Alpine Linux:FAQ

This is a list of frequently asked questions about Alpine Linux. If your question is not answered on this page, use the search box above to find work in progress pages not linked here, or in case of no answer, edit this page and write down your question.

Tip: Prepare your question. Think it through. Make it simple and understandable.

General

I have found a bug, where can I report it?

You can report it on the bugtracker.

Alpine freezes 1 minute when booting from Compact Flash, how can I fix?

Append nodma to the append line in syslinux.cfg.

How can I contribute?

You can contribute by using the software and giving feedback. You can contribute by documenting your Alpine Linux experiences on this wiki. You can contribute in many other ways. Please visit Contribute page to read more about this topic.

Your contributions are highly appreciated.

How do I remove the CDROM?

Since the modloop loopback device is on CDROM you cannot just run eject. You need to unmount the modloop first. Unmounting both the modloop and the cdrom in one step can be done by executing:

/etc/init.d/modloop stop

Then it's possible to run eject to eject the cdrom.

Audio

How do I play my .ogg/.mp3 files?

First, the sound card should be recognized (you must have /dev/snd/***** files)

sox, mpg321, mpg123, oggplay, etc all use the oss sound driver, while Alpine uses ALSA drivers. So you need to load the snd-pcm-oss compatibility module. While you're at it, you might need aumix to turn up the sound volume

echo snd-pcm-oss >> /etc/modules
modprobe snd-pcm-oss 
apk_add aumix sox
aumix (set volume settings)
play really_cool_song.mp3

Time and timezones

How do I set local timezone?

Timezone is set in the file /etc/TZ. If the timezone is not set, time will displayed in UTC. Set how other uClibc based distros do this: http://leaf.sourceforge.net/doc/buci-tz3.html http://www.sonoracomm.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=107&Itemid=32

For a more complete list of timezones see http://astronomy.physics.tamu.edu/Java/Tools/Misc/Clock/zones.html

OpenNTPD reports an error with "adjtime"

Your log contains something like:

reply from 85.214.86.126: offset 865033148.784255 delay 0.055466, next query 32s
reply from 202.150.212.24: offset 865033148.779314 delay 0.400771, next query 3s
adjusting local clock by 865033148.779835s                                      
adjtime failed: Invalid argument    

openntpd is supposed to make small adjustments in the time without causing time jumps. If the adjustment is too big then something is clearly wrong and ntpd gives up. (its actually adjtime(3) that has a limit on how big adjustments are allowed)

You can make ntpd set the time at startup by adding -s option to ntpd. This is done by setting NTPD_OPTS="-s" in /etc/conf.d/ntpd.

Packages

Can you build an apk package for ...?

Yes, we probably can. Please create an issue in the bugtracker. Mark it as "feature" and include a short description (one-line), an url for the home page, and an url for the source package.

How can I build my own package?

Please see the Creating an Alpine package page.