getting vi grep find and less working on android

I've ran a few searches but haven't really seen someone posting this out there, so I thought I'd post it here.

Prereqs:

first you need to be rooted (follow the guides, I used the preinstall method for 2.3.6, and that works)

You'll need busybox (I just used the copy from webtop2sd installed /system/etc/webtop2sd/busybox
You can see all busybox can do from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox

then you need a terminal, I use connectbot. connect to local (type)

if you've followed the preinstall method then /system/bin will be in your path, so I just put the sym links there.

shell commands:

su
/bin/mount /system -o remount,rw
ln -s /system/etc/webtop2sd/busybox /system/bin/vi
ln -s /system/etc/webtop2sd/busybox /system/bin/less
ln -s /system/etc/webtop2sd/busybox /system/bin/grep
ln -s /system/etc/webtop2sd/busybox /system/bin/find
/bin/mount /system -o remount,ro
exit

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

after you execute those lines, grep find vi and less will all work as normal in android like they would on a full linux machine. test it out by executing

su
cd /
find -name busybox
exit

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

that should list all your busyboxes on the system

Happy scripting.

busybox supports more then just those for commands, here's the output from busybox itself:

# ./busybox
BusyBox v1.14.3 (2009-08-18 21:48:57 CDT) multi-call binary
Copyright (C) 1998-2008 Erik Andersen, Rob Landley, Denys Vlasenko
and others. Licensed under GPLv2.
See source distribution for full notice.

Usage: busybox [function] [arguments]...
or: function [arguments]...

BusyBox is a multi-call binary that combines many common Unix
utilities into a single executable. Most people will create a
link to busybox for each function they wish to use and BusyBox
will act like whatever it was invoked as!

Currently defined functions:
[, [[, acpid, addgroup, adduser, adjtimex, ar, arp, arping, ash, awk, basename, blkid, brctl, bunzip2, bzcat, bzip2, cal, cat, catv, chat,
chattr, chgrp, chmod, chown, chpasswd, chpst, chroot, chrt, chvt, cksum, clear, cmp, comm, cp, cpio, crond, crontab, cryptpw, cttyhack,
cut, date, dc, dd, deallocvt, delgroup, deluser, depmod, devmem, df, dhcprelay, diff, dirname, dmesg, dnsd, dos2unix, du, dumpkmap, dumpleases,
echo, ed, egrep, eject, env, envdir, envuidgid, ether-wake, expand, expr, fakeidentd, false, fbset, fbsplash, fdflush, fdformat, fdisk,
fgrep, find, findfs, fold, free, freeramdisk, fsck, fsck.minix, ftpd, ftpget, ftpput, fuser, getopt, getty, grep, gunzip, gzip, halt, hd,
hdparm, head, hexdump, hostid, hostname, httpd, hush, hwclock, id, ifconfig, ifdown, ifenslave, ifup, inetd, init, insmod, install, ionice,
ip, ipaddr, ipcalc, ipcrm, ipcs, iplink, iproute, iprule, iptunnel, kbd_mode, kill, killall, killall5, klogd, last, length, less, linux32,
linux64, linuxrc, ln, loadfont, loadkmap, logger, login, logname, logread, losetup, lpd, lpq, lpr, ls, lsattr, lsmod, lzmacat, makedevs,
makemime, man, md5sum, mdev, mesg, microcom, mkdir, mkdosfs, mkfifo, mkfs.minix, mkfs.vfat, mknod, mkpasswd, mkswap, mktemp, modprobe, more,
mount, mountpoint, msh, mt, mv, nameif, nc, netstat, nice, nmeter, nohup, nslookup, od, openvt, passwd, patch, pgrep, pidof, ping, ping6,
pipe_progress, pivot_root, pkill, popmaildir, poweroff, printenv, printf, ps, pscan, pwd, raidautorun, rdate, rdev, readahead, readlink,
readprofile, realpath, reboot, reformime, renice, reset, resize, rm, rmdir, rmmod, route, rtcwake, run-parts, runlevel, runsv, runsvdir,
rx, script, sed, sendmail, seq, setarch, setconsole, setfont, setkeycodes, setlogcons, setsid, setuidgid, sh, sha1sum, sha256sum, sha512sum,
showkey, slattach, sleep, softlimit, sort, split, start-stop-daemon, stat, strings, stty, su, sulogin, sum, sv, svlogd, swapoff, swapon,
switch_root, sync, sysctl, syslogd, tac, tail, tar, tcpsvd, tee, telnet, telnetd, test, tftp, tftpd, time, timeout, top, touch, tr, traceroute,
true, tty, ttysize, tunctl, udhcpc, udhcpd, udpsvd, umount, uname, uncompress, unexpand, uniq, unix2dos, unlzma, unzip, uptime, usleep, uudecode, uuencode, vconfig, vi, vlock, watch, watchdog, wc, wget, which, who, whoami, xargs, yes, zcat, zcip


I've tested wget sha1sum and strings, those work too, I'm sure all those commands should work as advertised.