Create a Bootable Device

A custom Alpine Linux boot medium is basically an Alpine system installed to the device in diskless or data disk-mode.

If the device remains writable, the local configs (.apkovl) and the package cache may also be stored on the same device.

Requirements

In order to follow this document, you will need:

• An Alpine Linux CD-ROM or an .iso file containing an Alpine release (Download).
• A USB drive (flash, external HD, card reader, etc.)

Using setup-bootable

The preferable method to create a custom bootable device now is to follow the Installation for a diskless or data mode system on the device, and use the setup-bootable script to make the device bootable.

Manually copying Alpine files

This process applies to Alpine Linux 1.9.0 or later.

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Finishing installation

After one has booted the previously created Alpine Linux bootable USB medium, one has to prepare USB stick to hold local customizations and run setup-alpine to finish the installation.

First let's find out where is our just booted USB media mounted, the location could vary.

# mount | grep /media
/dev/sda1 on /media/sda1 type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=utf8,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)

Create local directory on USB media to hold local APK cache (see APK Local Cache for details).

# mount -o remount,rw /media/sda1
# mkdir /media/sda1/cache
# setup-apkcache /media/sda1/cache
# ls -l /etc/apk/cache
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            17 Oct 19 13:16 /etc/apk/cache -> /media/sda1/cache

Now run setup-alpine and proceed until a question about local disk selection - in diskless mode we won't use any disk (ie. our bootable media files is basically untouched) and we are going to use sda1 to hold our system customization.

# setup-alpine
...
Which disk(s) would you like to use? (or '?' for help or 'none') [none] 
Enter where to store configs ('floppy', 'sda1', 'usb' or 'none') [sda1]: 
Enter apk cache directory (or '?' or 'none') [/media/sda1/cache]:

After the installer finished you can see how many created/modified files are detected and will be added to the backup:

# lbu status
# lbu status | wc -l
59
# lbu commit
# ls -l /media/sda1/*apkovl.tar.gz
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          9591 Oct 19 15:23 /media/sda1/foo.apkovl.tar.gz

Now all the customization are saved into the foo.apkovl.tar.gz compressed tarball on the USB stick itself.

Troubleshooting

Slow USB Devices

Specifying the 'waitusb=X' option at the end of the syslinux.cfg line might help with certain USB devices that take a bit longer to register. X stands for the amount of seconds kernel will wait before looking for the installation media.

append initrd=/boot/grsec.gz alpine_dev=usbdisk:vfat modules=loop,cramfs,sd-mod,usb-storage quiet waitusb=3

See Also

Alpine Linux has some special applications that helps you to use it in the way you want.
Some of the first scripts you are suggested to use is:

• setup-alpine (Configures all basic things on your Alpine Linux)
• setup-acf (was named setup-webconf before Alpine 1.9 beta 4) (Configures ACF (webconfiguration) so you can manage your box through https)

Note: Just type any of the above commands on your console and hit Enter to execute the script.

Other useful pages

• Configure Networking
• Setting up a SSH server (Using ssh is a good way to administer your box remotely)
• Package Management (apk) (How to add/remove packages on your Alpine)
• Init System (rc) (Configure a service to automatically boot at next reboot)
• Alpine local backup (lbu) (Permanently store your modifications in case your box needs reboot)