README 8.6 KB

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  1. Please see the LICENSE file for details on copying and usage.
  2. Please refer to the INSTALL file for instructions on how to build.
  3. What is busybox:
  4. BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single
  5. small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the
  6. utilities you usually find in bzip2, coreutils, dhcp, diffutils, e2fsprogs,
  7. file, findutils, gawk, grep, inetutils, less, modutils, net-tools, procps,
  8. sed, shadow, sysklogd, sysvinit, tar, util-linux, and vim. The utilities
  9. in BusyBox often have fewer options than their full-featured cousins;
  10. however, the options that are included provide the expected functionality
  11. and behave very much like their larger counterparts.
  12. BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in
  13. mind, both to produce small binaries and to reduce run-time memory usage.
  14. Busybox is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude
  15. commands (or features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize
  16. embedded systems; to create a working system, just add /dev, /etc, and a
  17. Linux kernel. Busybox (usually together with uClibc) has also been used as
  18. a component of "thin client" desktop systems, live-CD distributions, rescue
  19. disks, installers, and so on.
  20. BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX environment for any small system,
  21. both embedded environments and more full featured systems concerned about
  22. space. Busybox is slowly working towards implementing the full Single Unix
  23. Specification V3 (http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/), but isn't
  24. there yet (and for size reasons will probably support at most UTF-8 for
  25. internationalization). We are also interested in passing the Linux Test
  26. Project (http://ltp.sourceforge.net).
  27. ----------------
  28. Using busybox:
  29. BusyBox is extremely configurable. This allows you to include only the
  30. components and options you need, thereby reducing binary size. Run 'make
  31. config' or 'make menuconfig' to select the functionality that you wish to
  32. enable. (See 'make help' for more commands.)
  33. The behavior of busybox is determined by the name it's called under: as
  34. "cp" it behaves like cp, as "sed" it behaves like sed, and so on. Called
  35. as "busybox" it takes the second argument as the name of the applet to
  36. run (I.E. "./busybox ls -l /proc").
  37. The "standalone shell" mode is an easy way to try out busybox; this is a
  38. command shell that calls the builtin applets without needing them to be
  39. installed in the path. (Note that this requires /proc to be mounted, if
  40. testing from a boot floppy or in a chroot environment.)
  41. The build automatically generates a file "busybox.links", which is used by
  42. 'make install' to create symlinks to the BusyBox binary for all compiled in
  43. commands. This uses the CONFIG_PREFIX environment variable to specify
  44. where to install, and installs hardlinks or symlinks depending
  45. on the configuration preferences. (You can also manually run
  46. the install script at "applets/install.sh").
  47. ----------------
  48. Downloading the current source code:
  49. Source for the latest released version, as well as daily snapshots, can always
  50. be downloaded from
  51. http://busybox.net/downloads/
  52. You can browse the up to the minute source code and change history online.
  53. http://git.busybox.net/busybox/
  54. Anonymous GIT access is available. For instructions, check out:
  55. http://www.busybox.net/source.html
  56. For those that are actively contributing and would like to check files in,
  57. see:
  58. http://busybox.net/developer.html
  59. The developers also have a bug and patch tracking system
  60. (https://bugs.busybox.net) although posting a bug/patch to the mailing list
  61. is generally a faster way of getting it fixed, and the complete archive of
  62. what happened is the git changelog.
  63. Note: if you want to compile busybox in a busybox environment you must
  64. select CONFIG_DESKTOP.
  65. ----------------
  66. Getting help:
  67. when you find you need help, you can check out the busybox mailing list
  68. archives at http://busybox.net/lists/busybox/ or even join
  69. the mailing list if you are interested.
  70. ----------------
  71. Bugs:
  72. if you find bugs, please submit a detailed bug report to the busybox mailing
  73. list at busybox@busybox.net. a well-written bug report should include a
  74. transcript of a shell session that demonstrates the bad behavior and enables
  75. anyone else to duplicate the bug on their own machine. the following is such
  76. an example:
  77. to: busybox@busybox.net
  78. from: diligent@testing.linux.org
  79. subject: /bin/date doesn't work
  80. package: busybox
  81. version: 1.00
  82. when i execute busybox 'date' it produces unexpected results.
  83. with gnu date i get the following output:
  84. $ date
  85. fri oct 8 14:19:41 mdt 2004
  86. but when i use busybox date i get this instead:
  87. $ date
  88. illegal instruction
  89. i am using debian unstable, kernel version 2.4.25-vrs2 on a netwinder,
  90. and the latest uclibc from cvs.
  91. -diligent
  92. note the careful description and use of examples showing not only what
  93. busybox does, but also a counter example showing what an equivalent app
  94. does (or pointing to the text of a relevant standard). Bug reports lacking
  95. such detail may never be fixed... Thanks for understanding.
  96. ----------------
  97. Portability:
  98. Busybox is developed and tested on Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, compiled
  99. with gcc (the unit-at-a-time optimizations in version 3.4 and later are
  100. worth upgrading to get, but older versions should work), and linked against
  101. uClibc (0.9.27 or greater) or glibc (2.2 or greater). In such an
  102. environment, the full set of busybox features should work, and if
  103. anything doesn't we want to know about it so we can fix it.
  104. There are many other environments out there, in which busybox may build
  105. and run just fine. We just don't test them. Since busybox consists of a
  106. large number of more or less independent applets, portability is a question
  107. of which features work where. Some busybox applets (such as cat and rm) are
  108. highly portable and likely to work just about anywhere, while others (such as
  109. insmod and losetup) require recent Linux kernels with recent C libraries.
  110. Earlier versions of Linux and glibc may or may not work, for any given
  111. configuration. Linux 2.2 or earlier should mostly work (there's still
  112. some support code in things like mount.c) but this is no longer regularly
  113. tested, and inherently won't support certain features (such as long files
  114. and --bind mounts). The same is true for glibc 2.0 and 2.1: expect a higher
  115. testing and debugging burden using such old infrastructure. (The busybox
  116. developers are not very interested in supporting these older versions, but
  117. will probably accept small self-contained patches to fix simple problems.)
  118. Some environments are not recommended. Early versions of uClibc were buggy
  119. and missing many features: upgrade. Linking against libc5 or dietlibc is
  120. not supported and not interesting to the busybox developers. (The first is
  121. obsolete and has no known size or feature advantages over uClibc, the second
  122. has known bugs that its developers have actively refused to fix.) Ancient
  123. Linux kernels (2.0.x and earlier) are similarly uninteresting.
  124. In theory it's possible to use Busybox under other operating systems (such as
  125. MacOS X, Solaris, Cygwin, or the BSD Fork Du Jour). This generally involves
  126. a different kernel and a different C library at the same time. While it
  127. should be possible to port the majority of the code to work in one of
  128. these environments, don't be suprised if it doesn't work out of the box. If
  129. you're into that sort of thing, start small (selecting just a few applets)
  130. and work your way up.
  131. In 2005 Shaun Jackman has ported busybox to a combination of newlib
  132. and libgloss, and some of his patches have been integrated.
  133. Supported hardware:
  134. BusyBox in general will build on any architecture supported by gcc. We
  135. support both 32 and 64 bit platforms, and both big and little endian
  136. systems.
  137. Under 2.4 Linux kernels, kernel module loading was implemented in a
  138. platform-specific manner. Busybox's insmod utility has been reported to
  139. work under ARM, CRIS, H8/300, x86, ia64, x86_64, m68k, MIPS, PowerPC, S390,
  140. SH3/4/5, Sparc, v850e, and x86_64. Anything else probably won't work.
  141. The module loading mechanism for the 2.6 kernel is much more generic, and
  142. we believe 2.6.x kernel module loading support should work on all
  143. architectures supported by the kernel.
  144. ----------------
  145. Please feed suggestions, bug reports, insults, and bribes back to the busybox
  146. mailing list:
  147. busybox@busybox.net
  148. and/or maintainer:
  149. Denys Vlasenko
  150. <vda.linux@googlemail.com>