NB: I'm starting a new thread to focus the discussion back on busybox.

Busybox is a lightweight toolkit of standard linux command line tools. See http://busybox.net for more information.

Every nokia tablet ships with busybox installed. However, the nokia supplied version includes only a subset of the available tools (referred to as applets) often without all of the available features. I have created some alternative "testing" packages with many more applets and features available here:

http://garage.maemo.org/projects/busybox-test/
(note that you install and run these packages at your own risk, including the risk of needing to reflash your tablet -- i recommend keeping an eye on the thread or the project page if you install them)

to try out the alternative packages, goto the files section and download the deb with the appropriate OS version (OS2007 or OS2008) flagged with "ALTERNATE". Note that you cannot uninstall busybox because it would break the system. To get the original busybox back, download the appropriate OS versioned deb flagged with "ORIGINAL".

Sources for both versions are checked into the subversion repository (kind of redundant because my changes are minor). The OS2007 version is based on busybox 1.4.1 and the 2008 ver is based on 1.6.1. Both include Nokia patches.

Why?

Having acess to a full featured busybox is useful in its own right. More importantly, Nokia developers are willing to consider adding more applets to the busybox that ships with the OS (Eero Tamminen asked for a bug report with a detailed request, which I will get to after i get some feedback here). They are most likely to add a handful of core utils because they would rather provide the option to download full versions of non-core utils as separate packages than lock people into limited busybox versions. You can look at the file debian/config-deb in the sources to figure out what is core.

Community help is appreciated. Anyone can help by:
* testing the extra busybox applets to see which ones work well and which ones don't
* listing "must have" applets
* contributing to packaging newer versions busybox or version with different applet mixes
* report package issues
* report errors in this post

If anyone wants write access to the project repo let me know.


Notes

1. You may need to uninstall some packages that supply commands that the "testing" version of busybox also supplies (for e.g. wget and less)

2. The "testing" busybox package uses a slightly different version string to the original. This will generate dpkg/apt warnings because one package depends explicitly on the original version: .
I'll look into a resolution for this.

3. For some applets you need to be root for them to work (for example, ping - but this is also true in full versions of ping AFAICT). The busybox sanctioned workaround is the set the SUID bit on busybox with:
I have not done this in the package because of potential security issues (effectively you are giving the entire binary root access and not necessarily the ones that need it -- busybox claims to restrict root access to only those applets that need it, but I'm leaving it off to be safe for now)

Hi,

Alternate version for OS2008 can't be installed. My N810 says that package is incompatible.

Taguapire.

Try to install this package from command line (dpkg -i smth.deb) from root. This "test" version may conflict with some utilities. In my case I removed wget and less before successful install.

Thank you for this package. It is very useful. But after some upgrade I got a next error message:

You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
osso-software-version: Depends: busybox (= 3:1.6.1.legal-1osso7) but 3:1.6.1.legal-1osso7.max is installed

I think, your variant must have the same version as the original one.

thanks egres. you're right: another package depends on busybox with the particular version string "3:1.6.1.legal-1osso7". I think it is just a warning though and shouldn't affect anything. i don't really like the idea of using an identical version string, but what do others think?

there might be another way to package the extra busybox components without conflicting with the original package (just redirecting some symlinks to an alternate binary)

if wget and less are in the maemo repos, then that's a good reason to remove them from busybox.

I think that you should really not take the same version name otherwise package management will get really messy!!

What's this osso-software-version anyway? It doesn't exist in scratchbox.
Remove osso-software-version?

I suspect removing that osso-softwre-version package may permit some major screwup in upgrades afterward... a friend couldn't pair a keyboard after dist-upgrading which asked to trash this. After reflashing it worked.

more about osso-system-version here: http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail//ma...ry/013750.html
(see the original e-mail by Markus Vollmer at the bottom of the thread)

Bottom line: if you want to tinker with essential system packages you probably have to remove osso-system-version (although I haven't). That might create issues in later system upgrades, as R-R says.

Remove it and add your own.
Your own should provide you the freedom to install your busybox but still keep locking the rest. Then it won't break anything more than what busybox itself might break ( and this is only after installing it that we can know..)
At the moment, you have an uninstallable package. Either you don't publish or you make everything so that it installs?

For testing, you can ask power users or developers to install it with dpkg and setting the correct option to don't care about conflicts and dependency breaking. It should install.