busybox/docs/busybox.net/index.html
Eric Andersen d0b4d3dabf Typo fix.
2001-07-07 08:47:21 +00:00

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<B>B&nbsp;u&nbsp;s&nbsp;y&nbsp;B&nbsp;o&nbsp;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
</B></BIG></A>
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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 /dev, a kernel, and a shell.
For a really minimal system, you can even use the busybox shell (not Bourne compatible, but very small and quite usable), and the busybox vi editor.
<p>
BusyBox is now maintained by
<a href="http://codepoet.org/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>.
<p>
<h3> Screenshot </h3>
<p> Because everybody loves screenshots, a screenshot of BusyBox
is now available <a href="screenshot.html">right here</a>.
<H3>Mailing List Information</h3>
BusyBox now has a <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/lists/busybox/">mailing list</a>!
To subscribe, go and visit <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/mailman/listinfo/busybox">this page</a>.
<!-- Begin Latest News section -->
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<A NAME="news">
<BIG><B>
Latest News
</B></BIG>
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<ul>
<li> <b>7 July 2001 -- BusyBox 0.52 released</b>
<br>
I am very pleased to announce the immediate availability of
BusyBox 0.52 (the "new-and-improved rock-solid release"). This
release is the result of <em>many</em> hours of work and has tons
of bugfixes, optimizations, and cleanups. This release adds
several new applets, including several new shells (such as hush, msh,
and ash).
<p>
The
<a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a> covers
some of the more obvious details, but there are many many things that
are not mentioned, but have been improved in subtle ways. As usual,
BusyBox 0.52 can be downloaded from
<a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
<p>Have Fun!
<p>
<li> <b>10 April 2001 - Graph of Busybox Growth </b>
<br>
The illustrious Larry Doolittle has made a PostScript chart of the growth
of the Busybox tarball size over time. It is available for downloading /
viewing <a href= "busybox-growth.ps"> right here</a>.
<p> (Note that while the number of applets in Busybox has increased, you
can still configure Busybox to be as small as you want by selectively
turning off whichever applets you don't need.)
<p>
<li> <b>10 April 2001 -- BusyBox 0.51 released</b>
<br>
BusyBox 0.51 (the "rock-solid release") is now out there. This
release adds only 2 new applets: env and vi. The vi applet,
contributed by Sterling Huxley, is very functional, and is only
22k. This release fixes 3 critical bugs in the 0.50 release.
There were 2 potential segfaults in lash (the busybox shell) in
the 0.50 release which are now fixed. Another critical bug in
0.50 which is now fixed: syslogd from 0.50 could potentially
deadlock the init process and thereby break your entire system.
<p>
There are a number of improvements in this release as well. For
one thing, the wget applet is greatly improved. Dmitry Zakharov
added FTP support, and Laurence Anderson make wget fully RFC
compliant for HTTP 1.1. The mechanism for including utility
functions in previous releases was clumsy and error prone. Now
all utility functions are part of a new libbb library, which makes
maintaining utility functions much simpler. And BusyBox now
compiles on itanium systems (thanks to the Debian itanium porters
for letting me use their system!).
<p>
You can read the
<a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/Changelog">changelog</a> for
complete details. BusyBox 0.51 can be downloaded from
<a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
<p>Have Fun!
<p>
<li> <b>Busybox Boot-Floppy Image</b>
<p>Because you asked for it, we have made available a <a href=
"ftp://opensource.lineo.com/busybox/busybox.floppy.img"> Busybox boot floppy
image</a>. Here's how you use it:
<ol>
<li> <a href= "ftp://opensource.lineo.com/busybox/busybox.floppy.img">
Download the image</a>
<li> dd it onto a floppy like so: <tt> dd if=busybox.floppy.img
of=/dev/fd0 ; sync </tt>
<li> Pop it in a machine and boot up.
</ol>
<p> If you want to look at the contents of the initrd image, do this:
<pre>
mount ./busybox.floppy.img /mnt -o loop -t msdos
cp /mnt/initrd.gz /tmp
umount /mnt
gunzip /tmp/initrd.gz
mount /tmp/initrd /mnt -o loop -t minix
</pre>
<li> <b>Old News</b>
<br>
For the old news, visit <a href="http://busybox.lineo.com/oldnews.html">the old news page</a>.
</ul>
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<A NAME="download"><BIG><B>
Download
</B></BIG></A>
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<ul>
<li> Source for the latest release can always be downloaded from
<a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox">ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox</a>.
<li> A new snapshot of the source is made daily and is available as a GNU
gzipped tarball <a href="busybox.tar.gz"> right here</a>.
<li> BusyBox now has its own publically browsable
<a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/">CVS tree</a>,
anonymous
<a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_anon.html">CVS access</a>, and
for those that are actively contributing there is even
<a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/cvs_write.html">CVS write access</a>.
</ul>
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<A NAME="docs"><BIG><B>
Documentation
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Current documentation for BusyBox includes:
<ul>
<li> <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/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
have spent a <em>lot</em> of time updating these docs and trying to
make them fairly comprehensive. If you find any errors (factual,
grammatical, whatever) please let me know.
<li> <a href="ftp://oss.lineo.com/busybox/README">README</a>.
This is the README file included in the busybox source release.
<li> <a href="http://bugs.lineo.com/db/pa/lbusybox.html">BusyBox Bugs</a>.
Need to report a bug? Need to check if a bug has been filed?
<li> If you need more help, the BusyBox
<a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/lists/busybox/">mailing list</a> is
a good place to start.
</ul>
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<A NAME="links">
<BIG><B>
Important Links
</B></BIG>
</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/projects/busybox/">
Freshmeat AppIndex record for BusyBox</A>
<p>
<li><a href="http://tinylogin.lineo.com/">TinyLogin</a>
is a nice embedded tool for handling authentication, changing passwords,
and similar tasks which nicely complements BusyBox.
<p>
<li><a href="http://cvs.uclinux.org/uClibc.html">uClibc</a>
is a C library for embedded systems. You can actually statically link
a "Hello World" application under x86 that only takes 4k (as opposed to
200k under GNU libc). It can do dynamic linking too and works nicely with
BusyBox to create very small embedded systems.
<p>
<li> <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/software.html">Other cool embedded software</a>.
<p>
<li> <a href="http://opensource.lineo.com/">opensource.lineo.com</a>.
<p>
<li> <A HREF="http://www.lineo.com/">Lineo</A> is sponsoring BusyBox development.
<p>
</ul>
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<A NAME="projects"><BIG><B>
Products/Projects Using BusyBox
</B></BIG></A>
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<p> I know of the following products and/or projects that use BusyBox --
listed in the order I happen to add them to the web page:
<ul>
<li> <a href="http://www.lineo.com/products/embedix_linux/">Lineo Embedix Linux</a>
<li> <a href="http://cvs.debian.org/boot-floppies/">Debian installer (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>
<li> <a href="http://www.trinux.org/">Trinux</a>
<li> <a href="http://oddas.sourceforge.net/">ODDAS project</a>
<li> <a href="http://www.kerbango.com/">The Kerbango Internet Radio</a>
<li> <a href="http://www.linuxmagic.com/vpn/">LinuxMagic VPN Firewall</a>
<li> <a href="http://byld.sourceforge.net/">Build Your Linux Disk</a>
<li> <a href="http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~ichi/baslinux.html">BasicLinux</a>
<li> <a href="http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/recovery">Zdisk</a>
<li> <a href="http://www.adtran.com">AdTran - VPN/firewall VPN Linux Distribution</a>
<li> <a href="http://mkcdrec.ota.be/">mkCDrec - make CD-ROM recovery</a>
<li> <a href="http://recycle.lbl.gov/~ldoolitt/bse/">Linux on nanoEngine</a>
<li> <a href="http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/"> Floppyfw</a>
<li> <a href="http://midori.transmeta.com/"> Midori Linux</a> - <a href=
"http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42399,00.html"> Article on
Midori Linux</a> on <a href= "http://www.wired.com"> Wired</a>. Quote from
Erik at the top of <a href=
"http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42399-2,00.html"> this
page</a>
<li> <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">Linux Terminal Server Project</a>
<li> <a href="http://www.devil-linux.org/">Devil-Linux</a>
</ul>
<p> Do you use BusyBox? I'd love to know about it and I'd be happy to link to
you.
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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 1999,2000,2001, Erik Andersen.
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src="images/written.in.vi.png"
alt="This site created with the vi editor"></a>
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