[gentoo-user] Why busybox?

[gentoo-user] Why busybox?

[Ian Zimmerman]

Why does portage insist on installing busybox for me?

As far as I know the only use for it on a desktop system is for
initramfs.  I have no initramfs, therefore I have no need for busybox.
I unmerged it and nothing bad happened except for a warning from portage
that it is part of my profile set.  I went ahead and ignored the
warning.

But now I updated the tree and emerge -p shows it will be installed
again.  Why is that?  The only reverse dependencies are virtuals which
are satisfied in other ways, like virtual/awk.  So is it the profile
thing?  But I have done the same with other profile packages (notably
editors/nano) and those are _not_ coming back.

-- 
Ian

Re: [gentoo-user] Why busybox?

[Ashley Dixon]

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On Sun, Apr 05, 2020 at 10:53:50AM -0700, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> Why does portage insist on installing busybox for me?

BusyBox is just a minimal set of utilities which would be useful for rescuing a
system, or to be used on an embedded system with extreme limitations. There's
not really any reason to remove this, but if you insist...

> As far as I know the only use for it on a desktop system is for
> initramfs.  I have no initramfs, therefore I have no need for busybox.
> I unmerged it and nothing bad happened except for a warning from portage
> that it is part of my profile set.  I went ahead and ignored the
> warning.
> 
> But now I updated the tree and emerge -p shows it will be installed
> again.  Why is that?  The only reverse dependencies are virtuals which
> are satisfied in other ways, like virtual/awk.  So is it the profile
> thing?  But I have done the same with other profile packages (notably
> editors/nano) and those are _not_ coming back.

Read more about profiles at [1]; a guide to making custom profiles can be found
as a subsection. Portage's attempts to reinstall BusyBox is not unexpected
behaviour, as the "profile" defines a core set of packages which should be
installed for a particular use case (e.g., desktop profiles mandate an X
server). Thus, when you invoke Portage to do a full overhaul, it interprets
anything defined in the profile which is not installed on the system to be an
error which needs to be rectified.

If you really don't want to have Portage install BusyBox, see the --exclude
option of emerge. But again, there's really no need to remove BusyBox unless
you're _very_ short on disk space.

[1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Profile_(Portage)

-- 

Ashley Dixon
suugaku.co.uk

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[gentoo-user] Re: Why busybox?

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2020-04-05 19:45, Ashley Dixon wrote:

> > Why does portage insist on installing busybox for me?
> 
> BusyBox is just a minimal set of utilities which would be useful for
> rescuing a system, or to be used on an embedded system with extreme
> limitations. There's not really any reason to remove this, but if you
> insist...

As for rescue scenarios, that has been obsolete for a long time.  For at
least 10 years now, whenever I need to rescue myself I boot from a
separate medium that is normally offline, a CD, an SD card or a thumb
drive.  And I did the same even when I had an initramfs.

And this is a desktop.  BTW, I'm curious - are there really embedded
systems, especially ones with extreme limitations, running gentoo?

> Read more about profiles at [1]; a guide to making custom profiles can
> be found as a subsection.

Indeed, profiles are a big hole in my gentoo knowledge.  Thanks for the
pointer.

> If you really don't want to have Portage install BusyBox, see the
> --exclude option of emerge. But again, there's really no need to
> remove BusyBox unless you're _very_ short on disk space.

The true reason I want to avoid it is that portage keeps spamming me
about the configuration - handled by saveconfig or something.  It
happens every time it is rebuild and I don't know how to stop it.

BTW, I found why app-editor/nano is different.  It is not part of the
profile set itself, it is just that it happens to satisfy virtual/editor
which is in the profile set.

virtuals are another area which I need to study, sigh

-- 
Ian

Re: [gentoo-user] Why busybox?

[Mark Knecht]

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On Sun, Apr 5, 2020 at 10:54 AM Ian Zimmerman <itz@very.loosely.org> wrote:
>
> Why does portage insist on installing busybox for me?
>
> As far as I know the only use for it on a desktop system is for
> initramfs.  I have no initramfs, therefore I have no need for busybox.
> I unmerged it and nothing bad happened except for a warning from portage
> that it is part of my profile set.  I went ahead and ignored the
> warning.
>
> But now I updated the tree and emerge -p shows it will be installed
> again.  Why is that?  The only reverse dependencies are virtuals which
> are satisfied in other ways, like virtual/awk.  So is it the profile
> thing?  But I have done the same with other profile packages (notably
> editors/nano) and those are _not_ coming back.
>
> --
> Ian

emerge is your friend. Something like

emerge -p -e

should. I believe, tell you where every package dependency comes from.

It's not always fun to read but the answer to your question should be there.

- Mark

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Re: [gentoo-user] Why busybox?

[Dale]

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Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 5, 2020 at 10:54 AM Ian Zimmerman <itz@very.loosely.org
> <mailto:itz@very.loosely.org>> wrote:
> >
> > Why does portage insist on installing busybox for me?
> >
> > As far as I know the only use for it on a desktop system is for
> > initramfs.  I have no initramfs, therefore I have no need for busybox.
> > I unmerged it and nothing bad happened except for a warning from portage
> > that it is part of my profile set.  I went ahead and ignored the
> > warning.
> >
> > But now I updated the tree and emerge -p shows it will be installed
> > again.  Why is that?  The only reverse dependencies are virtuals which
> > are satisfied in other ways, like virtual/awk.  So is it the profile
> > thing?  But I have done the same with other profile packages (notably
> > editors/nano) and those are _not_ coming back.
> >
> > --
> > Ian
>
> emerge is your friend. Something like 
>
> emerge -p -e
>
> should. I believe, tell you where every package dependency comes from.
>
> It's not always fun to read but the answer to your question should be
> there.
>
> - Mark
>


I usually do a emerge -et either -p or -a then package name to get a
tree list of what it depends on and what is pulling it in.  On some
packages tho, it can get rather long.  Example:

emerge -etp firefox

or

emerge -eta firefox

Doesn't either one of those q commands or equery do this as well???

Whichever works.  ;-)

Dale

:-)  :-) 



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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Why busybox?

[Ashley Dixon]

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On Sun, Apr 05, 2020 at 12:56:13PM -0700, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> As for rescue scenarios, that has been obsolete for a long time. For at least
> 10 years now

It is still used in some rescue situations, for example, an initramfs panic.
https://askubuntu.com/q/137655/ (This post was eight years ago but is still
applicable today. I still can't believe 2012 was almost a decade ago; it feels
like yesterday...)

> And this is a desktop.  BTW, I'm curious - are there really embedded
> systems, especially ones with extreme limitations, running gentoo?

I have seen them around. There used to be this great machine by Marvell called a
"SheevaPlug", and whilst its limitations weren't _extreme_, it could certainly
be classed as "embedded" by some. Think a power-line networking device, but a
full computer ! See [1], [2], and [3].

Anyway, that came with some peculiar variant of Linux with some proprietary
stuff on, which I (along with almost every other user, I assume), replaced with
a bare Gentoo installation. There was a moderately-sized mailing list a few
years ago which was dedicated to Gentoo on the Sheeva, although I think the
domain, and thus archives, have been lost to history.

> virtuals are another area which I need to study, sigh

They're not very intuitive, but just one of those things that you learn about
naturally while casually using Gentoo over a number of years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SheevaPlug
[2] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Embedded_Handbook/Boards/Marvell_Sheevaplug
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20140717151031/https://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/sheevaplug/install.xml

-- 

Ashley Dixon
suugaku.co.uk

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Re: [gentoo-user] Why busybox?

[Mark Knecht]

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On Sun, Apr 5, 2020 at 1:19 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 5, 2020 at 10:54 AM Ian Zimmerman <itz@very.loosely.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > Why does portage insist on installing busybox for me?
> >
> > As far as I know the only use for it on a desktop system is for
> > initramfs.  I have no initramfs, therefore I have no need for busybox.
> > I unmerged it and nothing bad happened except for a warning from portage
> > that it is part of my profile set.  I went ahead and ignored the
> > warning.
> >
> > But now I updated the tree and emerge -p shows it will be installed
> > again.  Why is that?  The only reverse dependencies are virtuals which
> > are satisfied in other ways, like virtual/awk.  So is it the profile
> > thing?  But I have done the same with other profile packages (notably
> > editors/nano) and those are _not_ coming back.
> >
> > --
> > Ian
>
> emerge is your friend. Something like
>
> emerge -p -e
>
> should. I believe, tell you where every package dependency comes from.
>
> It's not always fun to read but the answer to your question should be
> there.
>
> - Mark
>
>
>
> I usually do a emerge -et either -p or -a then package name to get a tree
> list of what it depends on and what is pulling it in.  On some packages
> tho, it can get rather long.  Example:
>
> emerge -etp firefox
>
> or
>
> emerge -eta firefox
>
> Doesn't either one of those q commands or equery do this as well???
>
> Whichever works.  ;-)
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)
>
>
> Yes, I forgot to add the 'tree' function. Thanks!

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Re: [gentoo-user] Why busybox?

[Jack]

On 2020.04.05 16:03, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 5, 2020 at 10:54 AM Ian Zimmerman <itz@very.loosely.org>  
> wrote:
> >
> > Why does portage insist on installing busybox for me?
> >
> > As far as I know the only use for it on a desktop system is for
> > initramfs.  I have no initramfs, therefore I have no need for  
> busybox.
> > I unmerged it and nothing bad happened except for a warning from  
> portage
> > that it is part of my profile set.  I went ahead and ignored the
> > warning.
> >
> > But now I updated the tree and emerge -p shows it will be installed
> > again.  Why is that?  The only reverse dependencies are virtuals  
> which
> > are satisfied in other ways, like virtual/awk.  So is it the profile
> > thing?  But I have done the same with other profile packages  
> (notably
> > editors/nano) and those are _not_ coming back.
> >
> > --
> > Ian
> 
> emerge is your friend. Something like
> 
> emerge -p -e
> 
> should. I believe, tell you where every package dependency comes from.
> 
> It's not always fun to read but the answer to your question should be  
> there.
> 
> - Mark
I find "emerge -p -c busybox" even easier, and it tells me busybox is  
required by @system.

Jack

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Why busybox?

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 5 Apr 2020 12:56:13 -0700, Ian Zimmerman wrote:

> The true reason I want to avoid it is that portage keeps spamming me
> about the configuration - handled by saveconfig or something.  It
> happens every time it is rebuild and I don't know how to stop it.

Read the spam, it tells you what to do ;-)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Why busybox?

[Adam Carter]

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> > > Why does portage insist on installing busybox for me?
> >
> > BusyBox is just a minimal set of utilities which would be useful for
> > rescuing a system, or to be used on an embedded system with extreme
> > limitations. There's not really any reason to remove this, but if you
> > insist...
>
> As for rescue scenarios, that has been obsolete for a long time.  For at
> least 10 years now, whenever I need to rescue myself I boot from a
> separate medium that is normally offline, a CD, an SD card or a thumb
> drive.
>

If your breakage can be fixed by busybox, then its easier, faster and
avoids downtime when compared to booting from alternate media. As its
statically linked, it will still run if any libraries required by the
conventional binary are stuffed (BTDT). Of course, sometimes its not enough
and you will have to fall back to booting from alternate media.

I don't think many will find a compelling case for its removal.

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