[BusyBox] Some problems with busybox-0.61

[Eric Spakman]

Hello all,

I'm in the process of migrating from busybox-0.60.5 and tinylogin-1.4 
to busybox-0.61 beta. In this process I encounterd a few problems 
that weren't present in the stable busybox/tinylogin release. I'm not 
a programmer, so I can't solve the issues myself. But I like to give 
you a list of things I noticed while testing and using busybox-0.61. 
B.t.w. I compiled it against the latest CVS version of uClibc, build 
for i386. 

Here's the list:

-When using an /etc/issue file, the login prompt is shift to the 
middle of the screen and options like "\l" are not processed. I don't 
see this behaviour with tinylogin.
-When I startup Linux, I generate the /dev/ files on the fly. With 
0.61 I always get a message "mknod: null: File exists". I don't have 
this behaviour when using busybox stable. Everything just works, it 
looks to be only cosmetic.
-When I shutdown Linux, I get a message "umount: bb_xasprintf: Read-
only file system". Note th "bb_xasprintf".
-Busybox ash: Compared to a "real" ash (Debian 0.3.7), it's terrible 
slow when processing some "heavy" scripts. I tested it with 
"shorewall" a script based front-end for iptables, with bb ash it's 
aproximatly ten times slower in processing the scripts. When I stop 
and start the shorewall scripts, bb ash even gives a "segmentation 
fault" while processing it.

Some things I noticed:
-start-stop-daemon and run-parts only support "short" options. This 
makes them unusable with the Debian scripts. In the source of run-
parts it's noted that short options is a busybox policy, but for 
busybox hwclock, using "long" options is a config parameter :)
-You can't choose "logger" without also choosing at least "syslogd". 
I want to run the "real" syslogd, because of syslog.conf and not 
being able to run busybox syslogd and klogd with start-stop-daemon. 
In busybox 0.60.5 it was possible to choose logger "stand-alone"
-You can't choose ifupdown in "iproute" compatibility mode without 
also choosing iproute itself. I prefer to run the real "iproute" 
source because of some missing functions in busybox, but I also like 
to use busybox ifupdown ;)

Regards,
Eric Spakman