small static userspace tools for Linux.
What is this project ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is a base system / early userspace for Linux. The role of this project in a system is similar to that of busybox in small custom distributions. Boot the system, load modules, mount partitions, establish networking, provide basic services. It is aimed primarily at personal devices running GUIs however. The project builds into small statically-linked executables with no external dependencies. There are no build-time library dependencies either, not even libc. The tools can be built with any toolchain that can build the kernel. Supported targets: x86_64 arm aarch64 rv64 mips mips64 i386. (anything else will not work even if toolchain is available) This project should be mostly useful for people building their own custom systems, distribution, or maybe even just looking for tools to put into initrd. Project status ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The project is ONGOING but not yet complete or even stable. Components currently included in the package: * batch command runner / script interpreter (msh) * early-stage boot utils (switchroot, modprobe, mount) * block device locating tools (devinit, findblk) * block device encryption tools (passblk, dektool, deitool) - no fsck for any file system yet * system shutdown tool (reboot) * top-level process supervisor (svchub) * udev event monitor (udevmod) * syslog and related tools (sysklogd) * VT/DRI/input multiplexer (vtmux) and related tools * network interface monitor (ifmon) * Wi-Fi client and connection manager (wsupp) [WPA2-PSK only] * DHCP client (dhconf) * time synchronization (SNTP) service (timed) * manual/static interface setup tools (ip4cfg, ip4info) [incomplete] * simple interactive shell (cmd). * small linux-specific tools (systime, sync, dmesg etc). * application supervisors (apphub, ptyhub) * package management tools (mpac, mpkg, ctool) [incomplete] - no audio tools of any kind. With everything in place, the system should boot on kernel and minibase alone to the point where it can run X or Wayland GUI, establish internet connection and start downloading packages. Quick start ~~~~~~~~~~~ Bootable images for QEMU (buildroot, minibase, Xorg, Weston) along with the build scripts are maintained in a dedicated repository: https://github.com/arsv/minibase-br/ Get the latest sys-plain or sys-crypt from Releases, check included instructions. Inspect the build scripts, rootfs and initrd contents to understand how the system boots. The images there tend to lag behind the master branch here. However, those images should still give a pretty good idea of how the whole thing is supposed to work. How to build and run the tools ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For a proper build, run ./configure make The final target executables will be located in ./bin. To try the tools without setting up a VM, configure and build the project in development mode: ./configure devel make Most tools can be run right from their source directories. Run `make clean` when switching between devel and regular build to force the objects to be rebuilt with the new compiler flags. To build only the tools from a particular directory: make libs make -C src/wsupp This should be run after configure. Just how small exactly? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The largest individual executable so far is `wsupp`, the WPA supplicant. Statically linked for x86_64, it's about 25 KiB in size. Realistically it also needs `dhconf` (12 KiB) to work, and the client tool `wifi` (16 KiB). `msh` is about 16 KiB. `cmd` (interactive shell) is about 18 KiB. `svchub` (pid 1 for the majority of system's uptime) is under 10 KiB. `vtmux` (logind equivalent) is about 12 KiB. Why bother making it small? Because it's a side effect of making it readable and debuggable. The idea is that anyone could pick a tool from minibase, start reading it and gain complete understanding of how it works in a very reasonable amount of time, say hours. And if necessary, audit or debug it down to assembly level. A major point in achieving this is making sure there are no unnecessary wrappers, useless abstractions or dead code, which eventually translates into small executables. Contributing ~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is not a community project. Do not send patches or pull requests. If there's a bug to be fixed, or a tool that you think should be in minibase, or a target to support, open an issue. This will probably change around 1.0 release but not earlier. Licensing ~~~~~~~~~ GNU Public License version 3, see COPYING. Limited closed-box license may or may not get added in the future. The code in lib/sys, lib/bits and lib/arch constitutes the public interface of the Linux kernel. No claims are made for that code, and it should not be copyrightable anyway. If unsure, grab corresponding fragments from either the kernel sources (GPLv2) or the musl libc (MIT license). The code in lib/crypto is mostly BSD-licensed. See README there. Credits ~~~~~~~ Dietlibc and "Writing Small and Fast Software" by Felix von Leitner. https://www.fefe.de/dietlibc/diet.pdf The project was heavily influenced by busybox at early stages. Certain decision from skarnet/s6 project also played significant role. Syscall code (static inline functions with asm volatile blocks) follows musl, because musl folks got it right. The Rust coreutils project provided a great deal of inspiration, specifically by showing how not to write coreutils. See also ~~~~~~~~ https://busybox.net/ http://www.landley.net/toybox/ http://www.fefe.de/embutils/ http://skarnet.org/software/ http://suckless.org http://jdebp.eu/Softwares/nosh/ http://b0llix.net/perp/ http://u-root.tk/ https://swtch.com/plan9port/ https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/coreutils.html https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/ https://github.com/uutils/coreutils https://github.com/mit-pdos/xv6-public (userspace tools)
from https://github.com/arsv/minibase
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