Setting up the build environment 1.7

This material is retained only for historical reasons ... Alpine 1.7 is an ancient release. URLs on this page may not function.

Quick note on how to set up a build environment.

NOTE: This document is obsolete since Alpine no longer is based on Gentoo. Please use the 1.9 build environment.

In this document the build environment will be created in /opt/alpine/1.7. You can ofcourse place it anywhere you have space. You will need a few Gigabytes to have enough space for kernel cmpiling and storing all the binary packages and iso image.

If you already done this part and only want to 'update your build env.' then see bottom of this page.

Requirements

You need a 2.6 kernel to use the chroot build environment.

• Note: Make sure your running kernel supports 16bit UIDs for backward compatibility. uCLibc needs them. Check it with:

zcat /proc/config.gz | grep CONFIG_UID16

or if you dont have /proc/config.gz:

grep CONFIG_UID16 /boot/config-`uname -r`

You should se something like:

CONFIG_UID16=y

Step-by-step

Before you go on please read this!

1) There is the hard way - do it yourself - if you want that go on with step-by-step
2) The quick/easy way: download a script that will do it for you: http://dev.alpinelinux.org/~abrodman/create-alpine-sdk.sh
   1) download the script
   2) chmod +x create-alpine-sdk.sh
   3) sudo ./create-alpine-sdk.sh
   -> it will download, unpack and compile everything for you
   -> location: /opt/alpine/alpine-sdk

All packages are downloaded from http://dev.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v1.7

• Download latest buildroot package from http://dev.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v1.7/sdk/ and unpack it in /opt/alpine, using the --preserve-permissions option and create a symblink named 1.7 for the development branch.

sudo mkdir -p /opt/alpine/alpine-sdk
cd /opt/alpine/alpine-sdk
wget -q -O - http://dev.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v1.7/sdk/alpine-sdk-latest.tar.bz2\
    | sudo tar -vjxp
cd ..
sudo ln -s alpine-sdk 1.7

• Copy your DNS configuration to the build environment and mount proc.

sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /opt/alpine/1.7/etc/
sudo mount -t proc proc /opt/alpine/1.7/proc

• Enter the chroot and change the prompt to reflect your chroot environment

sudo chroot /opt/alpine/1.7 /bin/bash --login
echo 'PS1="(chroot)$PS1"' >> /etc/profile

Now we are in the build environment chroot.

• Download latest portage snapshot portage-latest.tar.bz2 from Gentoo and unpack it to /usr

cd /usr
wget -q -O - http://mirror.gentoo.se/snapshots/portage-latest.tar.bz2 portage-latest.tar.bz2 | tar -vjx

• Check out the alpine-portage overlay from svn.

svn co svn://svn.alpinelinux.org/alpine-portage/trunk /usr/alpine-portage

• Download all the tbz2 packages into the var/cache/packages directory. This is probably easiest with rsync.

rsync -rauv rsync://rsync.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v1.7/tbz2/* /var/cache/packages/

• Check out the alpine-builder scripts in usr/src/

svn co svn://svn.alpinelinux.org/alpine-builder/trunk /usr/src/alpine

NOTE: The trunk is constantly changing. You might want to use a tagged release like svn://svn.alpinelinux.org/alpine-builder/tags/release-1.7.7

• Configure portage to use the config from alpine-builder.

rm -r /etc/make.conf /etc/portage
ln -s /usr/src/alpine/sdk/etc/make.conf /etc
ln -s /usr/src/alpine/sdk/etc/portage /etc

• Update the portage tree (this takes some time first time you do it)

emerge --sync

• Build the alpine images (iso, usb, flash, etc.)

cd /usr/src/alpine
make

Failure compiling ipp2p: just manually 'emerge iptables' and issue 'make' again.

If you get failures while building kernel drivers then you can workaround that by commenting out the specific in /usr/src/alpine/kernel/generic/drivers.

NOTE when leaving chroot: When leaving your chroot, you should unmount the /proc

exit
sudo umount /opt/alpine/1.7/proc

Updating the build env.

If you already setup the build env earlier and only want to enter it, update it and maybe create a iso, then this part of the documentation is what you are looking for.

• Mount proc.

sudo mount -t proc proc /opt/alpine/1.7/proc

• Enter the chroot and change the prompt to reflect your chroot environment

sudo chroot /opt/alpine/1.7 /bin/bash --login

Now we are in the build environment chroot.

• Update the portage snapshot from Gentoo

emerge --sync

When emerge has done syncing, you could be advised to update the portage. In such case, you just follow instructions.

One instruction could be "* To update portage, run 'emerge portage'".

emerge portage

Another case could be that you see "* IMPORTANT: x config files in '/etc' need updating.". In that case run the dispatch-conf tool.

dispatch-conf

In most cases (when using the 'dispatch-conf') you should use the new config (by pressing 'u' in the console).

• Check out the alpine-portage overlay from svn.

cd /usr/alpine-portage && svn up

• Download all the tbz2 packages into the var/cache/packages directory. This is probably easiest with rsync.

rsync -rauv rsync://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/linux/alpine/alpine/v1.7/tbz2/* /var/cache/packages/

• Check out the alpine-builder scripts in usr/src/

cd /usr/src/alpine && svn up

• Build the alpine images (iso, usb, flash, etc.)

cd /usr/src/alpine/iso
make iso

NOTE when leaving chroot: When leaving your chroot, you should unmount the /proc

exit
sudo umount /opt/alpine/1.7/proc