BusyBox is software that provides several stripped-down
Unix tools in a single
executable file. It runs in a variety of
POSIX environments such as
Linux,
Android, and
FreeBSD, although many of the tools it provides are designed to work with interfaces provided by the Linux kernel. It was specifically created for embedded operating systems with very limited resources. The authors dubbed it "The
Swiss Army knife of
Embedded Linux", as the single executable replaces basic functions of more than 300 common commands. It is released as
free software under the terms of the
GNU General Public License v2.