John Beppu | 5bca0af | 2001-04-05 19:41:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | # vi: set sw=4 ts=4: |
| 2 | |
| 3 | =head1 NAME |
| 4 | |
| 5 | BusyBox - The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux |
| 6 | |
| 7 | =head1 SYNTAX |
| 8 | |
| 9 | BusyBox <function> [arguments...] # or |
| 10 | |
| 11 | <function> [arguments...] # if symlinked |
| 12 | |
| 13 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 14 | |
| 15 | BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single |
| 16 | small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the utilities |
| 17 | you usually find in fileutils, shellutils, findutils, textutils, grep, gzip, |
| 18 | tar, etc. BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX environment for any small |
| 19 | or embedded system. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than |
| 20 | their full-featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are included provide |
| 21 | the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in mind. |
| 24 | It is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude commands (or |
| 25 | features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize your embedded |
| 26 | systems. To create a working system, just add a kernel, a shell (such as ash), |
| 27 | and an editor (such as elvis-tiny or ae). |
| 28 | |
| 29 | =head1 USAGE |
| 30 | |
| 31 | When you create a link to BusyBox for the function you wish to use, when BusyBox |
| 32 | is called using that link it will behave as if the command itself has been invoked. |
| 33 | |
| 34 | For example, entering |
| 35 | |
| 36 | ln -s ./BusyBox ls |
| 37 | ./ls |
| 38 | |
| 39 | will cause BusyBox to behave as 'ls' (if the 'ls' command has been compiled |
| 40 | into BusyBox). |
| 41 | |
| 42 | You can also invoke BusyBox by issuing the command as an argument on the |
| 43 | command line. For example, entering |
| 44 | |
| 45 | ./BusyBox ls |
| 46 | |
| 47 | will also cause BusyBox to behave as 'ls'. |
| 48 | |
| 49 | =head1 COMMON OPTIONS |
| 50 | |
John Beppu | 2771d1a | 2001-04-17 23:57:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 51 | Most BusyBox commands support the B<-h> option to provide a |
John Beppu | 5bca0af | 2001-04-05 19:41:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 52 | terse runtime description of their behavior. |
| 53 | |
| 54 | =head1 COMMANDS |
| 55 | |
| 56 | Currently defined functions include: |
| 57 | |
John Beppu | 2771d1a | 2001-04-17 23:57:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 58 | adjtimex, ar, basename, busybox, cat, chgrp, chmod, chown, chroot, chvt, clear, |
| 59 | cmp, cp, cut, date, dc, dd, deallocvt, df, dirname, dmesg, dos2unix, dpkg, |
| 60 | dpkg-deb, du, dumpkmap, dutmp, echo, expr, false, fbset, fdflush, find, free, |
| 61 | freeramdisk, fsck.minix, getopt, grep, gunzip, gzip, halt, head, hostid, |
| 62 | hostname, id, ifconfig, init, insmod, kill, killall, klogd, length, ln, |
| 63 | loadacm, loadfont, loadkmap, logger, logname, ls, lsmod, makedevs, md5sum, |
| 64 | mkdir, mkfifo, mkfs.minix, mknod, mkswap, mktemp, more, mount, mt, mv, nc, |
| 65 | nslookup, ping, pivot_root, poweroff, printf, ps, pwd, rdate, readlink, reboot, |
| 66 | renice, reset, rm, rmdir, rmmod, route, rpmunpack, sed, setkeycodes, sh, sleep, |
| 67 | sort, stty, swapoff, swapon, sync, syslogd, tail, tar, tee, telnet, test, tftp, |
| 68 | touch, tr, true, tty, umount, uname, uniq, unix2dos, update, uptime, usleep, |
| 69 | uudecode, uuencode, watchdog, wc, wget, which, whoami, xargs, yes, zcat, [ |
John Beppu | 5bca0af | 2001-04-05 19:41:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 70 | |
| 71 | =over 4 |
| 72 | |