blob: 517be81a31eec71054cdec9f4d89e561d0300623 [file] [log] [blame]
John Beppu5bca0af2001-04-05 19:41:23 +00001# vi: set sw=4 ts=4:
2
3=head1 NAME
4
5BusyBox - 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
15BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single
16small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the utilities
17you usually find in fileutils, shellutils, findutils, textutils, grep, gzip,
18tar, etc. BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX environment for any small
19or embedded system. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than
20their full-featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are included provide
21the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts.
22
23BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in mind.
24It is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude commands (or
25features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize your embedded
26systems. To create a working system, just add a kernel, a shell (such as ash),
27and an editor (such as elvis-tiny or ae).
28
29=head1 USAGE
30
31When you create a link to BusyBox for the function you wish to use, when BusyBox
32is called using that link it will behave as if the command itself has been invoked.
33
34For example, entering
35
36 ln -s ./BusyBox ls
37 ./ls
38
39will cause BusyBox to behave as 'ls' (if the 'ls' command has been compiled
40into BusyBox).
41
42You can also invoke BusyBox by issuing the command as an argument on the
43command line. For example, entering
44
45 ./BusyBox ls
46
47will also cause BusyBox to behave as 'ls'.
48
49=head1 COMMON OPTIONS
50
John Beppu2771d1a2001-04-17 23:57:23 +000051Most BusyBox commands support the B<-h> option to provide a
John Beppu5bca0af2001-04-05 19:41:23 +000052terse runtime description of their behavior.
53
54=head1 COMMANDS
55
56Currently defined functions include:
57
Eric Andersen08a72202002-09-30 20:52:10 +000058 addgroup, adduser, adjtimex, ar, awk, basename, busybox, cat, chgrp,
59chmod, chown, chroot, chvt, clear, cmp, cp, cpio, cut, date, dc, dd,
60deallocvt, deluser, df, dirname, dmesg, dos2unix, dpkg, dpkg-deb, du,
61dumpkmap, dutmp, echo, expr, false, fbset, fdflush, find, free,
62freeramdisk, fsck.minix, getopt, getty, grep, gunzip, gzip, halt, head,
63hostid, hostname, id, ifconfig, init, insmod, kill, killall, klogd, length,
64ln, loadacm, loadfont, loadkmap, logger, logname, ls, lsmod, makedevs,
65md5sum, mkdir, mkfifo, mkfs.minix, mknod, mkswap, mktemp, more, mount, mt,
66mv, nc, netstat, nslookup, ping, pivot_root, poweroff, printf, ps, pwd,
67rdate, readlink, reboot, renice, reset, rm, rmdir, rmmod, route, rpm2cpio,
68sed, setkeycodes, sh, sleep, sort, stty, swapoff, swapon, sync, syslogd,
69tail, tar, tee, telnet, telnetd, test, tftp, time, top, touch, tr, true,
70tty, umount, uname, uniq, unix2dos, update, uptime, usleep, uudecode,
71uuencode, watchdog, wc, wget, which, whoami, xargs, yes, zcat, [
John Beppu5bca0af2001-04-05 19:41:23 +000072
73=over 4
74
Matt Kraai91631012001-08-27 18:55:10 +000075