[BusyBox] CONFIG_FEATURE_SH_STANDALONE_SHELL broken?

[Rob Landley]

On Wednesday 29 October 2003 07:14, Florian Engelhardt wrote:
> Is CONFIG_FEATURE_SH_STANDALONE_SHELL broken?
>
> I compiled 1.0.0-pre3 with it enabled, however:
>
> # ./busybox ash
>
>
> BusyBox v1.00-pre3 (2003.10.29-12:48+0000) Built-in shell (ash)
> Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.
>
> # help
>
> Built-in commands:
> -------------------
>         . : alias bg break cd chdir continue eval exec exit export false
>         fg getopts hash help jobs kill let local pwd read readonly return
>         set shift times trap true type ulimit umask unalias unset wait
>         [ ash bunzip2 busybox bzcat cat chgrp chmod chown chroot clear
>         cp df du echo gunzip gzip kill killall ln ls mkdir mknod more
>         mv ps pwd reset rm rmdir sh sync tar test touch vi which zcat
>
>
> # ls
> ash: ls: not found
> #

For some reason, CONFIG_FEATURE_SH_STANDALONE_SHELL was broken a while back.  
What it used to do is fork and have the child process call run_applet_by_name 
to call the appropriate code from the running busybox executable.

Now what it does is attempt to exec "/bin/busybox commandname", which serves 
no purpose I can see.  The command path doesn't get searched for any external 
executables, so a non-busybox version of the command you typed can never get 
called anyway, even if there is one in the path.  All shelling out to busybox 
at an assumed absolute path (when we've already got a perfectly good copy of 
busybox running) does is introduce the possiblity of the exec failing, which 
looks like what's happening for you.

The exec can fail if:

A) Busybox isn't at /bin/busybox because you installed it in a directory other 
than /bin.
B) Busybox isn't at /bin/busybox because it's called something other than 
busybox (like /bin/sh, this being a logical thing to call a standalone 
shell).
C) Busybox isn't at /bin/busybox because you did a chroot.

There are probably many more ways this can break, and no gain in doing it that 
I can see since if you have something like gnu ls in the path, it won't get 
called unless it's named "/bin/busybox".  I have absolutely NO idea why this 
change was made.  I'm sure there's a reason, but there's a lot of obvious 
collateral damage and no obvious gain...

The problem can be seen at about line 3700 or so of shell/ash.c.

Rob