Running Alpine in Live mode in QEMU

2020-06-01T15:03:18Z

Omega0x013: remove 'o' to change 'loosing' to 'losing'

To just give Alpine Linux a try in diskless mode, qemu can be used to boot the .iso file without any need for a virtual HDD image or further configuration.

{{Cmd|qemu -m 512 -cdrom alpine-3.2.0-x86_64.iso}}

Issue {{Cmd|grsec nomodeset}} at boot prompt to avoid being forced into graphical mode and losing access.

== Letting the .iso image load an apkovl ==

This works by mounting a persitent filesytem under /media and selecting it to store the '''apkovl''' and the '''apkcache'''.

Preparing a KVM with a virtual drive:
<pre>
mkdir -p /media/usb/images
qemu-img create -f raw /media/usb/images/mykvm.config 32M
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 384 \
-name mykvm \
-cdrom /media/usb/images/alpine-3.2.0-x86_64.iso \
-drive file=/media/usb/images/mykvm.config,if=virtio \
-net lan \
-boot d &
</pre>

And inside the KVM (running alpine linux):

<pre>
fdisk /dev/vda #creating a partition
mkdosfs /dev/vda1
mkdir -p /media/vda1
echo "/dev/vda1 /media/vda1 vfat rw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
mount -a
setup-alpine # (select vda1 for saving configs)
lbu commit
</pre>

The next reboot then loads the generated apkovl and apkcache found on /dev/vda1 -- completely ''running-from-ram'' based on the latest official ISO.

[[Category:Virtualization]]

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Running Alpine in Live mode in QEMU