Android How-to: Use Linux tools on Android

Linux utilities can be used on Android using a very interesting tool busybox. This tools supports most of the Linux tools (functions as listed in below section). More details on busybox can be found here.

Download the ‘busybox‘, install and use it as below. Hope its useful for somebody.

 
 
Note:

1. Familiarity with Android ‘adb’ utility is assumed here.
2. ‘adb’ path is set for $PATH environment variable.
3. Following instructions were tried on Android G1 phone.

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On a terminal execute following instructions to create ‘busybox’
directory under /data on G1 phone.

 

$adb shell

#mkdir /data/busybox

#exit

 

Go to the location where busybox binary is downloaded and execute following instructions.

 

$adb push busybox /data/busybox/busybox
1194 KB/s (1745016 bytes in 1.427s)

$adb shell

#cd /data/busybox

#ls -l
-rw-rw-rw- root     root      1745016 2010-12-16 17:17 busybox

#chmod 777 busybox

#ls -l
-rwxrwxrwx root     root      1745016 2010-12-16 17:17 busybox

 

Time to verify ‘busybox’ is installed correctly, its version and various functions supported.

 

#./busybox
BusyBox v1.8.1 (2007-11-14 10:11:37 EST) multi-call binary
Copyright (C) 1998-2006 Erik Andersen, Rob Landley, and others.
Licensed under GPLv2. See source distribution for full notice.

Usage: busybox [function] [arguments]...
   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:
	[, [[, addgroup, adduser, adjtimex, ar, arp, arping, ash,
	awk, basename, bunzip2, bzcat, bzip2, cal, cat, catv,
	chattr, chgrp, chmod, chown, chpasswd, chpst, chroot,
	chrt, chvt, cksum, clear, cmp, comm, cp, cpio, crond,
	crontab, cryptpw, cut, date, dc, dd, deallocvt, delgroup,
	deluser, df, dhcprelay, diff, dirname, dmesg, dnsd, dos2unix,
	du, dumpkmap, dumpleases, echo, ed, egrep, eject, env,
	envdir, envuidgid, ether-wake, expand, expr, fakeidentd,
	false, fbset, fdflush, fdformat, fdisk, fgrep, find, fold,
	free, freeramdisk, fsck, fsck.minix, ftpget, ftpput, fuser,
	getopt, getty, grep, gunzip, gzip, halt, hdparm, head,
	hexdump, hostid, hostname, httpd, hwclock, id, ifconfig,
	ifdown, ifup, inetd, init, insmod, install, ip, ipaddr,
	ipcalc, ipcrm, ipcs, iplink, iproute, iprule, iptunnel,
	kbd_mode, kill, killall, killall5, klogd, last, length,
	less, linux32, linux64, linuxrc, ln, loadfont, loadkmap,
	logger, login, logname, logread, losetup, ls, lsattr,
	lsmod, lzmacat, makedevs, md5sum, mdev, mesg, microcom,
	mkdir, mkfifo, mkfs.minix, mknod, mkswap, mktemp, modprobe,
	more, mount, mountpoint, mt, mv, nameif, nc, netstat,
	nice, nmeter, nohup, nslookup, od, openvt, passwd, patch,
	pgrep, pidof, ping, ping6, pipe_progress, pivot_root,
	pkill, poweroff, printenv, printf, ps, pscan, pwd, raidautorun,
	rdate, readlink, readprofile, realpath, reboot, renice,
	reset, resize, rm, rmdir, rmmod, route, rpm, rpm2cpio,
	run-parts, runlevel, runsv, runsvdir, rx, sed, seq, setarch,
	setconsole, setkeycodes, setlogcons, setsid, setuidgid,
	sh, sha1sum, slattach, sleep, softlimit, sort, split,
	start-stop-daemon, stat, strings, stty, su, sulogin, sum,
	sv, svlogd, swapoff, swapon, switch_root, sync, sysctl,
	syslogd, tail, tar, taskset, tcpsvd, tee, telnet, telnetd,
	test, tftp, time, top, touch, tr, traceroute, true, tty,
	ttysize, udhcpc, udhcpd, udpsvd, umount, uname, uncompress,
	unexpand, uniq, unix2dos, unlzma, unzip, uptime, usleep,
	uudecode, uuencode, vconfig, vi, vlock, watch, watchdog,
	wc, wget, which, who, whoami, xargs, yes, zcat, zcip

 

‘busybox’ is installed correctly! Now go ahead and try Linux utilities/functions as per your need.
Since I needed ‘stty’ utility, I used following instruction.

 

#./busybox stty -F /dev/ttySDIO0 raw

#cat /dev/ttySDIO0
12345 ^C