On 8 Aug 2025 at 1:17, Jeff Pohlmeyer wrote:
From: Jeff Pohlmeyer <[email protected]>
Date sent: Fri, 8 Aug 2025 01:17:06 -0500
Subject: Re: How to enable command `file` in busybox's
applet?
To: Ahmad Gani <[email protected]>
Copies to: [email protected]
> On Aug 7, 2025 Ahmad Gani wrote:
>
> > I tried building BusyBox from source, but when I run ./busybox file, it
> > says:
> > file: applet not found
> > How can I enable it?
I looked at the make menuconfig and didn't find file as a busybox
applet. Also looked in .config, but file wasn't one of them?
I use a busybox for my G4L project and it contains these
commands.
busybox
BusyBox v1.38.0.git (2025-07-29 01:20:17 ChST) multi-call binary.
BusyBox is copyrighted by many authors between 1998-2015.
Licensed under GPLv2. See source distribution for detailed
copyright notices.
Usage: busybox [function [arguments]...]
or: busybox --list
or: function [arguments]...
BusyBox is a multi-call binary that combines many common
Unix
utilities into a single executable. Most people will create a
link to busybox for each function they wish to use and
BusyBox
will act like whatever it was invoked as.
Currently defined functions:
[, [[, arch, arping, ascii, awk, base32, base64, basename, bc, beep,
blockdev, bootchartd, cat, chgrp, chmod, chown, chvt, clear, cmp,
comm, cp, crc32, cut, date, deallocvt, df, diff, dirname, mesg, dnsd,
dnsdomainname, dos2unix, du, dumpkmap, echo, egrep, eject, env,
expr, false, fdflush, fdformat, fdisk, fgconsole, fgrep, find, flock,
free, freeramdisk, fsck.minix, ftpd, getfattr, getopt, grep, halt,
hdparm, head, hexdump, hostid, hostname, hwclock, i2ctransfer,
id, ifconfig, ifdown, ifup, inetd, init, insmod, install, iostat, ip,
ipaddr, ipcalc, iplink, ipneigh, iproute, iptunnel, kill, killall, klogd,
less, linuxrc, ln, loadfont, loadkmap, logger, login, logname,
losetup, ls, lsmod, lsof, lzop, lzopcat, makedevs, md5sum, mdev,
mesg, mkdir, mkfifo, mkfs.minix, mknod, modinfo, modprobe,
more, mpstat, mv, nbd-client, nc, netstat, nslookup, openvt,
partprobe, pidof, ping, pivot_root, pmap, poweroff, powertop,
printenv, printf, ps, pwd, raidautorun, rdate, reboot, renice, reset,
rev, rm, rmdir, rmmod, route, sed, seedrng, setkeycodes, sha3sum,
sleep, smemcap, sort, stat, strings, stty, svok, swapoff, swapon,
sync, syslogd, tail, tar, tcpsvd, tee, telnet, telnetd, test, time, top,
touch, tr, traceroute, tree, true, truncate, ts, tsort, tty, udhcpc,
udhcpd, uname, uniq, unix2dos, unlzop, unxz, unzip, uptime, users,
uudecode, uuencode, w, watchdog, wc, which, who, whoami,
whois, xargs, xz, xzcat, yes
So file was not one of those?
>
> The problem with including something like that in busybox is not so
> much the size of the program itself, but the size of the database
> required for understanding all the different file types. For example,
> on my Artix Linux system, the /usr/bin/file binary is only 31 kb, but
> the /usr/share/file/misc/magic.mgc database is nearly 10 MB. Many
> years ago I ran across a much smaller program with a fairly useful
> subset of file's functionality but I can't remember the name, and
> "file" is such a generic term that google isn't much help either.
>
> -- Jeff
> _______________________________________________
> busybox mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
+------------------------------------------------------------+
Michael D. Setzer II - Computer Science Instructor (Retired)
mailto:[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
Guam - Where America's Day Begins
G4L Disk Imaging Project maintainer
http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/
+------------------------------------------------------------+
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