BusyBox Docker Image

Quick reference

• Maintained by:
  https://github.com/docker-library/busybox

• Where to get help:
  https://dockr.ly/comm-slack, Server Fault, https://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic, or https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic

Supported tags and respective Dockerfile links

• https://github.com/docker-library/busybox/blob/066dbf90090ab2dbb905310fac2fa10ea39a7ba6/latest/glibc/amd64/index.json

• https://github.com/docker-library/busybox/blob/066dbf90090ab2dbb905310fac2fa10ea39a7ba6/latest/uclibc/amd64/index.json

• https://github.com/docker-library/busybox/blob/066dbf90090ab2dbb905310fac2fa10ea39a7ba6/latest/musl/amd64/index.json

• https://github.com/docker-library/busybox/blob/066dbf90090ab2dbb905310fac2fa10ea39a7ba6/latest/glibc/amd64/index.json

• https://github.com/docker-library/busybox/blob/066dbf90090ab2dbb905310fac2fa10ea39a7ba6/latest-1/glibc/amd64/index.json

• https://github.com/docker-library/busybox/blob/066dbf90090ab2dbb905310fac2fa10ea39a7ba6/latest-1/uclibc/amd64/index.json

• https://github.com/docker-library/busybox/blob/066dbf90090ab2dbb905310fac2fa10ea39a7ba6/latest-1/musl/amd64/index.json

• https://github.com/docker-library/busybox/blob/066dbf90090ab2dbb905310fac2fa10ea39a7ba6/latest-1/glibc/amd64/index.json

Quick reference (cont.)

• Where to file issues:
  https://github.com/docker-library/busybox/issues?q=is:issue+is:pr

• Supported architectures: (https://github.com/docker-library/official-images#architectures-other-than-amd64)
  https://hub.docker.com/r/amd64/busybox/, https://hub.docker.com/r/arm32v5/busybox/, https://hub.docker.com/r/arm32v6/busybox/, https://hub.docker.com/r/arm32v7/busybox/, https://hub.docker.com/r/arm64v8/busybox/, https://hub.docker.com/r/i386/busybox/, https://hub.docker.com/r/ppc64le/busybox/, https://hub.docker.com/r/riscv64/busybox/, https://hub.docker.com/r/s390x/busybox/

• Published image artifact details:
  https://github.com/docker-library/repo-info/blob/master/repos/busybox (https://github.com/docker-library/repo-info/commits/master/repos/busybox)
  (image metadata, transfer size, etc)

• Image updates:
  https://github.com/docker-library/official-images/issues?q=label%3Alibrary%2Fbusybox
  https://github.com/docker-library/official-images/blob/master/library/busybox (https://github.com/docker-library/official-images/commits/master/library/busybox)

• Source of this description:
  https://github.com/docker-library/docs/tree/master/busybox (https://github.com/docker-library/docs/commits/master/busybox)

What is BusyBox? The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux

Coming in somewhere between 1 and 5 Mb in on-disk size (depending on the variant), http://www.busybox.net/ is a very good ingredient to craft space-efficient distributions.

BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single small executable. It provides replacements for most of the utilities you usually find in GNU fileutils, shellutils, etc. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than their full-featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are included provide the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts. BusyBox provides a fairly complete environment for any small or embedded system.

***.org/wiki/BusyBox

How to use this image

Run BusyBox shell

console
$ docker run -it --rm busybox

This will drop you into an sh shell to allow you to do what you want inside a BusyBox system.

Create a Dockerfile for a binary

dockerfile
FROM busybox
COPY ./my-static-binary /my-static-binary
CMD ["/my-static-binary"]

This Dockerfile will allow you to create a minimal image for your statically compiled binary. You will have to compile the binary in some other place like another container. For a simpler alternative that's similarly tiny but easier to extend, https://hub.docker.com/_/alpine/.

Image Variants

The busybox images contain BusyBox built against various "libc" variants (for a comparison of "libc" variants, http://www.etalabs.net/compare_libcs.html which lists many similarities and differences).

For more information about the specific particulars of the build process for each variant, see Dockerfile.builder in the same directory as each variant's Dockerfile (see links above).

busybox:glibc

• https://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=libc6 (which is then included in the image)

busybox:uclibc

• https://uclibc.org via Buildroot (statically compiled)

busybox:musl

• https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages?name=musl (statically compiled)

License

View http://www.busybox.net/license.html for the software contained in this image.

As with all Docker images, these likely also contain other software which may be under other licenses (such as Bash, etc from the base distribution, along with any direct or indirect dependencies of the primary software being contained).

Some additional license information which was able to be auto-detected might be found in https://github.com/docker-library/repo-info/tree/master/repos/busybox.

As for any pre-built image usage, it is the image user's responsibility to ensure that any use of this image complies with any relevant licenses for all software contained within.