Installation

The following information will assist you with the installation of Alpine Linux.

Installation Quick-Start in 3 Easy Steps

1st

Download the latest stable-release ISO.

2nd

If you have a CD drive from which you can boot, then burn the ISO onto a blank CD using your favorite CD burning software. Else create a bootable USB drive.

3rd

Boot from the CD or USB drive, login as root with no password, and voilà! Enjoy Alpine Linux!

One of the first commands you might want to use is setup-alpine.

Installation Handbook

Basics

Alpine can be used in any of three modes:

diskless mode

You'll boot from read-only medium such as the installation CD, a USB drive, or a Compact Flash card.

Tip: To prepare either a USB or Compact Flash card, you can use the setup-bootable script; see the pages linked above for details.

When you use Alpine in this mode, you need to use Alpine Local Backup (lbu) to save your modifications between reboots. That requires some writable medium, usually removable. (If your boot medium is, for example, a USB drive, you can save modifications there; you don't need a separate partition or drive.) See also Local APK cache.

Note: When the setup-alpine script asks for a disk, say "none". It will then prompt whether you'd like to preserve modifications on any writable medium.

data mode

As in diskless mode, your OS is run from a read-only medium. However, here a writable partition (usually on a hard disk) is used to store the data in /var. That partition is accessed directly, rather than copied into a tmpfs; so this is better-suited to uses where large amounts of data need to be preserved between reboots.

Note: The setup-alpine script handles installing Alpine in this mode, too, when you supply a writable partition instead of "none", and request mode "data".

This mode may be used for mailspools, database and log servers, and so on.

sys mode

This is a traditional hard-disk install (see link for details). Both the boot system and your modifications are written to the hard disk, in a standard Linux hierarchy.

Note: The setup-alpine script handles installing Alpine in this mode, too, when you supply a writable partition instead of "none", and request mode "sys". By default, it will create three partions on your disk, for /boot, /, and swap; however you can also partition your disk manually.

This mode may be used for desktops, development boxes, and virtual servers.

Advanced

• Setting up storage with RAID, LVM, LUKS encryption, iSCSI, or suchlike
• Setting up disks manually
• Partitioning and Bootmanagers
• Migrating data
• Details about Alpine setup scripts

• Install to HDD with dual-boot
• Replacing non-Alpine Linux with Alpine remotely

• Bootstrapping Alpine Linux

• Installing Alpine Linux in a chroot

• Install Alpine on VirtualBox, VMware, coLinux, Qemu, , Amazon EC2, or RackSpace

• Xen Dom0 (Setting up Alpine as a dom0 for Xen hypervisor)
• Xen Dom0 on USB or SD
• Create Alpine Linux PV DomU
• Xen LiveCD

• Setting up a basic vserver
• Setting up the build environment on HDD
• Setting up a compile vserver for official or for third party packages

Post-Install

• Setting up Networking
• Package Management (apk) (How to add/remove packages on your Alpine)
• Alpine local backup (lbu) (Permanently store your modifications in case your box needs reboot)
  • Back Up a Flash Memory ("diskless mode") Installation
  • Manually editing a existing apkovl
• Init System (OpenRC) (Configure a service to automatically boot at next reboot)
  • Multiple Instances of Services
• Setting up Xorg

• Upgrading Alpine

• Setting up a ssh-server (Using ssh is a good way to administer your box remotely)
• setup-acf (Configures ACF (webconfiguration) so you can manage your box through https)
• Hosting services on Alpine(Links to several mail/web/ssh server setup pages)
• Changing passwords

• Setting the timezone (Not needed for the default musl- or uClibc-based installs)

Further Help and Information

• FAQs
• Tutorials and Howtos
• How to Contribute
• Developer Documentation