Basic Dropbear build instructions: - Edit options.h to set which features you want. - Edit debug.h if you want any debug options (not usually required). (If using a non-tarball copy, "autoconf; autoheader") ./configure (optionally with --disable-zlib or --disable-syslog, or --help for other options) Now compile: make PROGRAMS="dropbear dbclient dropbearkey dropbearconvert scp" And install (/usr/local/bin is usual default): make PROGRAMS="dropbear dbclient dropbearkey dropbearconvert scp" install (you can leave items out of the PROGRAMS list to avoid compiling them. If you recompile after changing the PROGRAMS list, you *MUST* "make clean" before recompiling - bad things will happen otherwise) See MULTI for instructions on making all-in-one binaries. If you want to compile statically, add "STATIC=1" to the make command-line. Binaries can be strippd with "make strip" ============================================================================ Compiling with uClibc: Firstly, make sure you have at least uclibc 0.9.17, as getusershell() in prior versions is broken. Also note that you may get strange issues if your uClibc headers don't match the library you are running with, ie the headers might say that shadow password support exists, but the libraries don't have it. Compiling for uClibc should be the same as normal, just set CC to the magic uClibc toolchain compiler (ie export CC=i386-uclibc-gcc or whatever). You can use "make STATIC=1" to make statically linked binaries, and it is advisable to strip the binaries too. If you're looking to make a small binary, you should remove unneeded ciphers and MD5, by editing options.h It is possible to compile zlib in, by copying zlib.h and zconf.h into a subdirectory (ie zlibincludes), and export CFLAGS="-Izlibincludes -I../zlibincludes" export LDFLAGS=/usr/lib/libz.a before ./configure and make. If you disable zlib, you must explicitly disable compression for the client - OpenSSH is possibly buggy in this regard, it seems you need to disable it globally in ~/.ssh/config, not just in the host entry in that file. You may want to manually disable lastlog recording when using uClibc, configure with --disable-lastlog. One common problem is pty allocation. There are a number of types of pty allocation which can be used -- if they work properly, the end result is the same for each type. Running configure should detect the best type to use automatically, however for some systems, this may be incorrect. Some things to note: If your system expects /dev/pts to be mounted (this is a uClibc option), make sure that it is. Make sure that your libc headers match the library version you are using. If openpty() is being used (HAVE_OPENPTY defined in config.h) and it fails, you can try compiling with --disable-openpty. You will probably then need to create all the /dev/pty?? and /dev/tty?? devices, which can be problematic for devfs. In general, openpty() is the best way to allocate PTYs, so it's best to try and get it working.