b5966368d7
scans /etc/inittab entries so that commands can contain ":"s. -Erik
437 lines
16 KiB
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437 lines
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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
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<HTML>
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<HEAD>
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<TITLE>BusyBox</TITLE>
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</HEAD>
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<body text="#000000" alink="#660000" link="#660000" bgcolor="#ffffff" vlink="#660000" background="images/background.png" >
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<basefont face="lucida, helvetica, arial" size="3">
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<CENTER>
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<TABLE BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=1 CELLPADDING=2>
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<TR>
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<td bgcolor="#000000">
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<FONT FACE="lucida, helvetica" COLOR="#ccccc0">
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<B>B u s y B o x</B>
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</FONT>
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</TD>
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</TR>
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</TABLE>
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<a href="/"><IMG SRC="images/busybox2.jpg" alt="BusyBox" border="0" width="360" height="230"</a><BR>
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<!-- Begin Introduction section -->
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<TABLE WIDTH=95% CELLSPACING=1 CELLPADDING=4 BORDER=1>
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
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<A NAME="intro"> <BIG><B>
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The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux
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</font>
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</A></B></BIG>
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</TD></TR>
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
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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
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or emdedded system. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options then
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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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<p>
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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 a kernel, a shell (such as ash),
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and an editor (such as elvis-tiny or ae).
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<p>
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BusyBox is now maintained by
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<a href="http://www.xmission.com/~andersen/erik/erik.html">
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Erik Andersen</a>, and its ongoing development is being sponsored by
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<a href="http://www.lineo.com/">Lineo</a>.
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<p>
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BusyBox is licensed under the
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<a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE</a>
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<!-- Begin Download section -->
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
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<A NAME="download"><BIG><B>
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Download
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</A></B></BIG>
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</TD></TR>
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
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<ul>
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<li> Source for the latest release can always be downloaded from
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<a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox">ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox</a>.
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</ul>
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<!-- Begin Latest News section -->
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
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<A NAME="news">
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<BIG><B>
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Latest News</A>
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</B></BIG>
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</A>
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</TD></TR>
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
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<ul>
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<p> <li> <b>19 April 2000 -- syslogd bugfix</b>
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<br>
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Turns out that there was still a bug in busybox syslogd.
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For example, with the following test app:
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<pre>
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#include <syslog.h>
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int do_log(char* msg, int delay)
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{
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openlog("testlog", LOG_PID, LOG_DAEMON);
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while(1) {
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syslog(LOG_ERR, "%s: testing one, two, three\n", msg);
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sleep(delay);
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}
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closelog();
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return(0);
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};
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int main(void)
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{
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if (fork()==0)
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do_log("A", 2);
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do_log("B", 3);
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}
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</pre>
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it should be logging stuff from both "A" and "B". As released in 0.43 only stuff
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from "A" would have been logged. This means that if init tries to log something
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while say ppp has the syslog open, init would block (which is bad, bad, bad).
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<p>
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Karl M. Hegbloom has created a
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<a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/busybox-0.43-syslog_patch">fix for the problem</a>.
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Thanks Karl!
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<p> <li> <b>18 April 2000 -- BusyBox 0.43 released (finally!)</b>
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<br>
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I have finally gotten everything into a state where I feel pretty
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good about things. This is definitely the most stable, solid release
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so far. A lot of bugs have been fixed, and the following new apps
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have been added: sh, basename, dirname, killall, uptime,
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freeramdisk, tr, echo, test, and usleep. Tar has been completely
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rewritten from scratch. Bss size has also been greatly reduced.
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More details are available in the
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<a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a>.
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Oh, and as a special bonus, I wrote some fairly comprehensive
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<em>documentation</em>, complete with examples and full usage information.
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<p>
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Many thanks go out to the fine people that have helped by submitting patches
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and bug reports; particularly instrumental in helping for this release were
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Karl Hegbloom, Pavel Roskin, Friedrich Vedder, Emanuele Caratti,
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Bob Tinsley, Nicolas Pitre, Avery Pennarun, Arne Bernin, John Beppu, and Jim Gleason.
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There were others so if I somehow forgot to mention you, I'm very sorry.
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<p>
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You can grab BusyBox 0.43 tarballs <a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/">here</a>.
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<p> <li> <b>9 April 2000 -- BusyBox 0.43 pre release</b>
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<br>
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Unfortunately, I have not yet finished all the things I want to
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do for BusyBox 0.43, so I am posting this pre-release for people
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to poke at. This contains my complete rewrite of tar, which now weighs in at
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5k (7k with all options turned on) and works for reading and writing
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tarballs (which it does correctly for everything I have been able to throw
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at it). Tar also (optionally) supports the "--exclude" option (mainly because
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the Linux Router Project folks asked for it). This also has a pre-release
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of the micro shell I have been writing. This pre-release should be stable
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enough for production use -- it just isn't a release since I have some structural
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changes I still want to make.
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<p>
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The pre-release can be found <a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/">here</a>.
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Please let me know ASAP if you find <em>any</em> bugs.
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<p> <li> <b>28 March 2000 -- Andersen Baby Boy release</b>
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<br>
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I am pleased to announce that on Tuesday March 28th at 5:48pm, weighing in at 7
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lbs. 12 oz, Micah Erik Andersen was born at LDS Hospital here in Salt Lake City.
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He was born in the emergency room less then 5 minutes after we arrived -- and
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it was such a relief that we even made it to the hospital at all. Despite the
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fact that I was driving at an amazingly unlawful speed and honking at everybody
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and thinking decidely unkind thoughts about the people in our way, my wife
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(inconsiderate of my feelings and complete lack of medical training) was lying
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down in the back seat saying things like "I think I need to start pushing now"
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(which she then proceeded to do despite my best encouraging statements to the
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contrary).
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<p>
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Anyway, I'm glad to note that despite the much-faster-than-we-were-expecting
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labor, both Shaunalei and our new baby boy are doing wonderfuly.
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<p>
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So now that I am done with my excuse for the slow release cycle...
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Progress on the next release of BusyBox has been slow but steady. I expect
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to have a release sometime during the first week of April. This release will
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include a number of important changes, including the addition of a shell, a
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re-write of tar (to accomodate the Linux Router Project), and syslogd can now
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accept multiple concurrent connections, fixing lots of unexpected blocking
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problems.
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<p> <li> <b>11 February 2000 -- BusyBox 0.42 released</b>
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<br>
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This is the most solid BusyBox release so far. Many, many
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bugs have been fixed. See the
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<a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a> for details.
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Of particular interest, init will now cleanly unmount
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filesystems on reboot, cp and mv have been rewritten and
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behave much better, and mount and umount no longer leak
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loop devices. Many thanks go out to Randolph Chung,
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Karl M. Hegbloom, Taketoshi Sano, and Pavel Roskin for
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their hard work on this release of BusyBox. Please pound
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on it and let me know if you find any bugs.
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<p> <li> <b>19 January 2000 -- BusyBox 0.41 released</b>
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<br>
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This release includes bugfixes to cp, mv, logger, true, false,
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mkdir, syslogd, and init. New apps include wc, hostid,
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logname, tty, whoami, and yes. New features include loop device
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support in mount and umount, and better TERM handling by init.
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The changelog can be found <a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/Changelog">here</a>.
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<p> <li> <b>7 January 2000 -- BusyBox 0.40 released</b>
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<br>
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This release includes bugfixes to init (now includes inittab support),
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syslogd, head, logger, du, grep, cp, mv, sed, dmesg, ls, kill, gunzip, and mknod.
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New apps include sort, uniq, lsmod, rmmod, fbset, and loadacm.
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In particular, this release fixes an important bug in tar which
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in some cases produced serious security problems.
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As always, the changelog can be found <a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/Changelog">here</a>.
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<p> <li> <b>11 December 1999 -- BusyBox Website</b>
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<br>
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I have received permission from Bruce Perens (the original author of BusyBox)
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to set up this site as the new primary website for BusyBox. This website
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will always contain pointers to the latest and greatest, and will also
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contain the latest documentation on how to use BusyBox, what it can do,
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what arguments its apps support, etc.
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<p> <li> <b>10 December 1999 -- BusyBox 0.39 released</b>
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<br>
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This release includes fixes to init, reboot, halt, kill, and ls, and contains
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the new apps ping, hostname, mkfifo, free, tail, du, tee, and head. A full
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changelog can be found <a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/Changelog">here</a>.
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<p> <li> <b>5 December 1999 -- BusyBox 0.38 released</b>
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<br>
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This release includes fixes to tar, cat, ls, dd, rm, umount, find, df,
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and make install, and includes new apps syslogd/klogd and logger.
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</ul>
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<!-- Begin Docs section -->
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
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<A NAME="docs"><BIG><B>
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Documentation
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</A></B></BIG>
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</TD></TR>
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
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Current documentation for BusyBox includes:
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<ul>
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<li> <a href="ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/busybox/BusyBox.html">BusyBox.html</a>
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This is a list of the all the available commands in BusyBox with complete
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usage information and examples of how to use each app. I spent
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a <em>lot</em> of time updating these docs and trying to make them
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fairly comprehensive for the BusyBox 0.43 release. If you find any
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errors (factual, grammatical, whatever) please let me know.
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<li> More documentation will follow.
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</ul>
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<!-- Begin Links section -->
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
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<A NAME="related">
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<BIG><B>
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Related Software</A>
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</B></BIG>
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</A>
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</TD></TR>
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
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<ul>
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<li><a href="http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/shells/ash.html">ash</a>
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is a very small Bourne shell. If you need a shell for your embedded systems, this is it.
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<p>
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<li><a href="http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/base/ae.html">ae</a>
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is a tiny full-screen text editor with both modal (vi-like) and modeless
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(emacs-like) modes, determined by an ae.rc config file. It makes a nice editor
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if people that don't know "vi" will need to work on your embedded system.
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<p>
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<li> <a href="http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/base/elvis-tiny.html">elvis-tiny</a>
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is based on a 1991 Minix version of the elvis "vi" clone. It behaves as one would
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expect a minamalist vi to behave, and is very small.
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<p>
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<li> <a href="http://www.asty.org/nano/">nano</a>
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A small GPLed pico clone that makes a nice editor for people that don't know "vi".
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<p>
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<li><a href="http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/iproute.html">iproute</a>
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Much more flexible replacement for ifconfig, route, etc. It is quite small, and for
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most networking applications, it is all you need. It also provides support for extremely
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advanced networking and provides Quality of Service(QoS) support, but most people will
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just need to use the "ip" command and will not even need to install the rest.
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<p>
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<li><a href="http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/pump.html">Pump</a>
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This is the DHCP/BOOTP client written by RedHat. When compiled properly, it
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gives you dhcp client support for about 35k.
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<p>
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<li><a href="http://www.pcug.org.au/~dbell/">sash</a>
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The Stand Alone SHell. This is a small shell (not Bourne shell compatable)
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that is similar to busybox in that it provides a number of common utilities as built-ins.
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<p>
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<li><a href="http://sourceware.cygnus.com/newlib/">NewLib</a>
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This is a small C library intended for use on embedded systems. If you are finding
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GNU libc is a bit too big for your applications, try NewLib and it may help.
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<p>
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<li><a href="http://linuxassembly.org/asmutils.html">asmutils</a>
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asmutils is similar to BusyBox in that it provides a number of common application
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for embedded systems that are very tiny. In fact, they are a _lot_ smaller than the
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equivalent apps in busybox -- but the price you pay for the size is reduced portability
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(x86 only) and interfaces that are tied directly to a perticular kernel (no libc involved).
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<p>
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<li><a href="http://tinylogin.lineo.com/">TinyLogin</a>
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is a nice embedded tool for handling authentication, changing passwords,
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and similar tasks, and which nicely complements BusyBox.
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<p>
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</ul>
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<!-- Begin Projects section -->
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
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<A NAME="docs"><BIG><B>
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Projects using BusyBox
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</A></B></BIG>
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</TD></TR>
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
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I know of the following projects that use BusyBox
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<ul>
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<li> <a href="http://www.lineo.com/products/embedix.html">Lineo Embedix Linux</a>
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<li> <a href="http://cvs.debian.org/boot-floppies/">Debian boot floppies project</a>
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<li> <a href="http://www.linuxrouter.org/">Linux Router Project </a>
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<li> <a href="http://linux-embedded.org/">LEM</a>
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<li> <a href="http://www.toms.net/rb/">tomsrtbt</a>
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<li> <a href="http://www.stormix.com/">Stormix Installer</a>
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<li> <a href="http://www.emacinc.com/linux2_sbc.htm">EMAC Linux 2.0 SBC</a>
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</ul>
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Do you use BusyBox? I'd love to know about it and I'd be happy to link to you.
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<!-- Begin Links section -->
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#ccccc0" ALIGN=center>
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<A NAME="links">
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<BIG><B>
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Important Links</A>
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</B></BIG>
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</A>
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</TD></TR>
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<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#eeeee0">
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<ul>
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<li> <A HREF="http://perens.com/FreeSoftware/">
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Free Software from Bruce Perens</A><br>
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The original idea for BusyBox, and all versions up to 0.26 were written
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by <A HREF="mailto:bruce@perens.com">Bruce Perens</a>. This is his BusyBox website.
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<p>
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<li> <A HREF="http://freshmeat.net/appindex/1999/04/11/923859921.html">
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Freshmeat AppIndex record for BusyBox</A>
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<p>
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<li> <A HREF="http://www.lineo.com/">Lineo</A> is sponsoring BusyBox development.
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<p>
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</ul>
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<!-- End of Table -->
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</TD></TR>
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</TABLE>
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</P>
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<!-- Footer -->
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<HR>
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<TABLE WIDTH="100%">
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<TR>
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<TD>
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<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">
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Mail all comments, insults, suggestions and bribes to
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<a href="mailto:andersen@lineo.com">Erik Andersen</a><BR>
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The Busybox logo is copyright 1999,2000, Erik Andersen.
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</font>
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</TD>
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<TD>
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<a href="http://www.vim.org"><img border=0 width=88 height=32
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src="images/anim.written.in.vi.gif"
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alt="This site created with the vi editor"></a>
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</TD>
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<TD>
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<a href="http://www.gimp.org/"><img border=0 width=88 height=38
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src="images/gfx_by_gimp.gif" alt="Graphics by GIMP"></a>
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</TD>
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<TD>
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<a href="http://www.linuxtoday.com"><img width=90 height=36
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src="images/ltbutton2.jpg" alt="Linux Today"></a>
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</TD>
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<TD>
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<p><a href="http://slashdot.org"><img width=90 height=36
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src="images/sdsmall.gif" alt="Slashdot"></a>
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</TD>
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<TD>
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<a href="http://freshmeat.net"><img width=90 height=36
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src="images/fm.mini.jpg" alt="Freshmeat"></a>
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</TD>
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