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Rob Landley	349ff52	2014-01-04 13:09:42 -0600	[diff] [blame]	1	<html><head><title>toybox roadmap</title>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	2	<!--#include file="header.html" -->
				3	<title>Toybox Roadmap</title>
				4
				5	<h2>Goals and use cases</h2>
				6
				7	<p>We have several potential use cases for a new set of command line
				8	utilities, and are using those to determine which commands to implement
				9	for Toybox's 1.0 release.</p>
				10
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	11	<p>The most interesting standards are POSIX-2008 (also known as the Single
				12	Unix Specification version 4) and the Linux Standard Base (version 4.1).
				13	The main test harness including toybox in Aboriginal Linux and if that can
				14	build itself using the result to build Linux From Scratch (version 6.8).
				15	We also aim to replace Android's Toolbox.</p>
				16
				17	<p>At a secondary level we'd like to meet other use cases. We've analyzed
				18	the commands provided by similar projects (klibc, sash, sbase, s6, embutils,
				19	nash, and beastiebox), along with various vendor configurations of busybox,
				20	and some end user requests.</p>
				21
				22	<p>Finally, we'd like to provide a good replacement for the Bash shell,
				23	which was the first program Linux ever ran and remains the standard shell
				24	of Linux no matter what Ubuntu says. This doesn't mean including the full
				25	set of Bash 4.x functionality, but does involve {various,features} beyond
				26	posix.</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	27
				28	<p>See the <a href=status.html>status page</a> for the combined list
				29	and progress towards implementing it.</p>
				30
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	31	<ul>
				32	<li><a href=#susv4>POSIX-2008/SUSv4</a></li>
				33	<li><a href=#sigh>Linux "Standard" Base</a></li>
				34	<li><a href=#dev_env>Development Environment</a></li>
				35	<li><a href=#android>Android Toolbox</a></li>
				36	<li>Miscelaneous: <a href=#klibc>klibc</a>, <a href=#sash>sash</a>,
Rob Landley	ca04c7f	2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500	[diff] [blame]	37	<a href=#sbase>sbase</a>, <a href=#s6>s6</a>...</li>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	38	</ul>
				39
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	40	<hr />
				41	<a name="standards">
				42	<h2>Use case: standards compliance.</h2>
				43
Rob Landley	571b070	2012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600	[diff] [blame]	44	<h3><a name=susv4 /><a href="#susv4">POSIX-2008/SUSv4</a></h3>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	45	<p>The best standards are the kind that describe reality, rather than
				46	attempting to impose a new one. (I.E. a good standard should document, not
				47	legislate.)</p>
				48
				49	<p>The kind of standards which describe existing reality tend to be approved by
				50	more than one standards body, such ANSI and ISO both approving C. That's why
				51	the IEEE POSIX committee's 2008 standard, the Single Unix Specification version
				52	4, and the Open Group Base Specification edition 7 are all the same standard
				53	from three sources.</p>
				54
Rob Landley	62f0021	2012-12-06 15:15:30 -0600	[diff] [blame]	55	<p>The <a href="http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/idx/utilities.html">"utilities"
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	56	section</a>
				57	of these standards is devoted to the unix command line, and are the best such
				58	standard for our purposes. (My earlier work on BusyBox was implemented with
				59	regard to SUSv3, an earlier version of this standard.)</p>
				60
				61	<h3>Problems with the standard</h3>
				62
				63	<p>Unfortunately, these standards describe a subset of reality, lacking any
				64	mention of commands such as init, login, or mount required to actually boot a
				65	system. It provides ipcrm and ipcs, but not ipcmk, so you can use System V IPC
				66	resources but not create them.</p>
				67
				68	<p>These standards also contain a large number of commands that are
				69	inappropriate for toybox to implement in its 1.0 release. (Perhaps some of
				70	these could be reintroduced in later releases, but not now.)</p>
				71
				72	<p>Starting with the full "utilities" list, we first remove generally obsolete
				73	commands (compess ed ex pr uncompress uccp uustat uux), commands for the
				74	pre-CVS "SCCS" source control system (admin delta get prs rmdel sact sccs unget
				75	val what), fortran support (asa fort77), and batch processing support (batch
				76	qalter qdel qhold qmove qmsg qrerun qrls qselect qsig qstat qsub).</p>
				77
				78	<p>Some commands are for a compiler toolchain (ar c99 cflow ctags cxref gencat
				79	iconv lex m4 make nm strings strip tsort yacc), which is outside of toybox's
				80	mandate and should be supplied externally. (Again, some of these may be
				81	revisited later, but not for toybox 1.0.)</p>
				82
				83	<p>Some commands are part of a command shell, and cannot be implemented as
				84	separate executables (alias bg cd command fc fg getopts hash jobs kill read
				85	type ulimit umask unalias wait). These may be revisited as part of a built-in
				86	toybox shell, but are not exported into $PATH via symlinks. (If you fork a
				87	child process and have it "cd" then exit, you've accomplished nothing.)</p>
				88
				89	<p>A few other commands are judgement calls, providing command-line
				90	internationalization support (iconv locale localedef), System V inter-process
				91	communication (ipcrm ipcs), and cross-tty communication from the minicomputer
				92	days (talk mesg write). The "pax" utility was supplanted by tar, "mailx" is
				93	a command line email client, and "lp" submits files for printing to... what
				94	exactly? (cups?) The standard defines crontab but not crond.</p>
				95
				96	<p>Removing all of that leaves the following commands, which toybox should
				97	implement:</p>
				98
				99	<blockquote><b>
				100	<span id=posix>
				101	at awk basename bc cal cat chgrp chmod chown cksum cmp comm cp
				102	csplit cut date dd df diff dirname du echo env expand expr false file find
				103	fold fuser getconf grep head id join kill link ln logger logname ls man
				104	mkdir mkfifo more mv newgrp nice nl nohup od paste patch pathchk printf ps
				105	pwd renice rm rmdir sed sh sleep sort split stty tabs tail tee test time
				106	touch tput tr true tty uname unexpand uniq unlink uudecode uuencode vi wc
				107	who xargs zcat
				108	</span>
				109	</b></blockquote>
				110
Rob Landley	571b070	2012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600	[diff] [blame]	111	<h3><a name=sigh /><a href="#sigh">Linux Standard Base</a></h3>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	112
				113	<p>One attempt to supplement POSIX towards an actual usable system was the
				114	Linux Standard Base. Unfortunately, the quality of this "standard" is
				115	fairly low.</p>
				116
				117	<p>POSIX allowed its standards process to be compromised
				118	by leaving things out, thus allowing IBM mainframes and Windows NT to drive
				119	a truck through the holes and declare themselves compilant. But it means what
				120	they DID standardize tends to be respected.</p>
				121
				122	<p>The Linux Standard Base's failure mode is different, they respond to
				123	pressure by including special-case crap, such as allowing Red Hat to shoehorn
Rob Landley	62f0021	2012-12-06 15:15:30 -0600	[diff] [blame]	124	RPM on the standard even though all sorts of distros (Debian, Slackware, Arch,
				125	Gentoo) don't use it and probably never will. This means anything in the LSB is
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	126	at best a suggestion: arbitrary portions of this standard are widely
				127	ignored.</p>
				128
				129	<p>The LSB does specify a <a href=http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/cmdbehav.html>list of command line
				130	utilities</a>:</p>
				131
				132	<blockquote><b>
				133	ar at awk batch bc chfn chsh col cpio crontab df dmesg du echo egrep
				134	fgrep file fuser gettext grep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups
				135	gunzip gzip hostname install install_initd ipcrm ipcs killall lpr ls
				136	lsb_release m4 md5sum mknod mktemp more mount msgfmt newgrp od passwd
				137	patch pidof remove_initd renice sed sendmail seq sh shutdown su sync
				138	tar umount useradd userdel usermod xargs zcat
				139	</b></blockquote>
				140
				141	<p>Where posix specifies one of those commands, LSB's deltas tend to be
				142	accomodations for broken tool versions which aren't up to date with the
				143	standard yet. (See <a href=http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/more.html>more</a> and <a href=http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/xargs.html>xargs</a>
				144	for examples.)</p>
				145
				146	<p>Since we've already committed to using our own judgement to skip bits of
				147	POSIX, and LSB's "judgement" in this regard is purely bug workarounds to declare
				148	various legacy tool implementations "compliant", this means we're mostly
				149	interested in the set of tools that aren't specified in posix at all.</p>
				150
				151	<p>Of these, gettext and msgfmt are internationalization, install_initd and
				152	remove_initd aren't present on ubuntu 10.04, lpr is out of scope, and
				153	lsb_release is a distro issue (it's a nice command, but the output of
				154	lsb_release -a is the name and version number of the linux distro you're
				155	running, which toybox doesn't know).</p>
				156
				157	<p>This leaves:</p>
				158
				159	<blockquote><b>
				160	<span id=lsb>
				161	chfn chsh dmesg egrep fgrep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups
				162	gunzip gzip hostname install killall md5sum
				163	mknod mktemp mount passwd pidof sendmail seq shutdown
				164	su sync tar umount useradd userdel usermod zcat
				165	</span>
				166	</b></blockquote>
				167
				168	<hr />
				169	<a name="dev_env">
Rob Landley	571b070	2012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600	[diff] [blame]	170	<h2><a href="#dev_env">Use case: provide a self-hosting development environment</a></h2>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	171
				172	<p>The following commands are enough to build the Aboriginal Linux development
				173	environment, boot it to a shell prompt, and build Linux From Scratch 6.8 under
				174	it. (Aboriginal Linux currently uses BusyBox for this, thus provides a
				175	drop-in test environment for toybox. We install both implementations side
				176	by side, redirecting the symlinks a command at a time until the older
				177	package is no longer used, and can be removed.)</p>
				178
				179	<p>This use case includes running init scripts and other shell scripts, running
				180	configure, make, and install in each package, and providing basic command line
				181	facilities such as a text editor. (It does not include a compiler toolchain or
				182	C library, those are outside the scope of this project.)</p>
				183
				184	<blockquote><b>
				185	<span id=development>
				186	bzcat cat cp dirname echo env patch rmdir sha1sum sleep sort sync
				187	true uname wc which yes zcat
				188	awk basename bzip2 chmod chown cmp cut date dd diff
				189	egrep expr find grep gzip head hostname id install ln ls
				190	mkdir mktemp mv od readlink rm sed sh tail tar touch tr uniq
				191	wget whoami xargs chgrp comm gunzip less logname man split
				192	tee test time bunzip2 chgrp chroot comm cpio dmesg
				193	dnsdomainname ftpd ftpget ftpput gunzip ifconfig init less
				194	logname losetup man mdev mount mountpoint nc pgrep pkill
				195	pwd route split stat switch_root tac umount vi
				196	</span>
				197	</b></blockquote>
				198
				199	<p>Note: Aboriginal Linux installs bash 2.05b as #!/bin/sh and its scripts
				200	require bash extensions not present in shells such as busybox ash.
				201	This means that toysh needs to supply several bash extensions _and_ work
				202	when called under the name "bash".</p>
				203
				204	<hr />
Rob Landley	571b070	2012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600	[diff] [blame]	205	<h2><a name=android /><a href="#android">Use case: Replacing Android Toolbox</a></h2>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	206
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	207	<p>Android has a policy against GPL in userspace, so even though BusyBox
				208	predates Android by many years, they couldn't use it. Instead they grabbed
				209	an old version of ash and implemented their own command line utility set
				210	called "toolbox".</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	211
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	212	<p>Toolbox doesn't have its own repository, instead it's part of Android's
				213	<a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core>system/core
				214	git repository</a> (this analysis looked at commit 51ccef27cab58).</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	215
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	216	<h3>Toolbox commands:</h3>
				217
				218	<p>According to core/toolbox/Android.mk the toolbox directory builds the
				219	following commands:</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	220
				221	<blockquote><b>
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	222	ls mount cat ps kill ln insmod rmmod lsmod ifconfig setconsole
				223	rm mkdir rmdir reboot getevent sendevent date wipe sync umount
				224	start stop notify cmp dmesg route hd dd df getprop setprop watchprops
				225	log sleep renice printenv smd chmod chown newfs_msdos netstat ioctl
				226	mv schedtop top iftop id uptime vmstat nandread ionice touch lsof md5 r
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	227	cp du grep watchdogd
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	228	</b></blockquote>
				229
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	230	<p>If selinux is enabled, you also get:</p>
				231	<blockquote><b>
				232	getenforce setenforce chcon restorecon runcon getsebool setsebool load_policy
				233	</b></blockquote>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	234
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	235	<p>The Android.mk file also refers to dynarray.c and toolbox.c as library
				236	code. This leaves the following apparently unused C files in toolbox/*.c, each
				237	of which has a command_main() function and seems to implement a standalone
				238	command:</p>
				239
				240	<blockquote><b>
				241	alarm exists lsusb readtty rotatefb setkey syren
				242	</b></blockquote>
				243
				244	<h3>Command shell (ash)</h3>
				245
				246	<p>The core/sh subdirectory contains a fork of ash 1.17, and sucks in
				247	liblinenoise to provide command line history/editing.</p>
				248
				249	<h3>Other Android core commands</h3>
				250
				251	<p>Other than the toolbox and sh directories, the currently interesting
				252	subdirectories in the core repository are fs_mgr, gpttool, init,
				253	logcat, logwrapper, mkbootimg, netcfg, run-as, and sdcard.</p>
				254
				255	<ul>
				256	<li><b>fs_mgr</b> - subset of mount</li>
				257	<li><b>gpttool</b> - subset of fdisk</li>
				258	<li><b>init</b> - Android's PID 1</li>
				259	<li><b>logcat</b> - read android log format</li>
				260	<li><b>logwrapper</b> - redirect stdio to android log</li>
				261	<li><b>mkbootimg</b> - create signed boot image</li>
				262	<li><b>netcfg</b> - network configuration (sucks in libnetutils)</li>
				263	<li><b>run-as</b> - subset of sudo</li>
				264	<li><b>sdcard</b> - FUSE wrapper to squash UID/GID/permissions to what FAT supports.</li>
				265	</ul>
				266
				267	<p>Almost all of these reinvent an existing wheel with less functionality and a
				268	different user interface. We may want to provide that interface, but
				269	implementing the full commands (mount, fdisk, init, ifconfig with dhcp,
				270	and sudo) come first.</p>
				271
				272	<p>Although logcat/logwrapper also reinvent a wheel, Android did so in the
				273	kernel and these provide an interface to that.</p>
				274
				275	<p>Also, gpttool and mkbootimg are install tools, and sdcard looks like a
				276	testing tool. These aren't a priority if android wants to use its own
				277	bespoke code to install itself.</p>
				278
				279	<h3>Analysis</h3>
				280
				281	<p>For reference, combining everything listed above, we get:</p>
				282
				283	<blockquote><b>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	284	alarm ash cat chcon chmod chown cmp cp date dd df dmesg du exists fs_mgr
				285	getenforce
				286	getevent getprop getsebool gpttool grep hd id ifconfig iftop init insmod ioctl
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	287	ionice kill ln load_policy log logcat logwrapper ls lsmod lsof lsusb md5
				288	mkbootimg mkdir mount mv nandread netcfg netstat newfs_msdos notify printenv
				289	ps r readtty reboot renice restorecon rm rmdir rmmod rotatefb route run-as
				290	runcon schedtop sdcard sendevent setconsole setenforce setkey setprop setsebool
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	291	sleep smd start stop sync syren top touch umount uptime vmstat watchdogd
				292	watchprops wipe
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	293	</b></blockquote>
				294
				295	<p>We may eventually implement all of that, but for toybox 1.0 we need to
				296	focus a bit. For our first pass, let's ignore selinux, strip out the "unlisted"
				297	commands except lsusb, and grab just logcat and logwrapper from the "core"
				298	commands (since the rest have some full/standard version providing that
				299	functionality, which we can implement a shim interface for later).</p>
				300
				301	<p>This means toybox should implement:</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	302	<blockquote><b>
				303	<span id=toolbox>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	304	cat chmod chown cmp cp date dd df dmesg du getevent getprop grep hd id ifconfig
				305	iftop insmod ioctl ionice kill ln log logcat logwrapper ls lsmod lsof lsusb md5
				306	mkdir mount mv nandread
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	307	netstat newfs_msdos notify printenv ps r reboot renice rm rmdir rmmod route
				308	schedtop sendevent setconsole setprop sleep smd start stop sync top touch
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	309	umount uptime vmstat watchprops watchdogd wipe
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	310	</span>
Rob Landley	c26ca6e	2013-01-31 04:05:56 -0600	[diff] [blame]	311	</b></blockquote>
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	312
				313	<p>The following Toolbox commands are already covered in previous
				314	sections of this analysis:</p>
				315
				316	<blockquote><b>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	317	cat chmod chown cmp cp date dd df dmesg du grep id ifconfig insmod kill ln ls
				318	lsmod mkdir mount mv ps renice rm rmdir rmmod route sleep sync top touch umount
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	319	</b></blockquote>
				320
				321	<p>Which leaves the following commands as new from Toolbox:</p>
				322
				323	<blockquote><b>
				324	getevent getprop hd iftop ioctl ionice log lsof nandread netstat
				325	newfs_msdos notify printenv r reboot schedtop sendevent setconsole
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	326	setprop smd start stop top uptime vmstat watchprops watchdogd wipe
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	327	</b></blockquote>
				328
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	329	<hr /><a name=klibc />
Rob Landley	934b2d3	2013-05-10 18:54:14 -0500	[diff] [blame]	330	<h2>klibc:</h2>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	331
				332	<p>Long ago some kernel developers came up with a project called
				333	<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klibc>klibc</a>.
				334	After a decade of development it still has no web page or HOWTO,
				335	and nobody's quite sure if the license is BSD or GPL. It inexplicably
				336	<a href=http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-center/perl-isnt-going-anywhere-better-or-worse-211580>requires perl to build</a>, and seems like an ideal candidate for
				337	replacement.</p>
				338
				339	<p>In addition to a C library even less capable than bionic (obsoleted by
				340	musl), klibc builds a random assortment of executables to run init scripts
				341	with. There's no multiplexer command, these are individual executables:</p>
				342
				343	<blockquote><p>
				344	cat chroot cpio dd dmesg false fixdep fstype gunzip gzip halt ipconfig kill
				345	kinit ln losetup ls minips mkdir mkfifo mknodes
				346	mksyntax mount mv nfsmount nuke pivot_root poweroff readlink reboot resume
				347	run-init sh sha1hash sleep sync true umount uname zcat
				348	</p></blockquote>
				349
				350	<p>To get that list, build klibc according to the instructions (I
				351	<a href=http://landley.net/notes-2013.html#23-01-2013>looked at</a> version
				352	2.0.2 and did cd klibc-*; ln -s /output/of/kernel/make/headers_install
				353	linux; make) then <b>echo $(for i in $(find . -type f); do file $i \| grep -q
				354	executable && basename $i; done \| grep -v '[.]g$' \| sort -u)</b> to find
				355	executables, then eliminated the .so files and .shared duplicates.</p>
				356
				357	<p>Some of those binaries are build-time tools that don't get installed,
				358	which removes mknodes, mksyntax, sha1hash, and fixdep from the list.
				359	(And sha1hash is just an unpolished sha1sum anyway.)</p>
				360
				361	<p>The run-init command is more commonly called switch_root, nuke is just
				362	"rm -rf -- $@", and minips is more commonly called "ps". I'm not doing aliases
				363	for the oddball names.</p>
				364
				365	<p>Yet more stale forks of dash and gzip sucked in here (see "dubious
				366	license terms" above), adding nothing to the other projects we've looked at.
				367	But we still need sh, gunzip, gzip, and zcat to replace this package.</p>
				368
				369	<p>By the time I did the analysis toybox already had cat, chroot, dmesg, false,
				370	kill, ln, losetup, ls, mkdir, mkfifo, readlink, rm, switch_root, sleep, sync,
				371	true, and uname.</p>
				372
				373	<p>The low hanging fruit is cpio, dd, ps, mv, and pivot_root.</p>
				374
				375	<p>The "kinit" command is another gratuitous rename, it's init running as PID 1.
				376	The halt, poweroff, and reboot commands work with it.</p>
				377
				378	<p>I've got mount and umount queued up already, fstype and nfsmount go with
				379	those. (And probably smbmount and p9mount, but this hasn't got one. Those
				380	are all about querying for login credentials, probably workable into the
				381	base mount command.)</p>
				382
				383	<p>The ipconfig command here has a built in dhcp client, so it's ifconfig
				384	and dhcpcd and maybe some other stuff.</p>
				385
				386	<p>The resume command is... weird. It finds a swap partition and reads data
				387	from it into a /proc file, something the kernel is capable of doing itself.
				388	(Even though the klibc author
				389	<a href=http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/klibc/2006-June/001748.html>attempted
				390	to remove</a> that capability from the kernel, current kernel/power/hibernate.c
				391	still parses "resume=" on the command line). And yet various distros seem to
				392	make use of klibc for this>
				393	Given the history of swsusp/hibernate (and
				394	<a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/333007>TuxOnIce</a>
				395	and <a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/242107>kexec jump</a>) I've lost track
				396	of the current state of the art here. Ah, Documentation/power/userland-swsusp.txt
				397	has the API docs, and <a href=http://suspend.sf.net>here's a better
				398	tool</a>...</p>
				399
				400	<p>So the list of things actually in klibc are:</p>
				401
				402	<blockquote><b>
Rob Landley	c166faf	2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500	[diff] [blame]	403	<span id=klibc_cmd>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	404	cat chroot dmesg false kill ln losetup ls mkdir mkfifo readlink rm switch_root
				405	sleep sync true uname
				406
				407	cpio dd ps mv pivot_root
				408	mount nfsmount fstype umount
				409	sh gunzip gzip zcat
				410	kinit halt poweroff reboot
				411	ipconfig
				412	resume
				413	</span>
				414	</b></blockquote>
				415
				416	<hr />
				417	<a name=sash />
				418	<h2>Stand-Alone Shell</h2>
				419
				420	<p>Wikipedia has <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-alone_shell>a good
				421	summary of sash</a>, with links. The original Stand-Alone Shell project reached
				422	a stopping point, and then <a href=http://www.baiti.net/sash>"sash plus
				423	patches"</a> extended it a bit further. The result is a megabyte executable
				424	that provides 40 commands.</p>
				425
				426	<p>Sash is a shell with built-in commands. It doesn't have a multiplexer
				427	command, meaning "sash ls -l" doesn't work (you have to go "sash -c 'ls -l'").
				428	</p>
				429
				430	<p>The list of commands can be obtained via building it and doing
				431	"echo help \| ./sash \| awk '{print $1}' \| sed 's/^-//' \| xargs echo", which
				432	gives us:</p>
				433
				434	<blockquote><b>
				435	alias aliasall ar cd chattr chgrp chmod chown cmp cp chroot dd echo ed exec
				436	exit file find grep gunzip gzip help kill losetup losetup ln ls lsattr mkdir
				437	mknod more mount mv pivot_root printenv prompt pwd quit rm rmdir setenv source
				438	sum sync tar touch umask umount unalias where
				439	</b></blockquote>
				440
				441	<p>Plus sh because it's a shell. A dozen or so commands can only sanely be
				442	implemented as shell builtins (alias aliasall cd exec exit prompt quit setenv
				443	source umask unalias), where is an alias for which, and at triage time toybox
				444	already has chgrp, chmod, chown, cmp, cp, chroot, echo, help, kill, losetup,
				445	ln, ls, mkdir, mknod, printenv, pwd, rm, rmdir, sync, and touch.</p>
				446
				447	<p>This leaves:</p>
				448
				449	<blockquote><b>
				450	<span id=sash_cmd>
				451	ar chattr dd ed file find grep gunzip gzip lsattr more mount mv pivot_root
				452	sh sum tar umount
				453	</span>
				454	</b></blockquote>
				455
				456	<p>(For once, this project doesn't include a fork of gzip, instead
				457	it sucks in -lz from the host.)</p>
				458
				459	<hr />
				460	<a name=sbase />
				461	<h2>sbase:</h2>
				462
				463	<p>It's <a href=http://git.suckless.org/sbase>on suckless</a>. So far it's
				464	implemented:</p>
				465
				466	<blockquote><p>
Rob Landley	c166faf	2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500	[diff] [blame]	467	<span id=sbase_cmd>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	468	basename cat chmod chown cksum cmp cp date dirname echo false fold grep head
				469	kill ln ls mc mkdir mkfifo mv nl nohup pwd rm seq sleep sort tail tee test
				470	touch true tty uname uniq wc yes
				471	</span>
				472	</p></blockquote>
				473
				474	<p>And has a TODO list:</p>
				475
				476	<blockquote><p>
Rob Landley	c166faf	2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500	[diff] [blame]	477	<span id=sbase_cmd>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	478	cal chgrp chvt comm cut df diff du env expand expr id md5sum nice paste
				479	printenv printf readlink rmdir seq sha1sum split sync test tr unexpand unlink
				480	who
				481	</span>
				482	</p></blockquote>
				483
				484	<p>At triage time, of the first list I still need to do: fold grep mc mv nl. Of
				485	the second list: diff expr paste printf split test tr unexpand who.</p>
				486
				487	<hr />
				488	<a name=s6 />
				489	<h2>s6</h2>
				490
				491	<p>The website <a href=http://skarnet.org/software/>skarnet</a> has a bunch
				492	of small utilities as part of something called "s6". This includes the
				493	<a href=http://skarnet.org/software/s6-portable-utils>s6-portabile-utils</a>
				494	and the <a href=http://skarnet.org/software/s6-linux-utils>s6-linux-utils</a>.
				495	</p>
				496
				497	<p>Both packages rely on multiple bespoke external libraries without which
				498	they can't compile. The source is completely uncommented and doesn't wrap at
				499	80 characters. Doing a find for *.c files brings up the following commands:</p>
				500
				501	<blockquote><b>
				502	<span id=s6>
				503	basename cat chmod chown chroot clock cut devd dirname echo env expr false
				504	format-filter freeramdisk grep halt head hiercopy hostname linkname ln
				505	logwatch ls maximumtime memoryhog mkdir mkfifo mount nice nuke pause
				506	pivotchroot poweroff printenv quote quote-filter reboot rename rmrf sleep
				507	sort swapoff swapon sync tail test touch true umount uniquename unquote
				508	unquote-filter update-symlinks
				509	</span>
				510	</b></blockquote>
				511
				512	<p>Triage: memoryhog isn't even listed on the website nor does it have
				513	a documentation file, clock seems like a subset
				514	of date, devd is some sort of netlink wrapper that spawns its command line
				515	every time it gets a message (maybe this is meant to implement part of
				516	udev/mdev?), format-filter is sort of awk's '{print $2}' function split out
				517	into its own command, hiercopy a subset of "cp -r", maximumtime is something
				518	I implemented as a shell script (more/timeout.sh in Aboriginal Linux),
				519	nuke isn't the same as klibc (this one's "kill SIG -1" only with hardwared
				520	SIG options), pause is a program that literally waits to be killed (I
				521	generally sleep 999999999 which is a little over 30 years),
				522	pivotchroot is a subset of switch_root, rmrf is rm -rf...</p>
				523
				524	<p>I see "nuke" resurface, and if "rmrf" wasn't also here I might think
				525	klibc had a point.</b>
				526
				527	<blockquote>
				528	basename cat chmod chown chroot cut dirname echo env expr false
				529	freeramdisk grep halt head hostname linkname ln
				530	logwatch ls mkdir mkfifo mount nice
				531	pivotchroot poweroff printenv quote quote-filter reboot rename sleep
				532	sort swapoff swapon sync tail test touch true umount uniquename unquote
				533	unquote-filter update-symlinks
				534	</blockquote>
				535
				536
				537	<hr />
				538	<a name=nash />
				539	<h2>nash:</h2>
				540
				541	<p>Red Hat's nash was part of its "mkinitrd" package, replacement for a shell
				542	and utilities on the boot floppy back in the 1990's (the same general idea
				543	as BusyBox, developed independently). Red Hat discontinued nash development
				544	in 2010, replacing it with dracut (which collects together existing packages,
				545	including busybox).</p>
				546
				547	<p>I couldn't figure out how to beat source code out of
				548	<a href=http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/git/mkinitrd>Fedora's current git</a>
				549	repository. The last release version that used it was Fedora Core 12
				550	which has <a href=http://archive.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/12/Fedora/source/SRPMS/mkinitrd-6.0.93-1.fc12.src.rpm>a source rpm</a>
				551	that can be unwound with "rpm2cpio mkinitrd.src.rpm \| cpio -i -d -H newc
				552	--no-absolute-filenames" and in there is a mkinitrd-6.0.93.tar.bz2 which
				553	has the source.</p>
				554
				555	<p>In addition to being a bit like a command shell, the nash man page lists the
				556	following commands:</p>
				557
				558	<blockquote><p>
				559	access echo find losetup mkdevices mkdir mknod mkdmnod mkrootdev mount
				560	pivot_root readlink raidautorun setquiet showlabels sleep switchroot umount
				561	</p></blockquote>
				562
				563	<p>Oddly, the only occurrence of the string pivot_root in the nash source code
				564	is in the man page, the command isn't there. (It seems to have been removed
				565	when the underscoreless switchroot went in.)</p>
				566
				567	<p>A more complete list seems to be the handlers[] array in nash.c:</p>
				568
				569	<blockquote><p>
				570	access buildEnv cat cond cp daemonize dm echo exec exit find kernelopt
				571	loadDrivers loadpolicy mkchardevs mkblktab mkblkdevs mkdir mkdmnod mknod
				572	mkrootdev mount netname network null plymouth hotplug killplug losetup
				573	ln ls raidautorun readlink resume resolveDevice rmparts setDeviceEnv
				574	setquiet setuproot showelfinterp showlabels sleep stabilized status switchroot
				575	umount waitdev
				576	</p></blockquote>
				577
				578	<p>This list is nuts: "plymouth" is an alias for "null" which is basically
				579	"true" (which thie above list doesn't have). Things like buildEnv and
				580	loadDrivers are bespoke Red Hat behavior that might as well be hardwired in
				581	to nash's main() without being called.</p>
				582
				583	<p>Instead of eliminating items
				584	from the list with an explanation for each, I'm just going to cherry pick
				585	a few: the device mapper (dm, raidautorun) is probably interesting,
				586	hotplug (may be obsolete due to kernel changes that now load firmware
				587	directly), and another "resume" ala klibc.</p>
				588
				589	<p>But mostly: I don't care about this one. And neither does Red Hat anymore.</p>
				590
Rob Landley	ca04c7f	2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500	[diff] [blame]	591	<p>Verdict: ignore</p>
				592
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	593	<hr />
				594	<a name=beastiebox />
				595	<h2>Beastiebox</h2>
				596
				597	<p>Back in 2008, the BSD guys vented some busybox-envy
				598	<a href=http://beastiebox.sourceforge.net>on sourceforge</a>. Then stopped.
				599	Their repository is still in CVS, hasn't been touched in years, it's a giant
				600	hairball of existing code sucked together. (The web page says the author
				601	is aware of crunchgen, but decided to do this by hand anyway. This is not
				602	a collection of new code, it's a katamari of existing code rolled up in a
				603	ball.)</p>
				604
				605	<p>Combining the set of commands listed on the web page with the set of
				606	man pages in the source gives us:</P>
				607
				608	<blockquote><p>
				609	[ cat chmod cp csh date df disklabel dmesg echo ex fdisk fsck fsck_ffs getty
				610	halt hostname ifconfig init kill less lesskey ln login ls lv mksh more mount
				611	mount_ffs mv pfctl ping poweroff ps reboot rm route sed sh stty sysctl tar test
				612	traceroute umount vi wiconfig
				613	</p></blockquote>
				614
				615	<p>Apparently lv is the missing link ed and vi, copyright 1982-1997 (do not
				616	want), ex is another obsolete vi mode, lesskey is "used to
				617	specify a set of key bindings to be used with less", and csh is a shell they
				618	sucked in, [ is an alias for test. Several more bsd-isms that don't have Linux
				619	equivalents (even in the ubuntu "install this package" search) are
				620	disklabel, fsck_ffs, mount_ffs, and pfctl. And wiconfig is a wavelan interface
				621	network card driver utility. Subtracting all that and the commands toybox
				622	already implements at triage time, we get:</p>
				623
				624	<blockquote><p>
				625	<span id=beastiebox_cmd>
				626	fdisk fsck getty halt ifconfig init kill less mksh more mount mv ping poweroff
				627	ps reboot route sed sh stty sysctl tar test traceroute umount vi
				628	</span>
				629	</p></blockquote>
				630
				631	<p>Not a hugely interesting list, but eh.</p>
				632
Rob Landley	ca04c7f	2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500	[diff] [blame]	633	<p>Verdict: ignore</p>
				634
				635	<hr />
				636	<a name=BsdBox />
				637	<h2>BsdBox</h2>
				638
				639	<p>Somebody decided to do a <a href=https://wiki.freebsd.org/AdrianChadd/BsdBox>multicall binary for freebsd</a>.</p>
				640
				641	<p>They based it on crunchgen, a tool that glues existing programs together
				642	into an archive and uses the name to execute the right one. It has no
				643	simplification or code sharing benefits whatsoever, it's basically an
				644	archiver that produces executables.</p>
				645
				646	<p>That's about where I stopped reading.</p>
				647
				648	<p>Verdict: ignore.</p>
				649
				650	<hr />
				651	<a name=slowaris />
				652	<h2>OpenSolaris Busybox</h2>
				653
				654	<p>Somebody <a href=http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+busybox/>wrote
				655	a wiki page</a> saying that Busybox for OpenSolaris would be a good idea.</p>
				656
				657	<p>The corresponding "files" tab is an auto-generated stub. The project never
				658	even got as far as suggesting commands to include before Oracle discontinued
				659	OpenSolaris.</p>
				660
				661	<p>Verdict: ignore.</p>
				662
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	663	<hr />
				664	<h2>Requests:</h2>
				665
				666	<p>The following additional commands have been requested by various users:</p>
				667	<blockquote><b>
				668	<span id=request>
Rob Landley	64b6319	2013-12-31 09:01:32 -0600	[diff] [blame]	669	dig freeramdisk getty halt hexdump hwclock klogd modprobe ping ping6 pivot_root
Rob Landley	ca04c7f	2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500	[diff] [blame]	670	poweroff readahead rev sfdisk sudo syslogd taskset telnet telnetd tracepath
				671	traceroute unzip usleep vconfig zip free login modinfo unshare netcat help w
Rob Landley	64b6319	2013-12-31 09:01:32 -0600	[diff] [blame]	672	ntpd iwconfig iwlist rdate
Rob Landley	7dbb982	2014-02-21 22:24:02 -0600	[diff] [blame^]	673	dos2unix unix2dos catv clear
				674	pmap realpath setsid timeout truncate
				675	mkswap swapon swapoff
				676	count oneit fstype
				677	acpi blkid eject pwdx
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	678	</span>
				679	</b></blockquote>
				680
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