1Please see the LICENSE file for copyright information. 2 3BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single 4small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the utilities 5you usually find in fileutils, shellutils, findutils, textutils, grep, gzip, 6tar, etc. BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX environment for any small or 7embedded system. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than 8their full featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are included provide 9the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts. 10 11BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in mind. 12It is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude commands (or 13features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize your embedded 14systems. To create a working system, just add /dev, /etc, and a kernel. 15 16BusyBox was originally written to support the Debian Rescue/Install disks, but 17it also makes an excellent environment for any small or embedded system. 18 19As of version 0.20 there is now a version number. : ) Also as of version 0.20, 20BusyBox is now modularized to easily allow you to build only the components you 21need, thereby reducing binary size. To turn off unwanted BusyBox components, 22simply edit the file "Config.h" and comment out the components you do not need 23using C++ style (//) comments. 24 25After the build is complete, a busybox.links file is generated. This is 26used by 'make install' to create symlinks to the busybox binary for all 27compiled in functions. By default, 'make install' will place the symlink 28forest into `pwd`/_install unless you have defined the PREFIX environment 29variable (i.e., 'make PREFIX=/tmp/foo install') 30 31---------------- 32 33Supported architectures: 34 35 Busybox in general will build on any architecture supported by gcc. It has 36 a few specialized features added for __sparc__ and __alpha__. insmod 37 functionality is currently limited to x86, ARM, SH3/4, powerpc, m68k, 38 and MIPS. 39 40Supported libcs: 41 42 glibc-2.0.x, glibc-2.1.x, Linux-libc5, uClibc. People are looking at 43 newlib and diet-libc, but consider them unsupported, untested, or worse. 44 45Supported kernels: 46 47 Full functionality requires Linux 2.0.x, 2.2.x, or 2.4.x. A large fraction 48 of the code should run on just about anything. 49 50---------------- 51 52Shells: 53 54lash is the very smallest shell (adds just 10k) and it is quite usable as 55a command prompt, but it is not suitable for any but the most trivial 56scripting (such as an initrd that calls insmod a few times) since it does 57not understand Bourne shell grammer. It does handle pipes, redirects, and 58job control though. Adding in command editing makes it a very nice 59lightweight command prompt. 60 61hush is also quite small (just 18k) and it has very complete Bourne shell 62grammer. It handles if/then/else/fi just fine, but doesn't handle loops 63like for/do/done or case/esac and such. It also currently has a problem 64with job control. Using hush is not yet recommended. 65 66msh: The minix shell (adds just 30k) is quite complete and handles things 67like for/do/done, case/esac and all the things you expect a Bourne shell to 68do. It is not always pedantically correct about Bourne shell grammer (try 69running the shell testscript "tests/sh.testcases" on it and compare vs bash) 70but for most things it works quite well. It also uses only vfork, so it can 71be used on uClinux systems. This was only recently added, so there is still 72room to shrink it further... 73 74ash: This adds about 60k in the default configuration and is the most 75complete and most pedantically correct shell included with busybox. This 76shell was also recently added, and several people (mainly Vladimir and Erik) 77have been working on it. There are a number of configurable things at the 78top of ash.c as well, so check those out if you want to tweak things. 79 80---------------- 81 82Getting help: 83 84When you find you need help, you can check out the BusyBox mailing list 85archives at http://opensource.lineo.com/lists/busybox/ or even join 86the mailing list if you are interested. 87 88---------------- 89 90Bugs: 91 92If you find bugs, please submit a bug report. Full instructions on how to 93report a bug are found at http://bugs.lineo.com/Reporting.html. 94 95For the impatient: To submit a bug, simply send an email describing the problem 96to submit@bugs.lineo.com. Bug reports should look something like this: 97 98 To: submit@bugs.lineo.com 99 From: diligent@testing.linux.org 100 Subject: /bin/true doesn't work 101 102 Package: busybox 103 Version: 0.51 104 105 When I invoke '/bin/true' it doesn't work. I expected it to return 106 a "0" but it returned a "1" instead. Here is the transcript: 107 $ /bin/true ; echo $? 108 1 109 With GNU /bin/true, I get the following output: 110 $ /bin/true ; echo $? 111 0 112 I am using Debian 2.2r2, kernel version 2.2.18, and the latest 113 uClibc from CVS. Thanks for the wonderful program! 114 -Diligent 115 116Note the careful description and use of examples showing not only what BusyBox 117does, but also a counter example showing what an equivalent GNU app does. Bug 118reports lacking such detail may take a _long_ time to be fixed... Thanks for 119understanding. 120 121---------------- 122 123FTP: 124 125Source for the latest released version can always be downloaded from 126 ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox. 127 128---------------- 129 130CVS: 131 132BusyBox now has its own publicly browsable CVS tree at: 133 http://opensource.lineo.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/ 134 135Anonymous CVS access is available. For instructions, check out: 136 http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_anon.html 137 138For those that are actively contributing there is even CVS write access: 139 http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_write.html 140 141---------------- 142 143Please feed suggestions, bug reports, insults, and bribes back to: 144 Erik Andersen 145 <andersen@lineo.com> 146 <andersee@debian.org> 147 <andersee@codepoet.org> 148 149<blatant plug> 150Many thanks to go to Lineo for paying me to work on busybox. 151</blatant plug> 152 153