Running Alpine in Live mode in QEMU

If your just want to give Alpine Linux a try, qemu can be used without a disk image and further configuration.

qemu -m 512 -cdrom alpine-3.2.0-x86_64.iso

You need to issue

grsec nomodeset

at boot prompt to avoid being forced in graphical mode and loosing access.

Question: Is there a way to pass an apkovl as paramater at this stage?

Response to self: Yes. I do it like this and I mount /dev/vda1 as /media/config to store the apkovl and the apkcache:

mkdir -p /media/usb/images
qemu-img create -f raw /media/usb/images/mykvm.config 32M
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 384 \
-name mykvm \
-cdrom /media/usb/images/alpine-3.2.0-x86_64.iso \
-drive file=/media/usb/images/mykvm.config,if=virtio \ 
-net lan \
-boot d &

And inside the KVM

fdisk /dev/vda
mkdosfs /dev/vda1
mkdir -p /media/config
echo "/dev/vda1 /media/config vfat rw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
mount /media/config
setup-alpine
lbu ci

At next reboot, it will use the newly generated apkovl and apkcache stored on /dev/vda1 running in run-from-ram from the latest official ISO.