Post installation

This material is work-in-progress ... This page "should" contain accurate and up to date information but is a work in progess (Last edited by Guest09248 on 6 Dec 2021.)

General Notes

When # is displayed in a command that means the command needs to be run with root privileges,

Anything in < > is likely just a placeholder that you need to replace (e.g <editor> file.txt)

Some information in here might be a repeat of information in other wiki pages, if you find a section where that is the case please add a link to the original wiki page.

Creating a new user account

After installing Alpine by default you only get a root account. You will probably want to create an account that is not root,

# adduser <YourUsername>

replace <YourUsername> with the username of your choice

You will probably want to install doas so you can allow <YourUsername> to use root privileges

# apk add doas

If you want your user to be able to use root privileges add them to the Wheel group

# adduser <YourUsername> wheel

Allow members of the Wheel group to use root privileges with doas:

# <editor> /etc/doas.d/doas.conf

add this to a new line:

# permit persist :wheel

Switch to the new account type exit in the shell and login with the new user,

By default the permissions of your new user(s) home directory may be limited to the root account, run one of these commands to change that:

# chmod 700 /home/<YourUsername>

or

# chmod 777 /home/<YourUsername>

Repositories

By default only the main repository is enabled, most users will probably want to enable the community repository, to enable a repository remove the # in front of the url along with any blank space.

# <editor> /etc/apk/repositories

Example default configuration:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

#/media/cdrom/apks http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/main # http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/community #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing

Note: The edge repositories contain unstable and/or possibly untested packages use at your own risk!

To avoid having to manually update the verison in /etc/apk/repositories for each Alpine Linux update, change v.3.15 to latest-stable

Example:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

#/media/cdrom/apks http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/latest-stable/main http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/latest-stable/community #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing

Note: Changing the repositories to latest-stable may initiate unexpected release upgrades, do this at your own risk!

For security reasons it may be a good idea to change the url's from http to https

Example:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

#/media/cdrom/apks https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/main https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/community #https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main #https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community #https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing

Note: some Alpine Linux package mirrors may not support https, if that is the case you will need to revert back or change mirrors

Once you have edited /etc/apk/repositories sync the repositories with:

# apk update

Installing a Display Manager (for graphical sessions)

Installing Xorg

Most desktop enviroments (DE) or Windows Managers (WM) require Xorg (also called: X11, X), although in the future many will fully migrate to Wayland currently Xorg is still widely used,

There is two ways you can get Xorg installed,

By default Alpine Linux provides a script that will install Xorg, run the following command to install Xorg:

# setup-xorg-base

or

# apk add xorg-server xorg-server-common xorg-server-dev xorgproto xorgxrdp xorgxrdp-dev

Note: the apk add method probably isnt complete yet