BusyBox 1.6.0. (svn, patches, how to add a patch)

Since this is a x.x.0 release, it probably does not deserve "stable" label. Please help making 1.6.1 stable by testing 1.6.0.

Note that hush shell had many changes and (hopefully) is much improved now, but there is a possibility that it regressed in some obscure cases. Please report any such cases.

lash users please note: lash is going to be deprecated in busybox 1.7.0 and removed in the more distant future. Please migrate to hush.

Memory usage has decreased, but we can do better still

Other changes since previous release:

• NOFORK: audit small applets and mark some of them as NOFORK. Put big scary warnings in relevant places
• NOFORK: factor out NOFORK/NOEXEC code from find. Use NOFORK/NOEXEC in find and xargs
• NOFORK: remove potential xmalloc from NOFORK path in bb_full_fd_action
• NOMMU: random fixes; compressed --help now works for NOMMU
• SELinux: load_policy applet
• [u]mount: extend -t option (Roy Marples <uberlord@gentoo.org>)
• addgroup: clean up, fix adding users to existing groups and make it optional (Tito)
• adduser: don't bomb out if shadow password file doesn't exist (from Tito <farmatito@tiscali.it>)
• applet.c: do not even try to read config if run by real root; fix suid config handling
• ash: fix infinite loop on exit if tty is not there anymore
• ash: fix kill -l (by Mats Erik Andersson <mats.andersson64@comhem.se>)
• ash: implement type -p, costs less than 10 bytes (patch by Mats Erik Andersson <mats.andersson64@comhem.se>)
• awk: don't segfault on printf(%*s). Closes bug 1337
• awk: guard against empty environment
• awk: some 'lineno' vars were shorts, made them ints (code got smaller)
• cat: stop using stdio.h opens
• config system: clarify PREFER_APPLETS/SH_STANDALONE effects in help text
• cryptpw: new applet (by Thomas Lundquist <lists@zelow.no>)
• cttyhack: new applet
• dd: NOEXEC fix; fix skip= parse error (spotted by Dirk Clemens <develop@cle-mens.de>)
• deluser: add optional support for removing users from groups (by Tito <farmatito@tiscali.it>)
• diff: fix SEGV (NULL deref) in diff -N
• diff: fix segfault on empty dirs (Peter Korsgaard <peter.korsgaard@barco.com>)
• dnsd: fix several buglets, make smaller; openlog(), so that applet's name is logged
• dpkg: run_package_script() returns 0 if all ok and non-zero if failure. The result code was checked incorrectly in two places. (from Kim B. Heino <Kim.Heino@bluegiga.com>)
• dpkg: use bitfields which are a bit closer to typical short/char. Code size -800 bytes
• dumpleases: getopt32()-ization (from Mats Erik Andersson <mats.andersson64@comhem.se>)
• e2fsprogs: stop using statics in chattr. Minor code shrinkage (-130 bytes)
• ether-wake: close bug 1317. Reorder fuctions to avoid forward refs while at it
• ether-wake: save a few more bytes of code
• find: -group, -depth (Natanael Copa <natanael.copa@gmail.com>)
• find: add support for -delete, -path (by Natanael Copa)
• find: fix -prune. Add big comment about it
• find: improve usage text (Natanael Copa <natanael.copa@gmail.com>)
• find: missed 'static' on const data; size and prune were mixed up; use index_in_str_array
• find: un-DESKTOPize (Kai Schwenzfeier <niteblade@gmx.net>)
• find_root_device: teach to deal with /dev/ subdirs (by Kirill K. Smirnov <lich@math.spbu.ru>)
• find_root_device: use lstat - don't follow links
• getopt32: fix llist_t options ordering. llist_rev is now unused
• getopt: use getopt32 for option parsing - inspired by patch by Mats Erik Andersson <mats.andersson64@comhem.se>
• hdparm: fix multisector mode setting (from Toni Mirabete <amirabete@catix.cat>)
• hdparm: make -T -t code smaller (-194 bytes), and output prettier
• ifupdown: make it possible to use DHCP clients different from udhcp
• ifupdown: reread state file before rewriting it. Fixes "ifup started another ifup" state corruption bug. Patch by Natanael Copa <natanael.copa@gmail.com>
• ifupdown: small optimization (avoid doing useless work if we are not going to update state file)
• ip: fix compilation if FEATURE_TR_CLASSES is off
• ip: mv ip*_main into ip.c; use a dispatcher to save on needless duplication. Saves a minor 12b
• ip: rewrite the ip applet to be less bloaty. Convert to index_in_(sub)str_array()
• ip: set the scope properly. Thanks to Jean Wolter
• iplink: shrink iplink; sanitize libiproute a bit (-916 bytes)
• iproute: shrink a bit (-200 bytes)
• kill: know much more signals; make code smaller; use common code for kill applet and ash kill builtin
• klogd: remove dependency on syslogd
• lash: "forking" applets are actually can be treated the same way as "non-forked". Also save a bit of space on trailing NULL array elements.
• lash: fix kill buglet (didn't properly recognize ESRCH)
• lash: make -c work; crush buffer overrun and free of non-malloced ptr (from Mats Erik Andersson <mats.andersson64@comhem.se>)
• lash: recognize and use NOFORK applets
• less: fix case when regex search finds nothing; fix very obscure memory corruption bug; fix less <HUGEFILE + [End] busy loop
• libbb: add xsendto, xunlink, xpipe
• libbb: fix segfault in reset_ino_dev_hashtable() when *hashtable was NULL
• libbb: make pidfile writing configurable
• libbb: make xsocket die with address family printed (if VERBOSE_RESOLUTION_ERRORS=y)
• libbb: rework NOMMU helper API so that it makes more sense and easier to use
• libiproute: audit callgraph, shortcut error paths into die() functions
• lineedit: do not try to open NULL history file
• lineedit: nuke two unused variables and code which sets them
• login: remove setpgrp call (makes it work from shell prompt again); sanitize stdio descriptors (we are suid, need to be careful!)
• login: shrink login and set_environment by ~100 bytes
• mount: fix incorrect usage of strtok (inadvertently used NULL sometimes)
• mount: fix mounting of symlinks (mount from util-linux allows that)
• msh: data/bss reduction (more than 9k of it); fix "underscore bug" (a_b=1111 didn't work); fix obscure case with backticks and closed fd 1
• nc: port nc 1.10 to busybox
• netstat: fix for bogus state value for raw sockets
• netstat: introduce -W: wide, ipv6-friendly output; shrink by ~500 bytes
• nmeter: should die if stdout doesn't like him anymore
• patch: do not try to delete same file twice
• ping: fix wrong sign extension of packet id (bug 1373)
• ps: add -o tty and -o rss support; make a bit smaller; work around libc bug: printf("%.*s\n", MAX_INT, buffer)
• run_parts: rewrite
• run_parts: do not check path portion of a name for "bad chars". Needed for ifupdown. Patch by Gabriel L. Somlo <somlo@cmu.edu>
• sed: fix escaped newlines in -f
• split: new applet
• stat: remove superfluous bss user (flags) and manually unswitch some areas
• stty: fix option parsing bug (spotted by Sascha Hauer <s.hauer@pengutronix.de>)
• svlogd: fix 'SEGV on uninitialized data' and make it honor TERM
• tail: fix SEGV on "tail -N"
• ipsvd: tcpsvd,udpsvd are new applets, GPL-ed 'clones' of Dan Bernstein's tcpserver. Author: Gerrit Pape <pape@smarden.org>, http://smarden.sunsite.dk/ipsvd/
• test: close bug 1371; plug a memory leak; code size reduction
• tftp: code diet, and I think retransmits were broken
• tr: fix bug where we did not reject invalid classes like '[[:alpha'. debloat while at it
• udhcp: MAC_BCAST_ADDR and blank_chaddr are in fact constant, move to rodata; use pipe instead of socketpair
• udhcp[cd]: stop using atexit magic fir pidfile removal; stop deleting our own pidfile if we daemonize
• xargs: shrink code, ~80 bytes; simplify word list management
• zcip: make it work on NOMMU (+ improve NOMMU support machinery)

BusyBox 1.5.1. (patches, how to add a patch)

This is a bugfix-only release, with fixes to hdparm, hush, ifupdown, ps and sed.

BusyBox 1.5.0. (patches, how to add a patch)

Since this is a x.x.0 release, it probably does not deserve "stable" label. Please help making 1.5.1 stable by testing 1.5.0.

Notable changes since previous release:

• find: added support for -user, -not, fixed -mtime, -mmin, -perm
• [de]archivers: merge common logic into one module
• ping[6]: unified code for both
• less: regex search improved
• ash: more readable code, testsuite added
• sed: several very obscure bugs fixed
• chown: -H, -L, -P support (required by POSIX)
• tar: handle (broken) checksums a-la Sun; tar restores mode again
• grep: implement -w, "implement" -a and -I by ignoring them
• cp: more sane behavior when overwriting existing files
• init: stop doing silly things with the console (-400 bytes)
• httpd: make httpd usable for NOMMU CPUs; fix POSTDATA handling bugs
• httpd: run interpreter for configured file extensions in any dir, not only in /cgi-bin/
• chrt: new applet
• SELinux: SELinux-related code and -Z option added to several applets, new SELinux-specific applets: chcon, runcon.
• Build system: produces link map, uses -Wwrite-strings to catch improper usage of string constants.
• Data and bss section usage audited and reduced - should help NOMMU targets.
• Applets with bug fixes: gunzip, vi, syslogd, dpkg, ls, adjtimex, resize, sv, printf, diff, awk, sort, dpkg, diff, tftp
• Applets with usability improvements: swapon, more, ifup/ifdown, hwclock, udhcpd, start_stop_daemon, cmp
• Applets with code cleaned up: telnet, fdisk, fsck_minix, mkfs_minix, syslogd, swapon, runsv, svlogd, klogd

BusyBox 1.4.2.

This release includes only trivial fixes accumulated since 1.4.1.

BusyBox 1.4.1. (patches)

This release includes only trivial fixes accumulated since 1.4.0.

BusyBox 1.4.0. (patches)

Since this is a x.x.0 release, it probably is a bit less "stable" than usual.

Changes since previous release:

• e2fsprogs are mostly removed from busybox. Some smaller parts remain, the rest of it sits disabled in e2fsprogs/old_e2fsprogs/*, because it's too bloated. Really. I'm afraid it's about the only way we can ever get e2fsprogs cleaned up.
• less: many improvements. Now can display binary files (although I expect it to have trouble with displays where 8bit chars don't have 1-to-1 char/glyph relationship). Regexp search is not buggy anymore. Less does not read entire input up-front. Reads input as it appears (yay!). Works rather nice as man pager. I recommend it for general use now.
• IPv6: generic support is in place, many networking applets are upgraded to be IPv6 capable. Probably some work remains, but it is already much better than what we had previously.
• arp: new applet (thanks to Eric Spakman).
• fakeidentd: non-forking standalone server part was taking ~90% of the applet. Factored it out (in fact, rewrote it).
• syslogd: mostly rewritten.
• decompress_unzip, gzip: sanitized a bit.
• sed: better hadling of NULs
• httpd: stop adding our own "Content-type:" to CGI output
• chown: user.grp works again.
• minor bugfixes to: passwd, date, tftp, start_stop_daemon, tar, ps, ifupdown, time, su, stty, awk, ping[6], sort,...

BusyBox 1.3.2.

This release includes only one trivial fix accumulated since 1.3.1

BusyBox 1.3.1. (patches)

Closing 2006 with new release. It includes only trivial fixes accumulated since 1.3.0

BusyBox 1.3.0. (patches)

This release has CONFIG_DESKTOP option which enables features needed for busybox usage on desktop machine. For example, find, chmod and chown get several less frequently used options, od is significantly bigger but matches GNU coreutils, etc. Intended to eventually make busybox a viable alternative for "standard" utilities for slightly adventurous desktop users.

Changes since previous release:

• find: taking many more of standard options
• ps: POSIX-compliant -o implemented
• cp: added -s, -l
• grep: added -r, fixed -h
• watch: make it exec child like standard one does (was totally incompatible)
• tar: fix limitations which were preventing bbox tar usage on big directories: long names and linknames, pax headers (Linux kernel tarballs have that). Fixed a number of obscure bugs. Raised max file limit (now 64Gb). Security fixes (/../ attacks).
• httpd: added -i (inetd), -f (foreground), support for directory indexer CGI (example is included), bugfixes.
• telnetd: fixed/improved IPv6 support, inetd+standalone support, other fixes. Useful IPv6 stuff factored out into libbb.
• runit/*: new applets adapted from http://smarden.sunsite.dk/runit/ (these are my personal favorite small-and-beautiful toys)
• minor bugfixes to: login, dd, mount, umount, chmod, chown, ln, udhcp, fdisk, ifconfig, sort, tee, mkswap, wget, insmod.

Note that GnuPG key used to sign this release is different. 1.2.2.1 is also signed post-factum now. Sorry for the mess.

BusyBox 1.2.2.1.

Added compile-time warning that static linking against glibc produces buggy executables.

It's a bit overdue, but here is BusyBox 1.2.2.

This release has dozens of fixes backported from the ongoing development branch. There are a couple of bugfixes to sed, two fixes to documentation generation (BusyBox.html shouldn't have USE() macros in it anymore), fix umount to report the right errno on failure and to umount block devices by name with newer kernels, fix mount to handle symlinks properly, make mdev delete device nodes when called for hotplug remove, fix a segfault in traceroute, a minor portability fix to md5sum option parsing, a build fix for httpd with old gccs, an options parsing tweak to hdparm, make test fail gracefully when getgroups() returns -1, fix a race condition in modprobe when two instances run at once (hotplug does this), make "tar xf foo.tar dir/dir" extract all subdirectories, make our getty initialize the terminal more like mingetty, an selinux build fix, an endianness fix in ping6, fix for zcip defending addresses, clean up some global variables in gzip to save memory, fix sulogin -tNNN, a help text tweak, several warning fixes and build fixes, fixup dnsd a bit, and a partridge in a pear tree.

As Linux Weekly News noted, this is my (Rob's) last release of BusyBox. The new maintainer is Denis Vlasenko, I'm off to do other things.

The email address gpl@busybox.net is now the recommended way to contact the Software Freedom Law Center to report BusyBox license violations.

Since nobody seems to have objected too loudly over the weekend, I might as well point you all at Busybox 1.2.1, a bugfix-only release with no new features.

It has three shell fixes (two to lash: going "var=value" without saying "export" should now work, plus a missing null pointer check, and one to ash when redirecting output to a file that fills up.) Fix three embarassing thinkos in the new dmesg command. Two build tweaks (dependencies for the compressed usage messages and running make in the libbb subdirectory). One fix to tar so it can extract git-generated tarballs (rather than barfing on the pax extensions). And a partridge in a pear... Ahem.

But wait, there's more! A passwd changing fix so an empty gecos field doesn't trigger a false objection that the new passwd contains the gecos field. Make all our setuid() and setgid() calls check the return value in case somebody's using per-process resource limits that prevent a user from having too many processes (and thus prevent a process from switching away from root, in which case the process will now _die_ rather than continue with root privileges). A fix to adduser to make sure that /etc/group gets updated. And a fix to modprobe to look for modules.conf in the right place on 2.6 kernels.

The -devel branch has been stabilized and the result is Busybox 1.2.0. Lots of stuff changed, I need to work up a decent changelog over the weekend.

I'm still experimenting with how long is best for the development cycle, and since we've got some largeish projects queued up I'm going to try a longer one. Expect 1.3.0 in December. (Expect 1.2.1 any time we fix enough bugs. :)

Update: Here are the first few bug fixes that will go into 1.2.1.

BusyBox 1.1.3 is another bugfix release. It makes passwd use salt, fixes a memory freeing bug in ls, fixes "build all sources at once" mode, makes mount -a not abort on the first failure, fixes msh so ctrl-c doesn't kill background processes, makes patch work with patch hunks that don't have a timestamp, make less's text search a lot more robust (the old one could segfault), and fixes readlink -f when built against uClibc.

Expect 1.2.0 sometime next month, which won't be a bugfix release.

You can now download BusyBox 1.1.2, a bug fix release consisting of 11 patches backported from the development branch: Some build fixes, several fixes for mount and nfsmount, a fix for insmod on big endian systems, a fix for find -xdev, and a fix for comm. Check the file "changelog" in the tarball for more info.

The next new development release (1.2.0) is slated for June. A 1.1.3 will be released before then if more bug fixes crop up. (The new plan is to have a 1.x.0 new development release every 3 months, with 1.x.y stable bugfix only releases based on that as appropriate.)

One issue Erik Andersen wanted to resolve when handing off BusyBox maintainership to Rob Landley was license enforcement. BusyBox and uClibc's existing license enforcement efforts (pro-bono representation by Erik's father's law firm, and the Hall of Shame), haven't scaled to match the popularity of the projects. So we put our heads together and did the obvious thing: ask Pamela Jones of Groklaw for suggestions. She referred us to the fine folks at softwarefreedom.org.

As a result, we're pleased to announce that the Software Freedom Law Center has agreed to represent BusyBox and uClibc. We join a number of other free and open source software projects (such as X.org, Wine, and Plone in being represented by a fairly cool bunch of lawyers, which is not a phrase you get to use every day.

The new maintainer is Rob Landley, and the new release is BusyBox 1.1.1. Expect a "what's new" document in a few days. (Also, Erik and I have have another announcement pending...)

Update: Rather than put out an endless stream of 1.1.1.x releases, the various small fixes have been collected together into a patch, and new fixes will be appended to that as needed. Expect 1.1.2 around June.

The new stable release is BusyBox 1.1.0. It has a number of improvements, including several new applets. (It also has a few rough spots, but we're trying out a "release early, release often" strategy to see how that works. Expect 1.1.1 sometime in March.)

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