The file /bin/bb installed by the sys-apps/busybox-1.1.0 ebuild always says "applet not found" whenever it is run, no matter what arguments I give it. It works just fine if it is renamed "busybox" first, and also like busybox it works as particular utilities if given their names. For example, I can make ~/busybox a symbolic link to /bin/bb and then ~/busybox works great. The problem is, how are you going to rename it if crucial system files get borked? Suppose, just for the sake of example, that /lib/ld-linux.so.2 gets borked? Then you won't be able to run /bin/busybox, which is the dynamically linked version. But /bin/bb, the statically linked version, won't be any use to you because it has to be renamed "busybox" before it can be used. And if crucial files have been borked then dynamically linked programs like "cat", "cp", "mv", etc., won't work either. So /bin/bb won't be useful as an emergency recovery tool in this case. Two possible solutions occur to me: 1. Change busybox so that it also recognizes the name "bb" as equivalent to "busybox". This way the statically linked version works where it is now. 2. Install the statically linked version under the name "busybox" in some other directory. I got worried about this because I'm looking at having to do something dangerous that might bork my C library and I was trying to see how I would revert. I thought, aha, I'll just tar up all the files and use busybox to untar them if needed, but this depends on the statically linked busybox itself working. Someone else who didn't check in advance could get wedged in such a situation. 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MACHTYPE="i386" MAIL="/var/mail/jbw" MAKEOPTS="" MANPATH="/usr/local/share/man:/usr/share/man:/usr/share/binutils-data/i686-pc-linux-gnu/2.16.1/man:/usr/share/gcc-data/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.4.5/man::/opt/blackdown-jdk-1.4.2.03/man" MFINPUTS=":/extra/home/jbw/church/lib/tex/fonts//" OPENGL_PROFILE="xorg-x11" OSTYPE="linux" PAGER="less" PATH="/home/jbw/bin:/home/jbw/church/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/opt/bin:/usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu/gcc-bin/3.4.5:/opt/ghc/bin:/opt/blackdown-jdk-1.4.2.03/bin:/opt/blackdown-jdk-1.4.2.03/jre/bin:/usr/games/bin:/extra/home/jbw/church/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/games" PERL5LIB="/home/jbw/perllib:/extra/home/jbw/church/lib/perl" PGPPATH="/home/jbw/.pgp" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_ARCHLIST="ppc s390 amd64 ppc64 m68k arm sparc sh mips ia64 alpha ppc-macos hppa x86" PORTAGE_BINHOST_CHUNKSIZE="3000" PORTAGE_CALLER="emerge" PORTAGE_ELOG_CLASSES="warn error log" PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM="save" PORTAGE_GID="250" PORTAGE_MASTER_PID="10481" 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bb is a standalone shell, not an applet pass through like `busybox`
He is probably missing the bb alias in busybox. A remerge of busybox should fix the problem you notice joe
(In reply to comment #2) > He is probably missing the bb alias in busybox. > > A remerge of busybox should fix the problem you notice joe This comment was helpful! Thanks very much! It turns out that on 2006-02-04, three days after sys-apps/busybox-1.1.0 ebuild was created, the bug I encountered was fixed in the ebuild without bumping the version or making an entry in ChangeLog. As a result, anyone who has emerged busybox in the three day period from 2006-02-01 to 2006-02-04 has an unworking /bin/bb and has no easy way of knowing it. Because having a non-working statically linked /bin/bb can prevent busybox from being used to recover from certain kinds of failures, like borking crucial shared libraries, I think this deserves a version bump so that people who unknowingly emerged busybox during the bad three days will get their copy fixed.
(In reply to comment #1) > bb is a standalone shell, not an applet pass through like `busybox` I'm not sure whether you realize this, but the only differences between /bin/bb and /bin/busybox are: 1. /bin/bb is statically linked while /bin/busybox is dynamically linked. 2. They have different names. I just noticed that you marked this bug as INVALID. Do you really mean this? This seems quite a genuine bug to me. Anyone who emerged busybox in the bad 3-day period has an unworking /bin/bb.
> I'm not sure whether you realize this, but the only differences > between /bin/bb and /bin/busybox are: i know whats going on, i wrote the code and the ebuild ... your assumptions here are wrong `bb` is not meant to be used like `busybox` and in fact it wont work like that ... running `bb` just executes a shell like `ash` running say `bb ls` and `busybox ls` are not the samething ... `bb ls` means execute a script named 'ls' while `busybox ls` means execute the 'ls' applet the bug is closed INVALID because your report made it sound like you expected the behavior of `bb` to be same thing as `busybox` ... if that's the case, the bug stays closed no revbump happened because i didnt really expect anyone to notice, but if it became a problem, i would simply push out the fix
