What's this Busybox in Android?
What is it used?
http://www.busybox.net/about.html
http://www.busybox.net/FAQ.html
Note that the linked site is not really describing Busybox for Android but rather Busybox in general, but you should get the point from reading the material.
The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux
BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single small executable. It provides replacements for most of the utilities you usually find in GNU fileutils, shellutils, etc. 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. BusyBox provides a fairly complete environment for any small or embedded system.
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Click to collapse
I love this swiss army knife.
Related
Has anyone compiled a set of command line utilities for Android more robust than BusyBox? Coming from an iPhone, I love Android and its hackability, but I'm surprised that I haven't seen more about command line tools like the BSD Subsystem packages that provide common utils on the iPhone.
It would be incredibly convenient for me (and others, I would think) to have a more complete set of commands available. I know that some have compiled bash for Android, though I haven't seen an installable version of that either.
Any insights?
Android command line utilities archive
I maintain an archive of useful command line utilities at vkfox"dot"com"slash"android and a blog at androidcommandline"dot"apps-1and1"dot"com that describes installation and use for the NON-ROOT terminal emulator user. Included are a properly compiled busybox, popular command line interpreter/compilers (tcl, nodejs, d8, pforth, squirrelfish javascript, php-cli, python, perl, java, pforth, etc.), utilities (grep, strace, gdb, ctags, links, etc.) and other things in which I have an interest. I also describe in the blog how to use dalvikvm without root to compile and execute java and provide dexed versions of the eclipse java compiler and other java utilities for this purpose.
Other places where you can get properly (NDK) compiled tools are the applications CCTools, Terminal IDE, and other terminal based developer apps.
Use at your own risk, and don't point the gun at your own feet.
I cross-compiled mksh R39c for Android if anyone is interested : http://www.plusquenet.net/android/mksh-R39c-armel-optimized.tar.bz2
Just as an indication, filesize is now 222kb (way less than any Bash will be).
To compile it yourself you just need to launch the build with :
(if you got Voodoo lagfix cross compiler (recommanded)) CC="/path/to/lagfix/stages_builder/buildroot-2010.08/output/staging/usr/bin/arm-linux-cc" CFLAGS="-Os -static" ./Build.sh
(if you got codesourcery cross compiler) CC="/path-to-codesourcery-toolchain/bin/arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc" CFLAGS="-Os -static" ./Build.sh
Someone does care... Me!
I assume mksh is backwards compatible with running any ksh scripts? IBM has a shell curses library that works just like the C library, but can be used in shell scripts. Written in pure ksh. I want to use it...
mksh is part of AOSP, you basically “only” have to write TARGET_SHELL:=mksh into your board configuration and you get mksh as /system/bin/sh ☺
Otherwise, compilation is straight-forward, and it runs fine, dynamically linked against Bionic (no need for strange other libcs or fancy stuff).
dwallersv said:
Someone does care... Me!
I assume mksh is backwards compatible with running any ksh scripts? IBM has a shell curses library that works just like the C library, but can be used in shell scripts. Written in pure ksh. I want to use it...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you still need the info, mirabilos made the curses lib working with few patches.
dwallersv said:
I assume mksh is backwards compatible with running any ksh scripts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Somewhat. There are different ksh’en out there, you know… ☺
dwallersv said:
IBM has a shell curses library that works just like the C library, but can be used in shell scripts. Written in pure ksh. I want to use it...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I’ve attached the patches against what I could find: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-shellcurses/ had no ready-made downloads, but pointed to http://www.mtxia.com/css/Downloads/Scripts/Korn/Functions/ which led to spotting http://www.mtxia.com/js/Downloads/Scripts/Korn/Functions/visualSelect/index.shtml which includes the shell curses functions.
Tab expansion is pretty broken on BSD with xterm and GNU screen, but the same seems to work better on ssh’ing out to Linux, I wonder why, since all software involved is the same… except tput though. But it works like that and is usable. With post-R40 mksh, you can get about with even less hacks (more similarity to AT&T ksh).
Have fun!
As I sit here at 2:56am, pondering the wonders of the universe, I had a thought:
"Of all the existing applications that run on Linux, which ones do you really wish you had on your phone?"
The main ones I want to see are mostly development related and items that will let me diagnose issues on my device. The idea of utilising the plethora of existing quick hacks and useful interpreted applications (i.e. Python/Perl based) which people have put out over the years really appeals to me.
My list follows
Python 2.6+ and supporting utilities.
UI libraries such as QT and GTK.
Perl 5.10+ with full CPAN access.
Networking libraries (i.e. pcap related).
System profiling utilities (i.e. strace, lsof, valgrind).
Common daemons (i.e. cups)
Choice of package management utilities.
What other open source applications would you find useful?
Lain Hiro.P Moto said:
UI libraries such as QT and GTK.
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Click to collapse
http://code.google.com/p/android-lighthouse/
Lain Hiro.P Moto said:
Python 2.6+ and supporting utilities.
Perl 5.10+ with full CPAN access.
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Click to collapse
http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/
They aren't perfect, but quite good and will be probably better in the future.
RootFW4 - An Android Root Shell Framework
RootFW is a tool that helps Android Applications act as root. The only way for an application to perform tasks as root, is by executing shell commands as Android has no native way of doing this. However, due to different types of shell support on different devices/ROM's (Shell type, busybox/toolbox versions etc.), this is not an easy task. RootFW comes with a lot of pre-built methods to handle the most common tasks. Each method tries to support as many different environments as possible by implementing different approaches for each environment. This makes the work of app developers a lot easier.
RootFW is the largest of it's kind. It does not only provide a feature of connecting to a root shell and executing a few shell commands. It also provides a very large range of additional features and extra shell tools that are all build to make RootFW the most cross-device compatible library for Android, and very fast and easy to use in your app.
Besides the ability to connect and communicate with a shell, it provides tools for working with files, properties (Both registered and prop files), file systems, binaries, busybox, memory (RAM, SWAP, ZRAM etc), processes and so on.
Links
Source
Usage and Overview
Full Documentation
Reserved...
Thanks @dk_zero-cool. This looks interesting. I'm currently using Chainfire's SU library. I'll give it a try !
Edit: Just out of curiosity, Why LGPL ?
ukanth said:
Edit: Just out of curiosity, Why LGPL ?
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Click to collapse
GPL has got to much limitation on how and where. I use GPL most of the times, but for something like this, I think LGPL fits much better.
This could be very good. I didn't read too much though.
AutoSploit is slightly more sophisticated but only because it leverages two popular, well-supported security tools. "As the name might suggest," its author wrote on the tool's GitHub page, "AutoSploit attempts to automate the exploitation of remote hosts." To do that, the Python script uses command line interfaces and text files to extract data from the Shodan database, which is a search engine that taps into scan data on millions of Internet-connected systems. AutoSploit then runs shell commands to execute the Metasploit penetration testing framework.
The link didn't work.
This one did:
https://arstechnica.com/information...ool-sparks-fears-of-empowered-script-kiddies/
Not useful for tablet exploitation.
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