BusyBox is a handy utility tool that provides a collection of several stripped-down UNIX shell command-line tools and tiny Linux programs in a single executable file of approximately 2 MB. It runs in multiple environments such as Android, Linux, FreeBSD, and so many others. BusyBox was specifically created for embedded devices with very limited memory and storage space.

BusyBox is dubbed a Swiss Army knife tool and provides minimalistic replacements for shell utilities that you would find in GNU shellutils, fileutils, and coreutils. It can also be found in Linux distributions with a small footprint such as Alpine Linux.

In this guide, we will help you get started with Busybox on Linux. We will also learn how to install and use it effectively.

How to Install BusyBox on Linux

There are a number of ways of installing BusyBox on a Linux system. Starting with Debian / Ubuntu-based distributions, you can use the APT package manager as follows.

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install busybox

install-busybox-apt-command

For Other distributions such as ArchLinux, Fedora, RHEL, CentOS , Rocky and AlmaLinux, you will have to install it from a  prebuilt binary file. So, first, download the Busybox 64-bit binary file as follows.

$ wget https://busybox.net/downloads/binaries/1.31.0-defconfig-multiarch-musl/busybox-x86_64

Next, give it a simpler name. In my case, I renamed it to  busybox

$ mv busybox-x86_64  busybox

Then assign it execute permissions using the chmod command.

$ chmod +x busybox

To run BusyBox and check out the version , usage and currently supported functions, run the command:

$ busybox

busybox-command-ubuntu

BusyBox is also available as a Docker container image. But first, ensure that you have already installed Docker.

To pull the BusyBox image, run the command:

$ sudo docker pull busybox

To confirm the existence of the image, execute:

$ sudo docker images

busybox-docker-container-image

Accessing BusyBox shell

To access the BusyBox shell from the BusyBox container image, simply run the command as follows.

$ sudo docker run -it --rm busybox

From here, you can start running basic Linux commands as you would normally do on a Linux terminal.

busybox-container-shell

Alternatively, if you installed BusyBox from the binary file or using the APT package manager (In case of Debian and Ubuntu ) you can gain access to the shell as follows.

$ busybox sh

busybox-console-ubuntu-debian

Trying out BusyBox

To start using BusyBox’s tools or applets you need to precede the commands with the busybox keyword while in the BusyBox shell. The syntax is:

$ busybox command

There are about 400 commands and programs that are available for use: You can check that using the command:

$ busybox --list | wc -l

busybox-list-command

To list the files and folders in the current directory path, simple run:

$ busybox ls -l

busybox-ls-command

Also, you can try pinging a domain name such as google.com

$ busybox ping -c google.com

busybox-ping-command

Use HTTPD webserver on BusyBox

One of the tiny Linux programs that BusyBox provides is the httpd webserver. You can confirm this by running the command:

$ busybox --list | grep httpd

busybox-httpd-server

To spin up a quick webserver, access the Busybox shell as the root user:

# busybox sh

And activate the webserver as shown.

# busybox httpd

You can confirm that the webserver process is running:

# ps -ef | grep httpd

busybox-start-httpd-server

Next, we are going to create a simple HTML file that we will use to test the webserver.

# busybox vi index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
Welcome to BusyBox !
</body>
</html>

Now, open your browser and browse your server’s localhost address. This is what you will get.

busybox-httpd-server-web-page

Conclusion

There’s so much more you can do with BusyBox.  Hopefully, we have given you the basic knowledge that you need to get started out with BusyBox. We look forward to your feedback and queries.

Read Also: How to Create Backup with tar Command in Linux

The post How to get started with BusyBox on Linux first appeared on LinuxTechi.

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