123 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
123 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
Please see the LICENSE file for copyright information.
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BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single
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small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the utilities
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you usually find in fileutils, shellutils, findutils, textutils, grep, gzip,
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tar, etc. BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX environment for any small or
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embedded system. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than
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their full featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are included provide
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the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts.
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BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in mind.
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It is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude commands (or
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features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize your embedded
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systems. To create a working system, just add /dev, a kernel, and an editor,
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such as nano, e3, or elvis-tiny. For a really minimal system, you can even use
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the busybox shell (not Bourne compatible, but very small and quite usable).
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BusyBox was originally written to support the Debian Rescue/Install disks, but
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it also makes an excellent environment for any small or embedded system.
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As of version 0.20 there is now a version number. : ) Also as of version 0.20,
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BusyBox is now modularized to easily allow you to build only the components you
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need, thereby reducing binary size. To turn off unwanted BusyBox components,
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simply edit the file "Config.h" and comment out the components you do not need
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using C++ style (//) comments.
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After the build is complete, a busybox.links file is generated. This is
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used by 'make install' to create symlinks to the busybox binary for all
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compiled in functions. By default, 'make install' will place the symlink
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forest into `pwd`/_install unless you have defined the PREFIX environment
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variable (i.e., 'make PREFIX=/tmp/foo install')
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----------------
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Supported architectures:
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Busybox in general will build on any architecture supported by gcc. It has
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a few specialized features added for __sparc__ and __alpha__. insmod
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functionality is currently limited to x86, ARM, SH3/4, powerpc, and MIPS.
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Supported libcs:
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glibc-2.0.x, glibc-2.1.x, Linux-libc5, uClibc. People are looking at
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newlib and diet-libc, but consider them unsupported, untested, or worse.
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Supported kernels:
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Full functionality requires Linux 2.0.x, 2.2.x, or 2.4.x. A large fraction
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of the code should run on just about anything.
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----------------
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Getting help:
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When you find you need help, you can check out the BusyBox mailing list
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archives at http://opensource.lineo.com/lists/busybox/ or even join
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the mailing list if you are interested.
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----------------
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Bugs:
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If you find bugs, please submit a bug report. Full instructions on how to
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report a bug are found at http://bugs.lineo.com/Reporting.html.
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For the impatient: To submit a bug, simply send an email describing the problem
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to submit@bugs.lineo.com. Bug reports should look something like this:
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To: submit@bugs.lineo.com
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From: diligent@testing.linux.org
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Subject: /bin/true doesn't work
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Package: busybox
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Version: 0.48
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When I invoke '/bin/true' it doesn't work. I expected it to return
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a "0" but it returned a "1" instead. Here is the transcript:
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$ /bin/true ; echo $?
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1
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With GNU /bin/true, I get the following output:
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$ /bin/true ; echo $?
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0
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I am using Debian 2.2r2, kernel version 2.2.18, and the latest
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uClibc from CVS. Thanks for the wonderful program!
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-Diligent
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Note the careful description and use of examples showing not only what BusyBox
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does, but also a counter example showing what an equivalent GNU app does. Bug
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reports lacking such detail may take a _long_ time to be fixed... Thanks for
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understanding.
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----------------
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FTP:
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Source for the latest released version can always be downloaded from
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ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox.
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----------------
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CVS:
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BusyBox now has its own publicly browsable CVS tree at:
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http://opensource.lineo.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/
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Anonymous CVS access is available. For instructions, check out:
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http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_anon.html
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For those that are actively contributing there is even CVS write access:
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http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_write.html
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----------------
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Please feed suggestions, bug reports, insults, and bribes back to:
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Erik Andersen
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<andersen@lineo.com>
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<andersee@debian.org>
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<blatant plug>
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Many thanks to go to Lineo for paying me to work on busybox.
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</blatant plug>
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