On my Raspberry Pi, running Raspbian 12 (Debian 12), busybox-static is shipped because it is used by the init ramdisk build script. It is included as the "shell" in the init ramdisk. There are actually two busybox packages:
marchhare% dpkg-query -l busybox\*|cat Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercaseºd) ||/ Name Version Architecture Description +++-==============-=====================-============-=====================================================un busybox <none> <none> (no description available) ii busybox-static 1:1.35.0-4+deb12u1+b1 arm64 Standalone rescue shell with tons of builtin utilities At Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:20:45 +0000 [email protected] wrote: > > > Is there any reason debain ships busybox by default? > > > > AFAIK it's used by the likes of `initramfs-tools` and `dracut` (it's > > copied into each of the `/boot/initrd.img-<VERSION>` files). > > > > I just checked in my fedora box, It doesn't have busybox. So again why debian > ships it? > > > > -- Robert Heller -- Cell: 413-658-7953 GV: 978-633-5364 Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services [email protected] -- Webhosting Services
