Bootstrapping Alpine on PC Engines ALIX.3

Experience with bootstrapping 1.7.17 Alpine Linux on a CF card for PC Engines ALIX.3C2 LX800 (This information is based on the Soekris instructions)

We assume our CF reader is at /dev/sdb, with a 512+ MB CF formatted card loaded and will be mounted on /mnt/flash. We also assume root priviledges.

export FLASHDEVICE=/dev/sdb1
export MNT=/mnt/flash

First, we download the latest usbdrive tarball

wget http://dev.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v1.7/usbdrive/alpine-1.7.17-i386.tar.gz

and unpack it on our CF card

mount $FLASHDEVICE $MNT
tar xzf ../alpine-1.7.17-i386.tar.gz -C $MNT

Next step is to tell syslinux and the kernel we are using a serial console. We do so by creating a custom syslinux.cfg

cat > $MNT/syslinux.cfg <<EOF
serial 0 115200
timeout 0
default generic-alix

label generic-alix
        kernel /kernel/generic/bzImage
        append initrd=/kernel/generic/hd-ext3.gz rw alpine_dev=hda1:vfat root_dev=none:tmpfs alpine_base=base.tar.bz2 pkg_dev=hda1:vfat pkg_subdir=/apks cfg_dev=hda1:vfat modloop=/kernel/generic/modloop.cmg console=ttyS0,115200
EOF

Finally, we make the CF bootable

syslinux $FLASHDEVICE
umount alpine

Insert the flash card, and boot:

Linux 2.6.23-hardened-r7 #3 Thu Apr 24 09:11:33 UTC 2008 i586 unknown

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 5
model           : 10
model name      : Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by AMD PCS
stepping        : 2
cpu MHz         : 498.049
cache size      : 128 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu de pse tsc msr cx8 pge cmov clflush mmx mmxext 3dnowext  3dnow
bogomips        : 997.58
clflush size    : 32