It's strange that ifconfig has be run as root. I think I know why. /sbin must be on the path of root but not of user. It can be invoked by user via /sbin/ifconfig.

I'm not sure what your data.tar.tz file does. It looks like it is establishing in /usr/busybox a bunch of symbolic links to various utilities found in /bin /usr/bin /sbin, etc. After I gunzip the data.tar.gz, what location do I do the untarring?

Also, what is busybox2? There is none on my n800.

Thanks,
rhackenb