GNU core utilities

This page explains the coreutils implementation in Alpine Linux.

The GNU Core Utilities coreutils are the basic file, shell and text manipulation utilities of the GNU operating system. These are the core utilities which are expected to exist on every operating system.. However, Alpine Linux uses BusyBox in place of the coreutils for a more lightweight, minimalist and secure experience but the coreutils is still available, if you wish to use it.

utmps

Some programs like wall(1) depend on a libc feature named "utmp", that cannot be implemented in libc securely. For this reason, musl (the libc that Alpine uses) does not implement utmp. Instead, it provides stubs that do nothing.

That is why programs that use utmp - such as wall, who or w - output nothing but still exit successfully. This is expected, a feature, and cannot be fixed easily.

The login monitor utmps, is a secure implementation of user accounting. The Alpine Linix package utmps can be installed as follows:

apk add coreutils utmps

Once the package is installed, start the helper script which sets up services.

setup-utmp

Note that it also works without the package coreutils.

ubase

There also an alternative to coreutils named ubase currently available in testing repository that provides better functionality than the built-in busybox, but less than what coreutils offers.