Originally Posted by iDont

I packaged up the latest stable busybox release based on Nokia's original debian/ source files. I've reviewed the patches Nokia included in Maemo's original busybox, pulled updated ones from Debian Sid, and ported some of the original patches when no updated ones were available for the latest busybox release (see the file debian/patches/series in the attached source for additional comments).
Maemo's .config file for busybox has been checked and updated against the newest default config from the new busybox release too.

The result should be a drop-in replacement for Maemo's busybox without losing any (patched in) functionality

Do note that the package identifies itself as being version "3:1.10.2.legal-1osso30+0m5" instead of "1.18.4". This had to be done because Nokia made mp-fremantle-generic-pr explicitly depend on that version, causing dependency problems when installing another version. Nonetheless, you should see "BusyBox v1.18.4 (Debian 3:1.10.2.legal-1osso30+0m5) built-in shell (ash)" when starting busybox.

To prevent the new busybox from being 'updated' to the old one when running apt-get upgrade, run a shell script containing:

Code:

for x in busybox busybox-symlinks-busybox busybox-symlinks-console-tools busybox-symlinks-dnsutils busybox-symlinks-ifupdown busybox-symlinks-iputils-ping busybox-symlinks-net-tools busybox-symlinks-procps busybox-symlinks-psmisc busybox-symlinks-realpath busybox-symlinks-time
do echo -e "Package: $x
Pin: release a=unstable 
Pin-Priority: 1001\n" >> /etc/apt/preferences
done

Click here to download the precompiled debs, and here to download the sources.

Warning: You should experience no problems after replacing Maemo's busybox with this one. However, considering the essential role of the shell I can not guarantee anything. Some brief testing and a few reboots didn't reveal any errors though

Update: I forgot to port shell-hist.patch, a patch in Maemo's busybox that fixes this bug. All patches from Nokia are now incorporated in the latest busybox release found in this post (linked packages + source are updated)

P.s. for those who run dpkg -i *.deb to install the packages: the packages busybox-dbg and busybox-symlinks-binutils aren't required to be installed.