwin, or the BSD Fork Du Jour). This generally involves
+ a different kernel and a different C library at the same time. While it
+ should be possible to port the majority of the code to work in one of
+ these environments, don't be suprised if it doesn't work out of the box. If
+ you're into that sort of thing, start small (selecting just a few applets)
+ and work your way up.
+
+ Shaun Jackman has recently (2005) ported busybox to a combination of newlib
+ and libgloss, and some of his patches have been integrated. This platform
+ may join glibc/uclibc and Linux as a supported combination with the 1.1
+ release, but is not supported in 1.0.
+
+Supported hardware:
+
+ BusyBox in general will build on any architecture supported by gcc. We
+ support both 32 and 64 bit platforms, and both big and little endian
+ systems.
+
+ Under 2.4 Linux kernels, kernel module loading was implemented in a
+ platform-specific manner. Busybox's insmod utility has been reported to
+ work under ARM, CRIS, H8/300, x86, ia64, x86_64, m68k, MIPS, PowerPC, S390,
+ SH3/4/5, Sparc, v850e, and x86_64. Anything else probably won't work.
+
+ The module loading mechanism for the 2.6 kernel is much more generic, and
+ we believe 2.6.x kernel module loading support should work on all
+ architectures supported by the kernel.
----------------
-Please feed suggestions, bug reports, insults, and bribes back to:
+Please feed suggestions, bug reports, insults, and bribes back to the busybox
+maintainer:
Erik Andersen
<andersen@codepoet.org>
-
projects / oweals / busybox.git / commitdiff