Welcome to Instant Optimizing Embedded System Using BusyBox.
BusyBox is a popular Unix toolbox; it integrates tiny versions of many common Unix utilities. It can be easily configured and compiled into a small, single-binary executable file. The built-in utilities are also known as BusyBox applets; they can be easily installed on an embedded system to add functionality or optimize performance. They can together also be used to build new embedded systems with extra device nodes, configuration files, and a Linux kernel.
This book will walk you through the configuration, compiling, and installation of the single-binary Unix toolbox, BusyBox. We'll show its basic usage on a desktop development system and the Android emulator, build a bootable embedded system from scratch and boot it on a virtual Android device, discuss how to meet diverse function requirements of BusyBox-based embedded systems, and explore how to utilize some powerful built-in applets to optimize different aspects of an embedded system.
Throughout this book, Ubuntu, as the most popular Linux distribution, will be used as our default desktop development system. Android, as the most popular embedded Linux system, will be used as our target embedded system. Android emulator, as the easy and cheap way to get a running Android device with root permission, will be used to build the Android experiment platform for demonstration.