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busybox-on-windows

busybox-on-windows

How to use a Win32 build of BusyBox to run many of the standard UNIX command line tools on Windows.

Independent GitHub snapshot · Automated classification · Original documentation governs

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name: busybox-on-windows description: How to use a Win32 build of BusyBox to run many of the standard UNIX command line tools on Windows. license: MIT

BusyBox is a single binary that implements many common Unix tools.

Use this skill only on Windows. If you are on UNIX, then stop here.

Run the following steps only if you cannot find a busybox.exe file in the same directory as this document is. These are PowerShell commands, if you have a classic cmd.exe terminal, then you must use powershell -Command "..." to run them.

  1. Print the type of CPU: Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Processor | Select-Object Name, NumberOfCores, MaxClockSpeed
  2. Print the OS versions: Get-ItemProperty "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion" | Select-Object ProductName, DisplayVersion, CurrentBuild
  3. Download a suitable build of BusyBox by running one of these PowerShell commands:
    • 32-bit x86 (ANSI): $ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'; Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://frippery.org/files/busybox/busybox.exe -OutFile busybox.exe
    • 64-bit x86 (ANSI): $ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'; Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://frippery.org/files/busybox/busybox64.exe -OutFile busybox.exe
    • 64-bit x86 (Unicode): $ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'; Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://frippery.org/files/busybox/busybox64u.exe -OutFile busybox.exe
    • 64-bit ARM (Unicode): $ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'; Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://frippery.org/files/busybox/busybox64a.exe -OutFile busybox.exe

Useful commands:

  • Help: busybox.exe --list
  • Available UNIX commands: busybox.exe --list

Usage: Prefix the UNIX command with busybox.exe, for example: busybox.exe ls -1

If you need to run a UNIX command under another CWD, then use the absolute path to busybox.exe.

Documentation: https://frippery.org/busybox/ Original BusyBox: https://busybox.net/

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