85c3c3f091
supported (it is unmaintained and lacks support for simple things such as stdint.h) and uClibc is a better choice these days anyways.
160 lines
6.1 KiB
Plaintext
160 lines
6.1 KiB
Plaintext
Please see the LICENSE file for details on copying and usage.
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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 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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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, /etc, and a kernel.
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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. Run 'make config' or 'make menuconfig'
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for select the functionality that you wish to enable.
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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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If you wish to install hardlinks, rather than symlinks, you can use
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'make install-hardlinks' instead.
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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, m68k,
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MIPS, and v850e.
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Supported libcs:
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glibc-2.0.x, glibc-2.1.x, glibc-2.2.x, glibc-2.3.x, uClibc. People
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are looking at newlib and diet-libc, but consider them unsupported,
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untested, or worse. Linux-libc5 is no longer supported -- you
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should probably use uClibc instead if you want a small C library.
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Supported kernels:
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Full functionality requires Linux 2.2.x or better. A large fraction of the
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code should run on just about anything. While the current code is fairly
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Linux specific, it should be fairly easy to port the majority of the code
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to, say, FreeBSD or Solaris, or MacOsX, or even Windows (if you are into that
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sortof thing).
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----------------
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Shells:
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lash is the very smallest shell (adds just 10k) and it is quite usable as
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a command prompt, but it is not suitable for any but the most trivial
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scripting (such as an initrd that calls insmod a few times) since it does
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not understand Bourne shell grammer. It does handle pipes, redirects, and
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job control though. Adding in command editing makes it a very nice
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lightweight command prompt.
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hush is also quite small (just 18k) and it has very complete Bourne shell
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grammer. It handles if/then/else/fi just fine, but doesn't handle loops
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like for/do/done or case/esac and such. It also currently has a problem
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with job control. Using hush is not yet recommended.
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msh: The minix shell (adds just 30k) is quite complete and handles things
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like for/do/done, case/esac and all the things you expect a Bourne shell to
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do. It is not always pedantically correct about Bourne shell grammer (try
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running the shell testscript "tests/sh.testcases" on it and compare vs bash)
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but for most things it works quite well. It also uses only vfork, so it can
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be used on uClinux systems. This was only recently added, so there is still
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room to shrink it further...
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ash: This adds about 60k in the default configuration and is the most
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complete and most pedantically correct shell included with busybox. This
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shell was also recently added, and several people (mainly Vladimir and Erik)
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have been working on it. There are a number of configurable things at the
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top of ash.c as well, so check those out if you want to tweak things.
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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://busybox.net/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 detailed bug report to the busybox mailing
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list at busybox@busybox.net. A well-written bug report should include a
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transcript of a shell session that demonstrates the bad behavior and enables
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anyone else to duplicate the bug on their own machine. The following is such
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an example:
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To: busybox@busybox.net
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From: diligent@testing.linux.org
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Subject: /bin/date doesn't work
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Package: busybox
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Version: 1.00
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When I execute Busybox 'date' it produces unexpected results.
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With GNU date I get the following output:
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$ date
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Wed Mar 21 14:19:41 MST 2001
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But when I use BusyBox date I get this instead:
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$ date
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llegal instruction
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I am using Debian unstable, kernel version 2.4.19-rmk1 on an Netwinder,
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and the latest 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 never be fixed... Thanks for understanding.
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----------------
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FTP:
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Source for the latest released version, as well as daily snapshots, can always
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be downloaded from
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http://busybox.net/downloads/
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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://busybox.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/
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Anonymous CVS access is available. For instructions, check out:
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http://busybox.net/cvs_anon.html
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For those that are actively contributing there is even CVS write access:
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http://busybox.net/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@codepoet.org>
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<andersen@codepoet.org>
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