1 Please see the LICENSE file for details on copying and usage.
2 Please refer to the INSTALL file for instructions on how to build.
5 Note about this Android Variant :
7 WARNING : THIS IS A BIONIC VERSION OF BUSYBOX, DO NOT USE "make" IN THIS TREE
9 This tree has multiple configurations,
11 - select the wanted config profile (full or minimal) :
12 cp .config-full .config
14 - type "make menuconfig" to update .config
15 - type "make prepare" to generate include/ files
16 - copy the generated files in include-full/ or include-minimal/
18 (there is a script to copy files inside these directories)
20 finally copy .config to .config-full or .config-minimal
22 please also check busybox-profile.links and busybox-profile.sources
28 BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single
29 small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the
30 utilities you usually find in bzip2, coreutils, dhcp, diffutils, e2fsprogs,
31 file, findutils, gawk, grep, inetutils, less, modutils, net-tools, procps,
32 sed, shadow, sysklogd, sysvinit, tar, util-linux, and vim. The utilities
33 in BusyBox often have fewer options than their full-featured cousins;
34 however, the options that are included provide the expected functionality
35 and behave very much like their larger counterparts.
37 BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in
38 mind, both to produce small binaries and to reduce run-time memory usage.
39 Busybox is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude
40 commands (or features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize
41 embedded systems; to create a working system, just add /dev, /etc, and a
42 Linux kernel. Busybox (usually together with uClibc) has also been used as
43 a component of "thin client" desktop systems, live-CD distributions, rescue
44 disks, installers, and so on.
46 BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX environment for any small system,
47 both embedded environments and more full featured systems concerned about
48 space. Busybox is slowly working towards implementing the full Single Unix
49 Specification V3 (http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/), but isn't
50 there yet (and for size reasons will probably support at most UTF-8 for
51 internationalization). We are also interested in passing the Linux Test
52 Project (http://ltp.sourceforge.net).
58 BusyBox is extremely configurable. This allows you to include only the
59 components and options you need, thereby reducing binary size. Run 'make
60 config' or 'make menuconfig' to select the functionality that you wish to
61 enable. (See 'make help' for more commands.)
63 The behavior of busybox is determined by the name it's called under: as
64 "cp" it behaves like cp, as "sed" it behaves like sed, and so on. Called
65 as "busybox" it takes the second argument as the name of the applet to
66 run (I.E. "./busybox ls -l /proc").
68 The "standalone shell" mode is an easy way to try out busybox; this is a
69 command shell that calls the builtin applets without needing them to be
70 installed in the path. (Note that this requires /proc to be mounted, if
71 testing from a boot floppy or in a chroot environment.)
73 The build automatically generates a file "busybox.links", which is used by
74 'make install' to create symlinks to the BusyBox binary for all compiled in
75 commands. This uses the CONFIG_PREFIX environment variable to specify
76 where to install, and installs hardlinks or symlinks depending
77 on the configuration preferences. (You can also manually run
78 the install script at "applets/install.sh").
82 Downloading the current source code:
84 Source for the latest released version, as well as daily snapshots, can always
87 http://busybox.net/downloads/
89 You can browse the up to the minute source code and change history online.
91 http://git.busybox.net/busybox/
93 Anonymous GIT access is available. For instructions, check out:
95 http://www.busybox.net/source.html
97 For those that are actively contributing and would like to check files in,
100 http://busybox.net/developer.html
102 The developers also have a bug and patch tracking system
103 (https://bugs.busybox.net) although posting a bug/patch to the mailing list
104 is generally a faster way of getting it fixed, and the complete archive of
105 what happened is the git changelog.
107 Note: if you want to compile busybox in a busybox environment you must
108 select CONFIG_DESKTOP.
114 when you find you need help, you can check out the busybox mailing list
115 archives at http://busybox.net/lists/busybox/ or even join
116 the mailing list if you are interested.
122 if you find bugs, please submit a detailed bug report to the busybox mailing
123 list at busybox@busybox.net. a well-written bug report should include a
124 transcript of a shell session that demonstrates the bad behavior and enables
125 anyone else to duplicate the bug on their own machine. the following is such
128 to: busybox@busybox.net
129 from: diligent@testing.linux.org
130 subject: /bin/date doesn't work
135 when i execute busybox 'date' it produces unexpected results.
136 with gnu date i get the following output:
139 fri oct 8 14:19:41 mdt 2004
141 but when i use busybox date i get this instead:
146 i am using debian unstable, kernel version 2.4.25-vrs2 on a netwinder,
147 and the latest uclibc from cvs.
151 note the careful description and use of examples showing not only what
152 busybox does, but also a counter example showing what an equivalent app
153 does (or pointing to the text of a relevant standard). Bug reports lacking
154 such detail may never be fixed... Thanks for understanding.
160 Busybox is developed and tested on Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, compiled
161 with gcc (the unit-at-a-time optimizations in version 3.4 and later are
162 worth upgrading to get, but older versions should work), and linked against
163 uClibc (0.9.27 or greater) or glibc (2.2 or greater). In such an
164 environment, the full set of busybox features should work, and if
165 anything doesn't we want to know about it so we can fix it.
167 There are many other environments out there, in which busybox may build
168 and run just fine. We just don't test them. Since busybox consists of a
169 large number of more or less independent applets, portability is a question
170 of which features work where. Some busybox applets (such as cat and rm) are
171 highly portable and likely to work just about anywhere, while others (such as
172 insmod and losetup) require recent Linux kernels with recent C libraries.
174 Earlier versions of Linux and glibc may or may not work, for any given
175 configuration. Linux 2.2 or earlier should mostly work (there's still
176 some support code in things like mount.c) but this is no longer regularly
177 tested, and inherently won't support certain features (such as long files
178 and --bind mounts). The same is true for glibc 2.0 and 2.1: expect a higher
179 testing and debugging burden using such old infrastructure. (The busybox
180 developers are not very interested in supporting these older versions, but
181 will probably accept small self-contained patches to fix simple problems.)
183 Some environments are not recommended. Early versions of uClibc were buggy
184 and missing many features: upgrade. Linking against libc5 or dietlibc is
185 not supported and not interesting to the busybox developers. (The first is
186 obsolete and has no known size or feature advantages over uClibc, the second
187 has known bugs that its developers have actively refused to fix.) Ancient
188 Linux kernels (2.0.x and earlier) are similarly uninteresting.
190 In theory it's possible to use Busybox under other operating systems (such as
191 MacOS X, Solaris, Cygwin, or the BSD Fork Du Jour). This generally involves
192 a different kernel and a different C library at the same time. While it
193 should be possible to port the majority of the code to work in one of
194 these environments, don't be suprised if it doesn't work out of the box. If
195 you're into that sort of thing, start small (selecting just a few applets)
196 and work your way up.
198 In 2005 Shaun Jackman has ported busybox to a combination of newlib
199 and libgloss, and some of his patches have been integrated.
203 BusyBox in general will build on any architecture supported by gcc. We
204 support both 32 and 64 bit platforms, and both big and little endian
207 Under 2.4 Linux kernels, kernel module loading was implemented in a
208 platform-specific manner. Busybox's insmod utility has been reported to
209 work under ARM, CRIS, H8/300, x86, ia64, x86_64, m68k, MIPS, PowerPC, S390,
210 SH3/4/5, Sparc, v850e, and x86_64. Anything else probably won't work.
212 The module loading mechanism for the 2.6 kernel is much more generic, and
213 we believe 2.6.x kernel module loading support should work on all
214 architectures supported by the kernel.
218 Please feed suggestions, bug reports, insults, and bribes back to the busybox
226 <vda.linux@googlemail.com>