Root what exactly is busybox

[auslet]

What exactly is busybox and what does it do?

 

[scary alien]

What exactly is busybox and what does it do?

Busybox for the Android platform is a set of Unix tools / commands that has been compiled for use on your phone. These are not usually full-featured versions of the Unix commands found on the larger platforms counterparts, but they are pretty close and useful nonetheless.

Soft links to the various commands are also sometimes created in /system/bin or /system/xbin by the root tool used to install the busybox.

Here's screen capture of the output of "busybox --help" on my phone:

# [B]busybox --help[/B]
busybox --help
BusyBox v1.17.2 (2010-09-05 03:37:08 CDT) multi-call binary.
Copyright (C) 1998-2009 Erik Andersen, Rob Landley, Denys Vlasenko
and others. Licensed under GPLv2.
See source distribution for full notice.
Usage: busybox [function] [arguments]...
   or: function [arguments]...
        BusyBox is a multi-call binary that combines many common Unix
        utilities into a single executable.  Most people will create a
        link to busybox for each function they wish to use and BusyBox
        will act like whatever it was invoked as.
Currently defined functions:
        [, [[, acpid, addgroup, adduser, adjtimex, arp, arping, ash, awk,
        basename, beep, blkid, bootchartd, brctl, bunzip2, bzcat, bzip2, cal,
        cat, catv, chat, chattr, chgrp, chmod, chown, chpasswd, chpst, chroot,
        chrt, chvt, cksum, clear, cmp, comm, cp, cpio, crond, crontab, cryptpw,
        cttyhack, cut, date, dc, dd, deallocvt, delgroup, deluser, depmod,
        devmem, df, dhcprelay, diff, dirname, dmesg, dnsd, dnsdomainname,
        dos2unix, du, dumpkmap, dumpleases, echo, ed, egrep, eject, env,
        envdir, envuidgid, ether-wake, expand, expr, fakeidentd, false, fbset,
        fbsplash, fdflush, fdformat, fdisk, fgconsole, fgrep, find, findfs,
        flock, fold, free, freeramdisk, fsck, fsck.minix, fsync, ftpd, ftpget,
        ftpput, fuser, getopt, getty, grep, gunzip, gzip, halt, hd, hdparm,
        head, hexdump, hostid, hostname, httpd, hush, hwclock, id, ifconfig,
        ifdown, ifenslave, ifplugd, ifup, inetd, init, insmod, install, ionice,
        ip, ipaddr, ipcalc, ipcrm, ipcs, iplink, iproute, iprule, iptunnel,
        kbd_mode, kill, killall, killall5, klogd, last, length, less, linux32,
        linux64, linuxrc, ln, loadfont, loadkmap, logger, login, logname,
        logread, losetup, lpd, lpq, lpr, ls, lsattr, lsmod, lspci, lsusb,
        lzcat, lzma, lzop, lzopcat, makedevs, makemime, man, md5sum, mdev,
        mesg, microcom, mkdir, mkdosfs, mke2fs, mkfifo, mkfs.ext2, mkfs.minix,
        mkfs.vfat, mknod, mkpasswd, mkswap, mktemp, modinfo, modprobe, more,
        mount, mountpoint, mt, mv, nameif, nc, netstat, nice, nmeter, nohup,
        nslookup, ntpd, od, openvt, passwd, patch, pgrep, pidof, ping, ping6,
        pipe_progress, pivot_root, pkill, popmaildir, poweroff, printenv,
        printf, ps, pscan, pwd, raidautorun, rdate, rdev, readahead, readlink,
        readprofile, realpath, reboot, reformime, renice, reset, resize, rev,
        rm, rmdir, rmmod, route, rpm, rpm2cpio, rtcwake, run-parts, runlevel,
        runsv, runsvdir, rx, script, scriptreplay, sed, sendmail, seq, setarch,
        setconsole, setfont, setkeycodes, setlogcons, setsid, setuidgid, sh,
        sha1sum, sha256sum, sha512sum, showkey, slattach, sleep, smemcap,
        softlimit, sort, split, start-stop-daemon, stat, strings, stty, su,
        sulogin, sum, sv, svlogd, swapoff, swapon, switch_root, sync, sysctl,
        syslogd, tac, tail, tar, tcpsvd, tee, telnet, telnetd, test, tftp,
        tftpd, time, timeout, top, touch, tr, traceroute, traceroute6, true,
        tty, ttysize, tunctl, udhcpc, udhcpd, udpsvd, umount, uname, unexpand,
        uniq, unix2dos, unlzma, unlzop, unxz, unzip, uptime, usleep, uudecode,
        uuencode, vconfig, vi, vlock, volname, wall, watch, watchdog, wc, wget,
        which, who, whoami, xargs, xz, xzcat, yes, zcat, zcip
#

So, you can see there's a lot there.

Cheers!