Install Alpine on Rackspace
Create a minimal rackspace server
Debian 7
512MB, 20GB
Copy settings from existing server into apkovl
The first step is to create Alpine configuration file with basic configuration of the host. We need the new box to start networking and ssh in the beginning so we can reconnect to it after reboot.
Create basic layout for the overlay:
mkdir overlay cd overlay mkdir -p etc/ssh etc/network etc/runlevels/{default,boot,sysinit,shutdown} root/.ssh etc/lbu
If you want to keep the existing host identity (e.g. SSH key), you can copy them over:
cp -a /etc/{passwd,group,shadow,gshadow,hostname,resolv.conf,network/interfaces,ssh} etc/ cp /etc/network/interfaces etc/network
Copy over your ssh authorized_keys and make sure its included in future:
cp -a /root/.ssh/authorized_keys root/.ssh echo "/root/.ssh" > etc/lbu/include
Edit etc/passwd and change bash to /bin/sh.
sed -i -e '/^root:/s:/bin/bash:/bin/sh:' etc/passwd
Make sure there is no whitespace at end of lines in interfaces file. Busybox ifup is very picky.
Create the apk world (/etc/apk/world) with essential packages:
echo "alpine-base iproute2 openssh bash" > etc/apk/world
(bash is technically not needed, but include it in case you forgot to edit your etc/passwd file correctly)
Double check the IP configuration and ssh keys.
Finally, make the essential services start up automatically and create the overlay file:
ln -s /etc/init.d/{hwclock,modules,sysctl,hostname,bootmisc,syslog} etc/runlevels/boot/ ln -s /etc/init.d/{devfs,dmesg,mdev,hwdrivers} etc/runlevels/sysinit/ ln -s /etc/init.d/{networking,sshd} etc/runlevels/default/ ln -s /etc/init.d/{mount-ro,killprocs,savecache} etc/runlevels/shutdown/ tar czf ../host.apkovl.tar.gz *
Verify the overlay with "tar tzf" to see that it contains everything in proper places, and ensure it is in the / directory
tar ../tzvf host.apkovl.tar.gz cp ../host.apkovl.tar.gz /
Install Alpine cd-rom image to hard disk
We need to copy over two sets of information: the boot kernel (kernel, initramdisk and boot configuration) and operating system boot data (overlay, apk packages and kernel modules).
Download an alpine iso and mount it; for example
wget http://dl-4.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v2.6/releases/x86_64/alpine-2.6.2-x86_64.iso mkdir /cdrom mount alpine*.iso /cdrom -o loop
Copy the contents of cd-rom image to root of current installation, then setup grub:
cp -a /cdrom/* / cat - >target/boot/grub/grub.conf <<EOF default=0 timeout=3 hiddenmenu title Alpine Linux root (hd0) kernel /boot/grsec alpine_dev=xvda1:ext3 modules=loop,squashfs,sd-mod,ext3 console=hvc0 pax_nouderef BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/grsec initrd /boot/grsec.gz EOF ln -sf ./grub.conf target/boot/grub/menu.lst
Reboot and check that all came back as expected.