From: Mike Frysinger If you just want to try out busybox without installing it, download the
- tarball, extract it, run "make defconfig", and then run "make".
-
- This will create a busybox binary with almost all features enabled. To try
- out a busybox applet, type "./busybox [appletname] [options]", for
- example "./busybox ls -l" or "./busybox cat LICENSE". Type "./busybox"
- to see a command list, and "busybox appletname --help" to see a brief
- usage message for a given applet.
-
- BusyBox uses the name it was invoked under to determine which applet is
- being invoked. (Try "mv busybox ls" and then "./ls -l".) Installing
- busybox consists of creating symlinks (or hardlinks) to the busybox
- binary for each applet in busybox, and making sure these links are in
- the shell's command $PATH. The special applet name "busybox" (or with
- any optional suffix, such as "busybox-static") uses the first argument
- to determine which applet to run, as shown above.
-
- BusyBox also has a feature called the
- "standalone shell", where the busybox
- shell runs any built-in applets before checking the command path. This
- feature is also enabled by "make allyesconfig", and to try it out run
- the command line "PATH= ./busybox ash". This will blank your command path
- and run busybox as your command shell, so the only commands it can find
- (without an explicit path such as /bin/ls) are the built-in busybox ones.
- This is another good way to see what's built into busybox.
- Note that the standalone shell requires CONFIG_BUSYBOX_EXEC_PATH
- to be set appropriately, depending on whether or not /proc/self/exe is
- available or not. If you do not have /proc, then point that config option
- to the location of your busybox binary, usually /bin/busybox.
- (So if you set it to /proc/self/exe, and happen to be able to chroot into
- your rootfs, you must mount /proc beforehand.)
-
- A typical indication that you set CONFIG_BUSYBOX_EXEC_PATH to proc but
- forgot to mount proc is:
- Busybox is configured similarly to the linux kernel. Create a default
- configuration and then run "make menuconfig" to modify it. The end
- result is a .config file that tells the busybox build process what features
- to include. So instead of "./configure; make; make install" the equivalent
- busybox build would be "make defconfig; make; make install".
- Busybox configured with all features enabled is a little under a megabyte
- dynamically linked on x86. To create a smaller busybox, configure it with
- fewer features. Individual busybox applets cost anywhere from a few
- hundred bytes to tens of kilobytes. Disable unneeded applets to save,
- space, using menuconfig.
- The most important busybox configurators are: make defconfig - Create the maximum "sane" configuration. This
-enables almost all features, minus things like debugging options and features
-that require changes to the rest of the system to work (such as selinux or
-devfs device names). Use this if you want to start from a full-featured
-busybox and remove features until it's small enough. make allnoconfig - Disable everything. This creates a tiny version
-of busybox that doesn't do anything. Start here if you know exactly what
-you want and would like to select only those features. make menuconfig - Interactively modify a .config file through a
-multi-level menu interface. Use this after one of the previous two. Some other configuration options are: make oldconfig - Update an old .config file for a newer version
-of busybox. make allyesconfig - Select absolutely everything. This creates
-a statically linked version of busybox full of debug code, with dependencies on
-selinux, using devfs names... This makes sure everything compiles. Whether
-or not the result would do anything useful is an open question. make allbareconfig - Select all applets but disable all sub-features
-within each applet. More build coverage testing. make randconfig - Create a random configuration for test purposes. Menuconfig modifies your .config file through an interactive menu where you can enable or disable
- busybox features, and get help about each feature.
-
-
- To build a smaller busybox binary, run "make menuconfig" and disable the
- features you don't need. (Or run "make allnoconfig" and then use
- menuconfig to add just the features you need. Don't forget to recompile
- with "make" once you've finished configuring.)
-
- To build busybox with a cross-compiler, specify CROSS_COMPILE=<prefix>.
-
- CROSS_COMPILE specifies the prefix used for all executables used
- during compilation. Only gcc and related binutils executables
- are prefixed with $(CROSS_COMPILE) in the makefiles.
- CROSS_COMPILE can be set on the command line:
-
- Alternatively CROSS_COMPILE can be set in the environment.
- Default value for CROSS_COMPILE is not to prefix executables.
-
- To store the cross-compiler in your .config, set the variable
- CONFIG_CROSS_COMPILER_PREFIX accordingly in menuconfig or by
- editing the .config file.
-
- BusyBox is a package that replaces a dozen standard packages, but it is
- not by itself a complete bootable system. Building an entire Linux
- distribution from source is a bit beyond the scope of this FAQ, but it
- understandably keeps cropping up on the mailing list, so here are some
- pointers.
-
- Start by learning how to strip a working system down to the bare essentials
- needed to run one or two commands, so you know what it is you actually
- need. An excellent practical place to do
- this is the Linux
- BootDisk Howto, or for a more theoretical approach try
- From
- PowerUp to Bash Prompt.
-
- To learn how to build a working Linux system entirely from source code,
- the place to go is the Linux
- From Scratch project. They have an entire book of step-by-step
- instructions you can
- read online
- or
- download.
- Be sure to check out the other sections of their main page, including
- Beyond Linux From Scratch, Hardened Linux From Scratch, their Hints
- directory, and their LiveCD project. (They also have mailing lists which
- are better sources of answers to Linux-system building questions than
- the busybox list.)
-
- If you want an automated yet customizable system builder which produces
- a BusyBox and uClibc based system, try
- buildroot, which is
- another project by the maintainer of the uClibc (Erik Andersen).
- Download the tarball, extract it, unset CC, make.
- For more instructions, see the website.
-
- Full functionality requires Linux 2.4.x or better. (Earlier versions may
- still work, but are no longer regularly tested.) 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).
-
- BusyBox in general will build on any architecture supported by gcc.
- Kernel module loading for 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.
-
- With 2.6.x kernels, module loading support should work on all architectures.
-
- On Linux, BusyBox releases are tested against uClibc (0.9.27 or later) and
- glibc (2.2 or later). Both should provide full functionality with busybox,
- and if you find a bug we want to hear about it.
-
- Linux-libc5 is no longer maintained (and has no known advantages over
- uClibc), dietlibc is known to have numerous unfixed bugs, and klibc is
- missing too many features to build BusyBox. If you require a small C
- library for Linux, the busybox developers recommend uClibc.
-
- Some BusyBox applets have been built and run under a combination
- of newlib and libgloss (see
- this thread).
- This is still experimental, but may be supported in a future release.
-
- Yes. As long as you fully comply
- with the generous terms of the GPL BusyBox license you can ship BusyBox
- as part of the software on your device.
-
- we maintain such a list on this site!
-
- You have not paid us a single cent and yet you still have the product of
- many years of our work. We are not your slaves! We work on BusyBox
- because we find it useful and interesting. If you go off flaming us, we
- will ignore you.
-
-
- If you find that you need help with BusyBox, you can ask for help on the
- BusyBox mailing list at busybox@busybox.net. In addition to the mailing list, Erik Andersen (andersee), Manuel Nova
- (mjn3), Rob Landley (landley), Mike Frysinger (SpanKY),
- Bernhard Reutner-Fischer (blindvt), and other long-time BusyBox developers
- are known to hang out on the uClibc IRC channel: #uclibc on
- irc.freenode.net. There is a
- web archive of
- daily logs of the #uclibc IRC channel going back to 2002.
-
- Please do not send private email to Rob, Erik, Manuel, or the other
- BusyBox contributors asking for private help unless you are planning on
- paying for consulting services.
-
- When we answer questions on the BusyBox mailing list, it helps everyone
- since people with similar problems in the future will be able to get help
- by searching the mailing list archives. Private help is reserved as a paid
- service. If you need to use private communication, or if you are serious
- about getting timely assistance with BusyBox, you should seriously consider
- paying for consulting services.
-
- Yes we are. The easy way to sponsor a new feature is to post an offer on
- the mailing list to see who's interested. You can also email the project's
- maintainer and ask them to recommend someone.
-
- If you simply need help with using or configuring BusyBox, please submit a
- detailed description of your problem to the BusyBox mailing list at busybox@busybox.net.
- Please do not send email to individual developers asking
- for private help unless you are planning on paying for consulting services.
- When we answer questions on the BusyBox mailing list, it helps everyone,
- while private answers help only you...
-
- Bug reports and new feature patches sometimes get lost when posted to the
- mailing list, because the developers of BusyBox are busy people and have
- only so much they can keep in their brains at a time. You can post a
- polite reminder after 2-3 days without offending anybody. If that doesn't
- result in a solution, please use the
- BusyBox Bug
- and Patch Tracking System to submit a detailed explanation and we'll
- get to it as soon as we can.
-
- Note that bugs entered into the bug system without being mentioned on the
- mailing list first may languish there for months before anyone even notices
- them. We generally go through the bug system when preparing for new
- development releases, to see what fell through the cracks while we were
- off writing new features. (It's a fast/unreliable vs slow/reliable thing.
- Saves retransits, but the latency sucks.)
- Variants of this one get asked a lot. The purpose of the BusyBox mailing list is to develop and improve BusyBox,
-and we're happy to respond to our users' needs. But if you're coming to the
-list for free tech support we're going to ask you to upgrade to a current
-version before we try to diagnose your problem. If you're building BusyBox 0.50 with uClibc 0.9.19 and gcc 1.27 there's a
-fairly large chance that whatever problem you're seeing has already been fixed.
-To get that fix, all you have to do is upgrade to a newer version. If you
-don't at least _try_ that, you're wasting our time. The volunteers are happy to fix any bugs you point out in the current
-versions because doing so helps everybody and makes the project better. We
-want to make the current version work for you. But diagnosing, debugging, and
-backporting fixes to old versions isn't something we do for free, because it
-doesn't help anybody but you. The cost of volunteer tech support is using a
-reasonably current version of the project. If you don't want to upgrade, you have the complete source code and thus
-the ability to fix it yourself, or hire a consultant to do it for you. If you
-got your version from a vendor who still supports the older version, they can
-help you. But there are limits as to what the volunteers will feel obliged to
-do for you. As a rule of thumb, volunteers will generally answer polite questions about
-a given version for about three years after its release before it's so old
-we don't remember the answer off the top of our head. And if you want us to
-put any _effort_ into tracking it down, we want you to put in a little effort
-of your own by confirming it's still a problem with the current version. It's
-also hard for us to fix a problem of yours if we can't reproduce it because
-we don't have any systems running an environment that old. A consultant will happily set up a special environment just to reproduce
-your problem, and you can always ask on the list if any of the developers
-have consulting rates.
- Init is the first program that runs, so it might be that no programs are
- working on your new system because of a problem with your cross-compiler,
- kernel, console settings, shared libraries, root filesystem... To rule all
- that out, first build a statically linked version of the following "hello
- world" program with your cross compiler toolchain:
-
- Now try to boot your device with an "init=" argument pointing to your
- hello world program. Did you see the hello world message? Until you
- do, don't bother messing with busybox init.
-
- Once you've got it working statically linked, try getting it to work
- dynamically linked. Then read the FAQ entry How
- do I build a BusyBox-based system?, and the
- documentation for BusyBox
- init.
-
- Configuring Busybox depends on a recent version of sed. Older
- distributions (Red Hat 7.2, Debian 3.0) may not come with a
- usable version. Luckily BusyBox can use its own sed to configure itself,
- although this leads to a bit of a chicken and egg problem.
- You can work around this by hand-configuring busybox to build with just
- sed, then putting that sed in your path to configure the rest of busybox
- with, like so:
- Then you can run "make defconfig" or "make menuconfig" normally.
- Job control will be turned off since your shell can not obtain a controlling
- terminal. This typically happens when you run your shell on /dev/console.
- The kernel will not provide a controlling terminal on the /dev/console
- device. Your should run your shell on a normal tty such as tty1 or ttyS0
- and everything will work perfectly. If you REALLY want your shell
- to run on /dev/console, then you can hack your kernel (if you are into that
- sortof thing) by changing drivers/char/tty_io.c to change the lines where
- it sets "noctty = 1;" to instead set it to "0". I recommend you instead
- run your shell on a real console...
- Busybox has nothing to do with the timezone. Please consult your libc
-documentation. (http://google.com/search?q=uclibc+glibc+timezone). Busybox aims to be the smallest and simplest correct implementation of the
-standard Linux command line tools. First and foremost, this means the
-smallest executable size we can manage. We also want to have the simplest
-and cleanest implementation we can manage, be standards
-compliant, minimize run-time memory usage (heap and stack), run fast, and
-take over the world. Busybox is like a swiss army knife: one thing with many functions.
-The busybox executable can act like many different programs depending on
-the name used to invoke it. Normal practice is to create a bunch of symlinks
-pointing to the busybox binary, each of which triggers a different busybox
-function. (See getting started in the
-FAQ for more information on usage, and the
-busybox documentation for a list of symlink names and what they do.)
-
- The "one binary to rule them all" approach is primarily for size reasons: a
-single multi-purpose executable is smaller then many small files could be.
-This way busybox only has one set of ELF headers, it can easily share code
-between different apps even when statically linked, it has better packing
-efficiency by avoding gaps between files or compression dictionary resets,
-and so on. Work is underway on new options such as "make standalone" to build separate
-binaries for each applet, and a "libbb.so" to make the busybox common code
-available as a shared library. Neither is ready yet at the time of this
-writing. The directory "applets" contains the busybox startup code (applets.c and
-busybox.c), and several subdirectories containing the code for the individual
-applets. Busybox execution starts with the main() function in applets/busybox.c,
-which sets the global variable applet_name to argv[0] and calls
-run_applet_and_exit() in applets/applets.c. That uses the applets[] array
-(defined in include/busybox.h and filled out in include/applets.h) to
-transfer control to the appropriate APPLET_main() function (such as
-cat_main() or sed_main()). The individual applet takes it from there. This is why calling busybox under a different name triggers different
-functionality: main() looks up argv[0] in applets[] to get a function pointer
-to APPLET_main(). Busybox applets may also be invoked through the multiplexor applet
-"busybox" (see busybox_main() in libbb/appletlib.c), and through the
-standalone shell (grep for STANDALONE_SHELL in applets/shell/*.c).
-See getting started in the
-FAQ for more information on these alternate usage mechanisms, which are
-just different ways to reach the relevant APPLET_main() function. The applet subdirectories (archival, console-tools, coreutils,
-debianutils, e2fsprogs, editors, findutils, init, loginutils, miscutils,
-modutils, networking, procps, shell, sysklogd, and util-linux) correspond
-to the configuration sub-menus in menuconfig. Each subdirectory contains the
-code to implement the applets in that sub-menu, as well as a Config.in
-file defining that configuration sub-menu (with dependencies and help text
-for each applet), and the makefile segment (Makefile.in) for that
-subdirectory. The run-time --help is stored in usage_messages[], which is initialized at
-the start of applets/applets.c and gets its help text from usage.h. During the
-build this help text is also used to generate the BusyBox documentation (in
-html, txt, and man page formats) in the docs directory. See
-adding an applet to busybox for more
-information. Most non-setup code shared between busybox applets lives in the libbb
-directory. It's a mess that evolved over the years without much auditing
-or cleanup. For anybody looking for a great project to break into busybox
-development with, documenting libbb would be both incredibly useful and good
-experience. Common themes in libbb include allocation functions that test
-for failure and abort the program with an error message so the caller doesn't
-have to test the return value (xmalloc(), xstrdup(), etc), wrapped versions
-of open(), close(), read(), and write() that test for their own failures
-and/or retry automatically, linked list management functions (llist.c),
-command line argument parsing (getopt32.c), and a whole lot more.
- To conserve bytes it's good to know where they're being used, and the
- size of the final executable isn't always a reliable indicator of
- the size of the components (since various structures are rounded up,
- so a small change may not even be visible by itself, but many small
- savings add up).
- The busybox Makefile builds two versions of busybox, one of which
- (busybox_unstripped) has extra information that various analysis tools
- can use. (This has nothing to do with CONFIG_DEBUG, leave that off
- when trying to optimize for size.)
- The "make bloatcheck" option uses Matt Mackall's bloat-o-meter
- script to compare two versions of busybox (busybox_unstripped vs
- busybox_old), and report which symbols changed size and by how much.
- To use it, first build a base version with "make baseline".
- (This creates busybox_old, which should have the original sizes for
- comparison purposes.) Then build the new version with your changes
- and run "make bloatcheck" to see the size differences from the old
- version.
-
- The first line of output has totals: how many symbols were added or
- removed, how many symbols grew or shrank, the number of bytes added
- and number of bytes removed by these changes, and finally the total
- number of bytes difference between the two files. The remaining
- lines show each individual symbol, the old and new sizes, and the
- increase or decrease in size (which results are sorted by).
-
- The "make sizes" option produces raw symbol size information for
- busybox_unstripped. This is the output from the "nm --size-sort"
- command (see "man nm" for more information), and is the information
- bloat-o-meter parses to produce the comparison report above. For
- defconfig, this is a good way to find the largest symbols in the tree
- (which is a good place to start when trying to shrink the code). To
- take a closer look at individual applets, configure busybox with just
- one applet (run "make allnoconfig" and then switch on a single applet
- with menuconfig), and then use "make sizes" to see the size of that
- applet's components.
-
- The "showasm" command (in the scripts directory) produces an assembly
- dump of a function, providing a closer look at what changed. Try
- "scripts/showasm busybox_unstripped" to list available symbols, and
- "scripts/showasm busybox_unstripped symbolname" to see the assembly
- for a sepecific symbol.
- To add a new applet to busybox, first pick a name for the applet and
-a corresponding CONFIG_NAME. Then do this: The standard we're paying attention to is the "Shell and Utilities"
-portion of the Open
-Group Base Standards (also known as the Single Unix Specification version
-3 or SUSv3). Note that paying attention isn't necessarily the same thing as
-following it. SUSv3 doesn't even mention things like init, mount, tar, or losetup, nor
-commonly used options like echo's '-e' and '-n', or sed's '-i'. Busybox is
-driven by what real users actually need, not the fact the standard believes
-we should implement ed or sccs. For size reasons, we're unlikely to include
-much internationalization support beyond UTF-8, and on top of all that, our
-configuration menu lets developers chop out features to produce smaller but
-very non-standard utilities. Also, Busybox is aimed primarily at Linux. Unix standards are interesting
-because Linux tries to adhere to them, but portability to dozens of platforms
-is only interesting in terms of offering a restricted feature set that works
-everywhere, not growing dozens of platform-specific extensions. Busybox
-should be portable to all hardware platforms Linux supports, and any other
-similar operating systems that are easy to do and won't require much
-maintenance. In practice, standards compliance tends to be a clean-up step once an
-applet is otherwise finished. When polishing and testing a busybox applet,
-we ensure we have at least the option of full standards compliance, or else
-document where we (intentionally) fall short. Busybox is a Linux project, but that doesn't mean we don't have to worry
-about portability. First of all, there are different hardware platforms,
-different C library implementations, different versions of the kernel and
-build toolchain... The file "include/platform.h" exists to centralize and
-encapsulate various platform-specific things in one place, so most busybox
-code doesn't have to care where it's running. To start with, Linux runs on dozens of hardware platforms. We try to test
-each release on x86, x86-64, arm, power pc, and mips. (Since qemu can handle
-all of these, this isn't that hard.) This means we have to care about a number
-of portability issues like endianness, word size, and alignment, all of which
-belong in platform.h. That header handles conditional #includes and gives
-us macros we can use in the rest of our code. At some point in the future
-we might grow a platform.c, possibly even a platform subdirectory. As long
-as the applets themselves don't have to care. On a related note, we made the "default signedness of char varies" problem
-go away by feeding the compiler -funsigned-char. This gives us consistent
-behavior on all platforms, and defaults to 8-bit clean text processing (which
-gets us halfway to UTF-8 support). NOMMU support is less easily separated
-(see the tips section later in this document), but we're working on it. Another type of portability is build environments: we unapologetically use
-a number of gcc and glibc extensions (as does the Linux kernel), but these have
-been picked up by packages like uClibc, TCC, and Intel's C Compiler. As for
-gcc, we take advantage of newer compiler optimizations to get the smallest
-possible size, but we also regression test against an older build environment
-using the Red Hat 9 image at "http://busybox.net/downloads/qemu". This has a
-2.4 kernel, gcc 3.2, make 3.79.1, and glibc 2.3, and is the oldest
-build/deployment environment we still put any effort into maintaining. (If
-anyone takes an interest in older kernels you're welcome to submit patches,
-but the effort would probably be better spent
-trimming
-down the 2.6 kernel.) Older gcc versions than that are uninteresting since
-we now use c99 features, although
-tcc might be worth a
-look. We also test busybox against the current release of uClibc. Older versions
-of uClibc aren't very interesting (they were buggy, and uClibc wasn't really
-usable as a general-purpose C library before version 0.9.26 anyway). Other unix implementations are mostly uninteresting, since Linux binaries
-have become the new standard for portable Unix programs. Specifically,
-the ubiquity of Linux was cited as the main reason the Intel Binary
-Compatability Standard 2 died, by the standards group organized to name a
-successor to ibcs2: the 86open
-project. That project disbanded in 1999 with the endorsement of an
-existing standard: Linux ELF binaries. Since then, the major players at the
-time (such as AIX, Solaris, and
-FreeBSD)
-have all either grown Linux support or folded. The major exceptions are newcomer MacOS X, some embedded environments
-(such as newlib+libgloss) which provide a posix environment but not a full
-Linux environment, and environments like Cygwin that provide only partial Linux
-emulation. Also, some embedded Linux systems run a Linux kernel but amputate
-things like the /proc directory to save space. Supporting these systems is largely a question of providing a clean subset
-of BusyBox's functionality -- whichever applets can easily be made to
-work in that environment. Annotating the configuration system to
-indicate which applets require which prerequisites (such as procfs) is
-also welcome. Other efforts to support these systems (swapping #include
-files to build in different environments, adding adapter code to platform.h,
-adding more extensive special-case supporting infrastructure such as mount's
-legacy mtab support) are handled on a case-by-case basis. Support that can be
-cleanly hidden in platform.h is reasonably attractive, and failing that
-support that can be cleanly separated into a separate conditionally compiled
-file is at least worth a look. Special-case code in the body of an applet is
-something we're trying to avoid. Various things busybox uses that aren't particularly well documented
-elsewhere. Password fields in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow are in a special format.
-If the first character isn't '$', then it's an old DES style password. If
-the first character is '$' then the password is actually three fields
-separated by '$' characters: The "type" indicates which encryption algorithm to use: 1 for MD5 and 2 for SHA1. The "salt" is a bunch of ramdom characters (generally 8) the encryption
-algorithm uses to perturb the password in a known and reproducible way (such
-as by appending the random data to the unencrypted password, or combining
-them with exclusive or). Salt is randomly generated when setting a password,
-and then the same salt value is re-used when checking the password. (Salt is
-thus stored unencrypted.) The advantage of using salt is that the same cleartext password encrypted
-with a different salt value produces a different encrypted value.
-If each encrypted password uses a different salt value, an attacker is forced
-to do the cryptographic math all over again for each password they want to
-check. Without salt, they could simply produce a big dictionary of commonly
-used passwords ahead of time, and look up each password in a stolen password
-file to see if it's a known value. (Even if there are billions of possible
-passwords in the dictionary, checking each one is just a binary search against
-a file only a few gigabytes long.) With salt they can't even tell if two
-different users share the same password without guessing what that password
-is and decrypting it. They also can't precompute the attack dictionary for
-a specific password until they know what the salt value is. The third field is the encrypted password (plus the salt). For md5 this
-is 22 bytes. The busybox function to handle all this is pw_encrypt(clear, salt) in
-"libbb/pw_encrypt.c". The first argument is the clear text password to be
-encrypted, and the second is a string in "$type$salt$password" format, from
-which the "type" and "salt" fields will be extracted to produce an encrypted
-value. (Only the first two fields are needed, the third $ is equivalent to
-the end of the string.) The return value is an encrypted password in
-/etc/passwd format, with all three $ separated fields. It's stored in
-a static buffer, 128 bytes long. So when checking an existing password, if pw_encrypt(text,
-old_encrypted_password) returns a string that compares identical to
-old_encrypted_password, you've got the right password. When setting a new
-password, generate a random 8 character salt string, put it in the right
-format with sprintf(buffer, "$%c$%s", type, salt), and feed buffer as the
-second argument to pw_encrypt(text,buffer). On systems that haven't got a Memory Management Unit, fork() is unreasonably
-expensive to implement (and sometimes even impossible), so a less capable
-function called vfork() is used instead. (Using vfork() on a system with an
-MMU is like pounding a nail with a wrench. Not the best tool for the job, but
-it works.) Busybox hides the difference between fork() and vfork() in
-libbb/bb_fork_exec.c. If you ever want to fork and exec, use bb_fork_exec()
-(which returns a pid and takes the same arguments as execve(), although in
-this case envp can be NULL) and don't worry about it. This description is
-here in case you want to know why that does what it does. Implementing fork() depends on having a Memory Management Unit. With an
-MMU then you can simply set up a second set of page tables and share the
-physical memory via copy-on-write. So a fork() followed quickly by exec()
-only copies a few pages of the parent's memory, just the ones it changes
-before freeing them. With a very primitive MMU (using a base pointer plus length instead of page
-tables, which can provide virtual addresses and protect processes from each
-other, but no copy on write) you can still implement fork. But it's
-unreasonably expensive, because you have to copy all the parent process'
-memory into the new process (which could easily be several megabytes per fork).
-And you have to do this even though that memory gets freed again as soon as the
-exec happens. (This is not just slow and a waste of space but causes memory
-usage spikes that can easily cause the system to run out of memory.) Without even a primitive MMU, you have no virtual addresses. Every process
-can reach out and touch any other process' memory, because all pointers are to
-physical addresses with no protection. Even if you copy a process' memory to
-new physical addresses, all of its pointers point to the old objects in the
-old process. (Searching through the new copy's memory for pointers and
-redirect them to the new locations is not an easy problem.) So with a primitive or missing MMU, fork() is just not a good idea. In theory, vfork() is just a fork() that writeably shares the heap and stack
-rather than copying it (so what one process writes the other one sees). In
-practice, vfork() has to suspend the parent process until the child does exec,
-at which point the parent wakes up and resumes by returning from the call to
-vfork(). All modern kernel/libc combinations implement vfork() to put the
-parent to sleep until the child does its exec. There's just no other way to
-make it work: the parent has to know the child has done its exec() or exit()
-before it's safe to return from the function it's in, so it has to block
-until that happens. In fact without suspending the parent there's no way to
-even store separate copies of the return value (the pid) from the vfork() call
-itself: both assignments write into the same memory location. One way to understand (and in fact implement) vfork() is this: imagine
-the parent does a setjmp and then continues on (pretending to be the child)
-until the exec() comes around, then the _exec_ does the actual fork, and the
-parent does a longjmp back to the original vfork call and continues on from
-there. (It thus becomes obvious why the child can't return, or modify
-local variables it doesn't want the parent to see changed when it resumes.)
-
- Note a common mistake: the need for vfork doesn't mean you can't have two
-processes running at the same time. It means you can't have two processes
-sharing the same memory without stomping all over each other. As soon as
-the child calls exec(), the parent resumes. If the child's attempt to call exec() fails, the child should call _exit()
-rather than a normal exit(). This avoids any atexit() code that might confuse
-the parent. (The parent should never call _exit(), only a vforked child that
-failed to exec.) (Now in theory, a nommu system could just copy the _stack_ when it forks
-(which presumably is much shorter than the heap), and leave the heap shared.
-Even with no MMU at all
-In practice, you've just wound up in a multi-threaded situation and you can't
-do a malloc() or free() on your heap without freeing the other process' memory
-(and if you don't have the proper locking for being threaded, corrupting the
-heap if both of you try to do it at the same time and wind up stomping on
-each other while traversing the free memory lists). The thing about vfork is
-that it's a big red flag warning "there be dragons here" rather than
-something subtle and thus even more dangerous.) Busybox has special functions, bb_full_read() and bb_full_write(), to
-check that all the data we asked for got read or written. Is this a real
-world consideration? Try the following: If tee is implemented with bb_full_read(), tee doesn't display output
-in real time but blocks until its entire input buffer (generally a couple
-kilobytes) is read, then displays it all at once. In that case, we _want_
-the short read, for user interface reasons. (Note that read() should never
-return 0 unless it has hit the end of input, and an attempt to write 0
-bytes should be ignored by the OS.) As for short writes, play around with two processes piping data to each
-other on the command line (cat bigfile | gzip > out.gz) and suspend and
-resume a few times (ctrl-z to suspend, "fg" to resume). The writer can
-experience short writes, which are especially dangerous because if you don't
-notice them you'll discard data. They can also happen when a system is under
-load and a fast process is piping to a slower one. (Such as an xterm waiting
-on x11 when the scheduler decides X is being a CPU hog with all that
-text console scrolling...) So will data always be read from the far end of a pipe at the
-same chunk sizes it was written in? Nope. Don't rely on that. For one
-counterexample, see rfc 896
-for Nagle's algorithm, which waits a fraction of a second or so before
-sending out small amounts of data through a TCP/IP connection in case more
-data comes in that can be merged into the same packet. (In case you were
-wondering why action games that use TCP/IP set TCP_NODELAY to lower the latency
-on their their sockets, now you know.) The downside of standard dynamic linking is that it results in self-modifying
-code. Although each executable's pages are mmaped() into a process' address
-space from the executable file and are thus naturally shared between processes
-out of the page cache, the library loader (ld-linux.so.2 or ld-uClibc.so.0)
-writes to these pages to supply addresses for relocatable symbols. This
-dirties the pages, triggering copy-on-write allocation of new memory for each
-processes' dirtied pages. One solution to this is Position Independent Code (PIC), a way of linking
-a file so all the relocations are grouped together. This dirties fewer
-pages (often just a single page) for each process' relocations. The down
-side is this results in larger executables, which take up more space on disk
-(and a correspondingly larger space in memory). But when many copies of the
-same program are running, PIC dynamic linking trades a larger disk footprint
-for a smaller memory footprint, by sharing more pages. A third solution is static linking. A statically linked program has no
-relocations, and thus the entire executable is shared between all running
-instances. This tends to have a significantly larger disk footprint, but
-on a system with only one or two executables, shared libraries aren't much
-of a win anyway. You can tell the glibc linker to display debugging information about its
-relocations with the environment variable "LD_DEBUG". Try
-"LD_DEBUG=help /bin/true" for a list of commands. Learning to interpret
-"LD_DEBUG=statistics cat /proc/self/statm" could be interesting. For more on this topic, here's Rich Felker: Dynamic linking (without fixed load addresses) fundamentally requires
-at least one dirty page per dso that uses symbols. Making calls (but
-never taking the address explicitly) to functions within the same dso
-does not require a dirty page by itself, but will with ELF unless you
-use -Bsymbolic or hidden symbols when linking. ELF uses significant additional stack space for the kernel to pass all
-the ELF data structures to the newly created process image. These are
-located above the argument list and environment. This normally adds 1
-dirty page to the process size. The ELF dynamic linker has its own data segment, adding one or more
-dirty pages. I believe it also performs relocations on itself. The ELF dynamic linker makes significant dynamic allocations to manage
-the global symbol table and the loaded dso's. This data is never
-freed. It will be needed again if libdl is used, so unconditionally
-freeing it is not possible, but normal programs do not use libdl. Of
-course with glibc all programs use libdl (due to nsswitch) so the
-issue was never addressed. ELF also has the issue that segments are not page-aligned on disk.
-This saves up to 4k on disk, but at the expense of using an additional
-dirty page in most cases, due to a large portion of the first data
-page being filled with a duplicate copy of the last text page. The above is just a partial list of the tiny memory penalties of ELF
-dynamic linking, which eventually add up to quite a bit. The smallest
-I've been able to get a process down to is 8 dirty pages, and the
-above factors seem to mostly account for it (but some were difficult
-to measure). The "linux" or "asm" directories of /usr/include
-contain Linux kernel
-headers, so that the C library can talk directly to the Linux kernel. In
-a perfect world, applications shouldn't include these headers directly, but
-we don't live in a perfect world. For example, Busybox's losetup code wants linux/loop.c because nothing else
-#defines the structures to call the kernel's loopback device setup ioctls.
-Attempts to cut and paste the information into a local busybox header file
-proved incredibly painful, because portions of the loop_info structure vary by
-architecture, namely the type __kernel_dev_t has different sizes on alpha,
-arm, x86, and so on. Meaning we either #include <linux/posix_types.h> or
-we hardwire #ifdefs to check what platform we're building on and define this
-type appropriately for every single hardware architecture supported by
-Linux, which is simply unworkable. This is aside from the fact that the relevant type defined in
-posix_types.h was renamed to __kernel_old_dev_t during the 2.5 series, so
-to cut and paste the structure into our header we have to #include
-<linux/version.h> to figure out which name to use. (What we actually
-do is
-check if we're building on 2.6, and if so just use the new 64 bit structure
-instead to avoid the rename entirely.) But we still need the version
-check, since 2.4 didn't have the 64 bit structure. The BusyBox developers spent two years trying to figure
-out a clean way to do all this. There isn't one. The losetup in the
-util-linux package from kernel.org isn't doing it cleanly either, they just
-hide the ugliness by nesting #include files. Their mount/loop.h
-#includes "my_dev_t.h", which #includes <linux/posix_types.h>
-and <linux/version.h> just like we do. There simply is no alternative.
- Just because directly #including kernel headers is sometimes
-unavoidable doesn't me we should include them when there's a better
-way to do it. However, block copying information out of the kernel headers
-is not a better way. The following login accounts currently exist on busybox.net. (I.E. these
-people can commit patches
-into subversion for the BusyBox, uClibc, and buildroot projects.) The following accounts used to exist on busybox.net, but don't anymore so
-I can't ask /etc/passwd for their names. Rob Wentworth
-<robwen at gmail.com> asked Google and recovered the names: BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single
-small executable. It provides replacements for most of the utilities you
-usually find in GNU fileutils, shellutils, 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 provides a fairly complete
-environment for any small or embedded system. 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 some device
-nodes in /dev, a few configuration files in /etc, and a Linux kernel. BusyBox is maintained by
-Denys Vlasenko,
-and licensed under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
-version 2.
-Frequently Asked Questions
-
-This is a collection of some of the more frequently asked questions
-about BusyBox. Some of the questions even have answers. If you
-have additions to this FAQ document, we would love to add them,
-
-General questions
-
-
-
-Troubleshooting
-
-
-
-Misc. questions
-
-
-Programming questions
-
-
-
-
-
-General questions
-
-
-How can I get started using BusyBox?
-
-
-$ /bin/echo $PATH
-/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11
-$ echo $PATH
-/bin/sh: echo: not found
-
-
-
-How do I configure busybox?
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-How do I build BusyBox with a cross-compiler?
-
-
- make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-uclibcgnueabi-
-
-
-How do I build a BusyBox-based system?
-
-
-Which Linux kernel versions are supported?
-
-
-Which architectures does BusyBox run on?
-
-
-Which C libraries are supported?
-
-
-Can I include BusyBox as part of the software on my device?
-
-
-Where can I find other small utilities since busybox
- does not include the features i want?
-
-
-I demand that you to add <favorite feature> right now! How come you don't answer all my questions on the mailing list instantly? I demand that you help me with all of my problems Right Now!
-
-
-I need help with BusyBox! What should I do?
-
-
-I need you to add <favorite feature>! Are the BusyBox developers willing to be paid in order to fix bugs or add in <favorite feature>? Are you willing to provide support contracts?
-
-
-Troubleshooting
-
-
-I think I found a bug in BusyBox! What should I do?
-
-
-I'm using an ancient version from the dawn of time and something's broken. Can you backport fixes for free?
-
-
-Busybox init isn't working!
-
-
-#include <stdio.h>
-
-int main(int argc, char *argv)
-{
- printf("Hello world!\n");
- sleep(999999999);
-}
-
-
-
-I can't configure busybox on my system.
-
-
- tar xvjf sources/busybox-x.x.x.tar.bz2
- cd busybox-x.x.x
- make allnoconfig
- make include/bb_config.h
- echo "CONFIG_SED=y" >> .config
- echo "#undef ENABLE_SED" >> include/bb_config.h
- echo "#define ENABLE_SED 1" >> include/bb_config.h
- make
- mv busybox sed
- export PATH=`pwd`:"$PATH"
-
-
-
-Why do I keep getting "sh: can't access tty; job control turned off" errors? Why doesn't Control-C work within my shell?
-
-
-Misc. questions
-
-
-How do I change the time zone in busybox?
-
-
-Development
-
-
-What are the goals of busybox?
-
-
-What is the design of busybox?
-
-
-The applet directories
-
-
-libbb
-
-
-I want to make busybox even smaller, how do I go about it?
-
-
-Adding an applet to busybox
-
-
-
-
-
-What standards does busybox adhere to?
-
-
-Portability.
-
-
-Programming tips and tricks.
-
-
-Encrypted Passwords
-
-
- $type$salt$encrypted_password
-
-
-
-Fork and vfork
-
-
-Short reads and writes
-
-while true; do echo hello; sleep 1; done | tee out.txt
-
-
-Memory used by relocatable code, PIC, and static linking.
-
-
-
-
-
-Including kernel headers
-
-
-Who are the BusyBox developers?
-
-
-aldot :Bernhard Reutner-Fischer
-andersen :Erik Andersen - uClibc and BuildRoot maintainer.
-bug1 :Glenn McGrath
-davidm :David McCullough
-gkajmowi :Garrett Kajmowicz - uClibc++ maintainer
-jbglaw :Jan-Benedict Glaw
-jocke :Joakim Tjernlund
-landley :Rob Landley
-lethal :Paul Mundt
-mjn3 :Manuel Novoa III
-osuadmin :osuadmin
-pgf :Paul Fox
-pkj :Peter Kjellerstedt
-prpplague :David Anders
-psm :Peter S. Mazinger
-russ :Russ Dill
-sandman :Robert Griebl
-sjhill :Steven J. Hill
-solar :Ned Ludd
-timr :Tim Riker
-tobiasa :Tobias Anderberg
-vapier :Mike Frysinger
-vda :Denys Vlasenko - BusyBox maintainer
-
-
-
-aaronl :Aaron Lehmann
-beppu :John Beppu
-dwhedon :David Whedon
-erik :Erik Andersen
-gfeldman :Gennady Feldman
-jimg :Jim Gleason
-kraai :Matt Kraai
-markw :Mark Whitley
-miles :Miles Bader
-proski :Pavel Roskin
-rjune :Richard June
-tausq :Randolph Chung
-vodz :Vladimir N. Oleynik
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
diff --git a/docs/busybox.net/about.html b/docs/busybox.net/about.html
deleted file mode 100644
index 35809c315..000000000
--- a/docs/busybox.net/about.html
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,24 +0,0 @@
-
-
-BusyBox: The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux
-
-Prerequisites
-
-
-
-If you feel comfortable with the above and have proven to continually -fulfill these requirements, or somebody asks you to apply for write-access -to the repository who itself is maintainer of a project, then please apply -for an account (if needed). -
-Subversion commit access requires an account on Morris. The server -behind busybox.net and uclibc.org. If you want to be able to commit things to -Subversion, first contribute some stuff to show you are serious, can handle -some responsibility, and that your patches don't generally need a lot of -cleanup. Then, very nicely ask one of us -(Denys Vlasenko for primarily BusyBox, or -Bernhard Reutner-Fischer primarily for uClibc) -for an account.
- -If you're approved for an account, you'll need to send an email from your -preferred contact email address with the username you'd like to use when -committing changes to GIT, and attach a public ssh key to access your account -with.
- -If you don't currently have an ssh version 2 DSA key at least 4096 bits -long, you can generate a key using the command -ssh-keygen -b 4096 -t dsa -and hitting enter at the prompts. -This will create the files ~/.ssh/id_dsa and ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub -You must then send the content of 'id_dsa.pub' to me so I can set up your -account. (The content of 'id_dsa' should of course be kept secret, anyone -who has that can access any account that's installed your public key in -its .ssh/authorized_keys file.)
- -Note that if you would prefer to keep your communications with us -private, you can encrypt your email using -Denys' public key or -Bernhard's public key. -
- -Once you are setup with an account, you will need to use your account to -checkout a copy of BusyBox from GIT:
- -git+ssh://username@git.busybox.net/git/busybox busybox.mine
-or
-git+ssh://username@git.uClibc.org/git/uClibc uClibc.tmp
- -You must change username to your own username, or omit -it if it's the same as your local username.
- -You can then enter the newly checked out project directory, make changes, -check your changes, diff your changes, revert your changes, and and commit your -changes using commands such as:
- --git diff -git format-patch -s -git status -git revert- --EDITOR=vi git commit -s -git log -git push -v --thin -git help -
For additional detail on how to use -GIT, please visit the -GIT overview site. -You might also want to read online the manpages -or -tutorial. -
- -A morris account also gives you a personal web page -(http://busybox.net/~username comes from ~/public_html on morris), and of -course a shell prompt you can ssh into (as a regular user, root access is -reserved for folks doing maintenancy stuff only). But keep in mind an -account on Morris is a -priviledge, not a requirement. Most contributors to busybox and uClibc -haven't got one, and accounts are handed out to make the project maintainers' -lives easier, not because "you deserve it".
- - diff --git a/docs/busybox.net/download.html b/docs/busybox.net/download.html deleted file mode 100644 index 34195b6f1..000000000 --- a/docs/busybox.net/download.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,60 +0,0 @@ - - - - --Source for the latest release can always be -downloaded from http://www.busybox.net/downloads/. - -
-Each 1.x branch has bug fix releases after initial 1.x.0 release. -Also there are patches on top of latest bug fix release. -
-Latest releases and patch directories for each branch:
-
-1.10.1,
-patches,
-
-1.9.2,
-patches,
-
-1.8.3,
-patches,
-
-1.7.5,
-patches,
-
-1.6.2,
-patches,
-
-1.5.2,
-patches,
-
-1.4.2,
-patches,
-
-1.3.2,
-patches.
-
-
-You can also obtain Daily Snapshots of -the latest development source tree for those wishing to follow BusyBox development, -but cannot or do not wish to use Subversion (svn). - -
If you found a regression or severe bug in busybox, and you have a patch - for it, and you want to see it added to "hot fixes", please rediff your - patch against corresponding unmodified busybox source and send it to - the mailing list. -
- -
-
-
- Copyright © 1999-2008 Erik Andersen
- - Mail all comments, insults, suggestions and bribes to - - Denys Vlasenko vda.linux@googlemail.com - - - |
-
- - - | - -- - | - -