130 lines
4.6 KiB
Plaintext
130 lines
4.6 KiB
Plaintext
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 fileutils, shellutils, findutils, textutils, grep, gzip,
|
|
tar, etc. BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX environment for any small or
|
|
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 was originally written to support the Debian Rescue/Install disks, but
|
|
it also makes an excellent 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 /dev, /etc, and a kernel.
|
|
|
|
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. Run 'make config' or 'make menuconfig'
|
|
for 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 hardlinks, rather than symlinks, you can use
|
|
'make install-hardlinks' instead.
|
|
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
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, m68k,
|
|
MIPS, and v850e.
|
|
|
|
Supported libcs:
|
|
|
|
glibc-2.0.x, glibc-2.1.x, glibc-2.2.x, glibc-2.3.x, uClibc. People
|
|
are looking at newlib and diet-libc, but consider them unsupported,
|
|
untested, or worse. Linux-libc5 is no longer supported -- you
|
|
should probably use uClibc instead if you want a small C library.
|
|
|
|
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, say, FreeBSD or Solaris, or MacOsX, or even Windows (if you are into that
|
|
sortof thing).
|
|
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
Getting help:
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
Bugs:
|
|
|
|
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@busybox.net
|
|
From: diligent@testing.linux.org
|
|
Subject: /bin/date doesn't work
|
|
|
|
Package: busybox
|
|
Version: 1.00
|
|
|
|
When I execute Busybox 'date' it produces unexpected results.
|
|
With GNU date I get the following output:
|
|
|
|
$ date
|
|
Wed Mar 21 14:19:41 MST 2001
|
|
|
|
But when I use BusyBox date I get this instead:
|
|
|
|
$ date
|
|
llegal instruction
|
|
|
|
I am using Debian unstable, kernel version 2.4.19-rmk1 on an Netwinder,
|
|
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 never be fixed... Thanks for understanding.
|
|
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
FTP:
|
|
|
|
Source for the latest released version, as well as daily snapshots, can always
|
|
be downloaded from
|
|
http://busybox.net/downloads/
|
|
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
CVS:
|
|
|
|
BusyBox now has its own publicly browsable CVS tree at:
|
|
http://busybox.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/
|
|
|
|
Anonymous CVS access is available. For instructions, check out:
|
|
http://busybox.net/cvs_anon.html
|
|
|
|
For those that are actively contributing there is even CVS write access:
|
|
http://busybox.net/cvs_write.html
|
|
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
Please feed suggestions, bug reports, insults, and bribes back to:
|
|
Erik Andersen
|
|
<andersen@codepoet.org>
|
|
<andersen@codepoet.org>
|
|
|