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<B>B u s y B o x</B>
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<a href="/"><IMG SRC="images/busybox2.jpg" alt="BusyBox" border="0" width="360" height="230"</a><BR>
<!-- Begin Introduction section -->
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<A NAME="intro"> <BIG><B>
The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux
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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.
<p>
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 a kernel, a shell (such as ash),
and an editor (such as elvis-tiny or ae).
<p>
BusyBox is now maintained by
<a href="http://www.xmission.com/~andersen/erik/erik.html">
Erik Andersen</a>, and its ongoing development is being sponsored by
<a href="http://www.lineo.com/">Lineo</a>.
<p>
BusyBox is licensed under the
<a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE</a>
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<A NAME="download"><BIG><B>
Download
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<ul>
<li> Source for the latest release can always be downloaded from
<a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox">ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox</a>.
</ul>
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<BIG><B>
Latest News</A>
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<ul>
<p> <li> <b>19 April 2000 -- syslogd bugfix</b>
<br>
Turns out that there was still a bug in busybox syslogd.
For example, with the following test app:
<pre>
#include <syslog.h>
int do_log(char* msg, int delay)
{
openlog("testlog", LOG_PID, LOG_DAEMON);
while(1) {
syslog(LOG_ERR, "%s: testing one, two, three\n", msg);
sleep(delay);
}
closelog();
return(0);
};
int main(void)
{
if (fork()==0)
do_log("A", 2);
do_log("B", 3);
}
</pre>
it should be logging stuff from both "A" and "B". As released in 0.43 only stuff
from "A" would have been logged. This means that if init tries to log something
while say ppp has the syslog open, init would block (which is bad, bad, bad).
<p>
Karl M. Hegbloom has created a
<a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/busybox-0.43-syslog_patch">fix for the problem</a>.
Thanks Karl!
<p> <li> <b>18 April 2000 -- BusyBox 0.43 released (finally!)</b>
<br>
I have finally gotten everything into a state where I feel pretty
good about things. This is definitely the most stable, solid release
so far. A lot of bugs have been fixed, and the following new apps
have been added: sh, basename, dirname, killall, uptime,
freeramdisk, tr, echo, test, and usleep. Tar has been completely
rewritten from scratch. Bss size has also been greatly reduced.
More details are available in the
<a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a>.
Oh, and as a special bonus, I wrote some fairly comprehensive
<em>documentation</em>, complete with examples and full usage information.
<p>
Many thanks go out to the fine people that have helped by submitting patches
and bug reports; particularly instrumental in helping for this release were
Karl Hegbloom, Pavel Roskin, Friedrich Vedder, Emanuele Caratti,
Bob Tinsley, Nicolas Pitre, Avery Pennarun, Arne Bernin, John Beppu, and Jim Gleason.
There were others so if I somehow forgot to mention you, I'm very sorry.
<p>
You can grab BusyBox 0.43 tarballs <a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/">here</a>.
<p> <li> <b>9 April 2000 -- BusyBox 0.43 pre release</b>
<br>
Unfortunately, I have not yet finished all the things I want to
do for BusyBox 0.43, so I am posting this pre-release for people
to poke at. This contains my complete rewrite of tar, which now weighs in at
5k (7k with all options turned on) and works for reading and writing
tarballs (which it does correctly for everything I have been able to throw
at it). Tar also (optionally) supports the "--exclude" option (mainly because
the Linux Router Project folks asked for it). This also has a pre-release
of the micro shell I have been writing. This pre-release should be stable
enough for production use -- it just isn't a release since I have some structural
changes I still want to make.
<p>
The pre-release can be found <a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/">here</a>.
Please let me know ASAP if you find <em>any</em> bugs.
<p> <li> <b>28 March 2000 -- Andersen Baby Boy release</b>
<br>
I am pleased to announce that on Tuesday March 28th at 5:48pm, weighing in at 7
lbs. 12 oz, Micah Erik Andersen was born at LDS Hospital here in Salt Lake City.
He was born in the emergency room less then 5 minutes after we arrived -- and
it was such a relief that we even made it to the hospital at all. Despite the
fact that I was driving at an amazingly unlawful speed and honking at everybody
and thinking decidedly unkind thoughts about the people in our way, my wife
(inconsiderate of my feelings and complete lack of medical training) was lying
down in the back seat saying things like "I think I need to start pushing now"
(which she then proceeded to do despite my best encouraging statements to the
contrary).
<p>
Anyway, I'm glad to note that despite the much-faster-than-we-were-expecting
labor, both Shaunalei and our new baby boy are doing wonderfully.
<p>
So now that I am done with my excuse for the slow release cycle...
Progress on the next release of BusyBox has been slow but steady. I expect
to have a release sometime during the first week of April. This release will
include a number of important changes, including the addition of a shell, a
re-write of tar (to accommodate the Linux Router Project), and syslogd can now
accept multiple concurrent connections, fixing lots of unexpected blocking
problems.
<p> <li> <b>11 February 2000 -- BusyBox 0.42 released</b>
<br>
This is the most solid BusyBox release so far. Many, many
bugs have been fixed. See the
<a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a> for details.
Of particular interest, init will now cleanly unmount
filesystems on reboot, cp and mv have been rewritten and
behave much better, and mount and umount no longer leak
loop devices. Many thanks go out to Randolph Chung,
Karl M. Hegbloom, Taketoshi Sano, and Pavel Roskin for
their hard work on this release of BusyBox. Please pound
on it and let me know if you find any bugs.
<p> <li> <b>19 January 2000 -- BusyBox 0.41 released</b>
<br>
This release includes bugfixes to cp, mv, logger, true, false,
mkdir, syslogd, and init. New apps include wc, hostid,
logname, tty, whoami, and yes. New features include loop device
support in mount and umount, and better TERM handling by init.
The changelog can be found <a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/Changelog">here</a>.
<p> <li> <b>7 January 2000 -- BusyBox 0.40 released</b>
<br>
This release includes bugfixes to init (now includes inittab support),
syslogd, head, logger, du, grep, cp, mv, sed, dmesg, ls, kill, gunzip, and mknod.
New apps include sort, uniq, lsmod, rmmod, fbset, and loadacm.
In particular, this release fixes an important bug in tar which
in some cases produced serious security problems.
As always, the changelog can be found <a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/Changelog">here</a>.
<p> <li> <b>11 December 1999 -- BusyBox Website</b>
<br>
I have received permission from Bruce Perens (the original author of BusyBox)
to set up this site as the new primary website for BusyBox. This website
will always contain pointers to the latest and greatest, and will also
contain the latest documentation on how to use BusyBox, what it can do,
what arguments its apps support, etc.
<p> <li> <b>10 December 1999 -- BusyBox 0.39 released</b>
<br>
This release includes fixes to init, reboot, halt, kill, and ls, and contains
the new apps ping, hostname, mkfifo, free, tail, du, tee, and head. A full
changelog can be found <a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/Changelog">here</a>.
<p> <li> <b>5 December 1999 -- BusyBox 0.38 released</b>
<br>
This release includes fixes to tar, cat, ls, dd, rm, umount, find, df,
and make install, and includes new apps syslogd/klogd and logger.
</ul>
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<A NAME="docs"><BIG><B>
Documentation
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Current documentation for BusyBox includes:
<ul>
<li> <a href="BusyBox.html">BusyBox.html</a>
This is a list of the all the available commands in BusyBox with complete
usage information and examples of how to use each app. I spent
a <em>lot</em> of time updating these docs and trying to make them
fairly comprehensive for the BusyBox 0.43 release. If you find any
errors (factual, grammatical, whatever) please let me know.
<li> More documentation will follow.
</ul>
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<A NAME="related">
<BIG><B>
Related Software</A>
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<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/shells/ash.html">ash</a>
is a very small Bourne shell. If you need a shell for your embedded systems, this is it.
<p>
<li><a href="http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/base/ae.html">ae</a>
is a tiny full-screen text editor with both modal (vi-like) and modeless
(emacs-like) modes, determined by an ae.rc config file. It makes a nice editor
if people that don't know "vi" will need to work on your embedded system.
<p>
<li> <a href="http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/base/elvis-tiny.html">elvis-tiny</a>
is based on a 1991 Minix version of the elvis "vi" clone. It behaves as one would
expect a minimalist vi to behave, and is very small.
<p>
<li> <a href="http://www.asty.org/nano/">nano</a>
A small GPLed pico clone that makes a nice editor for people that don't know "vi".
<p>
<li><a href="http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/iproute.html">iproute</a>
Much more flexible replacement for ifconfig, route, etc. It is quite small, and for
most networking applications, it is all you need. It also provides support for extremely
advanced networking and provides Quality of Service(QoS) support, but most people will
just need to use the "ip" command and will not even need to install the rest.
<p>
<li><a href="http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/pump.html">Pump</a>
This is the DHCP/BOOTP client written by RedHat. When compiled properly, it
gives you dhcp client support for about 35k.
<p>
<li><a href="http://www.pcug.org.au/~dbell/">sash</a>
The Stand Alone SHell. This is a small shell (not Bourne shell compatible)
that is similar to busybox in that it provides a number of common utilities as built-ins.
<p>
<li><a href="http://sourceware.cygnus.com/newlib/">NewLib</a>
This is a small C library intended for use on embedded systems. If you are finding
GNU libc is a bit too big for your applications, try NewLib and it may help.
<p>
<li><a href="http://linuxassembly.org/asmutils.html">asmutils</a>
asmutils is similar to BusyBox in that it provides a number of common application
for embedded systems that are very tiny. In fact, they are a _lot_ smaller than the
equivalent apps in busybox -- but the price you pay for the size is reduced portability
(x86 only) and interfaces that are tied directly to a particular kernel (no libc involved).
<p>
<li><a href="http://tinylogin.lineo.com/">TinyLogin</a>
is a nice embedded tool for handling authentication, changing passwords,
and similar tasks, and which nicely complements BusyBox.
<p>
</ul>
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<A NAME="docs"><BIG><B>
Projects using BusyBox
</A></B></BIG>
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I know of the following projects that use BusyBox
<ul>
<li> <a href="http://www.lineo.com/products/embedix.html">Lineo Embedix Linux</a>
<li> <a href="http://cvs.debian.org/boot-floppies/">Debian boot floppies project</a>
<li> <a href="http://www.linuxrouter.org/">Linux Router Project </a>
<li> <a href="http://linux-embedded.org/">LEM</a>
<li> <a href="http://www.toms.net/rb/">tomsrtbt</a>
<li> <a href="http://www.stormix.com/">Stormix Installer</a>
<li> <a href="http://www.emacinc.com/linux2_sbc.htm">EMAC Linux 2.0 SBC</a>
</ul>
Do you use BusyBox? I'd love to know about it and I'd be happy to link to you.
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<A NAME="links">
<BIG><B>
Important Links</A>
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<ul>
<li> <A HREF="http://perens.com/FreeSoftware/">
Free Software from Bruce Perens</A><br>
The original idea for BusyBox, and all versions up to 0.26 were written
by <A HREF="mailto:bruce@perens.com">Bruce Perens</a>. This is his BusyBox website.
<p>
<li> <A HREF="http://freshmeat.net/appindex/1999/04/11/923859921.html">
Freshmeat AppIndex record for BusyBox</A>
<p>
<li> <A HREF="http://www.lineo.com/">Lineo</A> is sponsoring BusyBox development.
<p>
</ul>
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Mail all comments, insults, suggestions and bribes to
<a href="mailto:andersen@lineo.com">Erik Andersen</a><BR>
The Busybox logo is copyright 1999,2000, Erik Andersen.
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