Release Notes for Alpine 1.7.3

Release notes for Alpine 1.7.3

Some news:

• Improved disk support
• Experiemntal support for vserver
• albootstrap script
• Experimental support for drbd
• Experimental openswan-2.5.x
• Support for multiple kernels
• Boot from floppy is no longer supported

Improved Disk support

A localmount script was added that will mount all partitions in /etc/fstab like a traditional distro. The mdadm-raid and lvm init scripts are revisited too so it should now be possible to mount lvm2 partitions on a software raid array.

Experimental support for vserver

An additional kernel was added with both vserver and grsec patches. This means that you can now run debian as a vserver guest in alpine! The guest will benefit from the grsec'ed kernel.

The debootstrap should work just out of the box. Installing alpine as a vserver guest still needs some work. (see albootstrap below)

To boot the vserver kernel from cdrom type:

vsgrsec-cd

at the iso/syslinux boot prompt.

To boot from usb:

vsgrsec-usb

Bootstraping Alpine: albootstrap

I wrote a simple script to help install a base installation in a subdir. It will download base.tar.bz2 from $MIRROR (defaults to http://dev.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v1.7 ), extract to specified dierctory and set up busybox links, resolv.conf and APK_PATH. Everything is done within seconds.

You can actually test it on any linux distro and create an alpine chroot:

wget http://dev.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v1.7/albootstrap
sudo sh albootstrap <DIR>

You can now mount proc to <DIR>/proc and chroot into a base alpine system.

The idea is to integrate this with vserver or add options for installing a kernel and bootloader.

Experimental support for drbd

The drbd kernel module and userland utilities was added. It should be possible to set up a redundant diskarray (think raid1 over ip). This could be very useful for vserver. No support for gfs2/ocfs2 yet. They simply don't compile under uclibc for various reasons.

It should still be possible to set up vserver with hardbeat on a drbd device. If a physical server goes down harbeat could start up the vserver on the slave. Downtime could be reduced to seconds even if live migration is not possible.

Openswan 2.5.x

I upgraded to development version of openswan. Its suppoed to have some very useful features (like bringing up/down a single tunnel without taking down all)

Please let me know if you have problems with this or if you need the stable 2.4.x. We can work something out.

Support for multiple kernels

The kernel has now moved to /kernel/<flavor>/bzImage so its possible to have multiple kernels on same cd. modules.cmg is renamed to modloop.cmg and moved to same dir as the related bzImage. The following kernels are currently shipped:

generic - The "classic" Gentoo hardened kernel (2.6.20)
vsgrsec - Vserver + grsec kernel (2.6.21)
mini - Save as "generic" but with a minimal config.

to boot the vsgrsec and read base/modloop from cd, type "vsgrsec-cd" at the boot prompt.

Boot from floppy support removed

To save some time, decided to drop support for booting from floppy. I would like to create a minimal cd with only kernel, net/disk drivers and base wich is supposed to be used as install cd. This will most likely have support for booting from floppy.

So you will be able to boot from floppy and install alpine to disk from network.

Let me know if you depend on floppies to boot and I will get it working again for the "generic" kernel. There is not enough space for vsgrsec.

Package summary

Removed packages:
None

New pacakges:
debootstrap-1.0.0
dpkg-1.13.11
drbd-8.0.4
dyntun-0.2
gmp-dev-4.2.1-r1
mktemp-1.5
mpt-status-1.2.0
uclibc++-dev-0.2.1

Upgraded/downgraded packages (from version):
alpine-baselayout-1.5.0-r1     (1.4.1-r1)
alpine-conf-0.10               (0.9)
asterisk-1.2.21.1              (1.2.17)
asterisk-doc-1.2.21.1          (1.2.17)
authforce-0.9.9                (0.9.6)
baselayout-2.0.0_alpha4        (1.12.9-r2)
binutils-2.17                  (2.16.1-r3)
binutils-dev-2.17              (2.16.1-r3)
busybox-1.6.1                  (1.5.0-r1)
chntpw-0.99.4.20070409         (0.99.3.20040818)
clamav-0.91                    (0.90.3)
cpio-2.8                       (2.7-r2)
ctorrent-3.1                   (2.2)
curl-7.15.5-r1                 (7.15.1-r1)
device-mapper-1.02.19          (1.02.10-r1)
dnsmasq-2.39                   (2.38-r1)
dspam-3.8.0-r3                 (3.8.0-r1)
dspam-postgres-3.8.0-r3        (3.8.0-r1)
fetchmail-6.3.8                (6.3.3)
file-4.21-r1                   (4.21)
findutils-4.3.7                (4.3.4)
flow-tools-0.68-r5             (0.68-r3)
gd-2.0.35                      (2.0.34)
haserl-0.9.18                  (0.9.16)
hdparm-7.5                     (7.3)
hydra-5.4                      (5.3)
libnetfilter_conntrack-0.0.80  (0.0.75)
libpri-1.2.5                   (1.2.4-r2)
libtool-1.5.23b                (1.5.22)
links-2.1_pre28-r1             (2.1_pre26)
lsof-4.78                      (4.77)
lsscsi-0.19                    (0.17)
mdadm-2.6.2                    (2.6.1)
nano-2.0.6                     (2.0.4)
ncurses-5.6-r1                 (5.6)
ngircd-0.10.2                  (0.10.1)
olsrd-0.5.2                    (0.5.0)
openswan-2.5.14                (2.4.8)
openswan-doc-2.5.14            (2.4.7)
patch-2.5.9                    (2.5.9-r1)
portage-utils-0.1.28           (0.1.23)
ppp-2.4.4-r9                   (2.4.4-r4)
psmisc-22.5                    (22.3)
readline-5.2_p4                (5.2_p2)
sdparm-1.01                    (1.00)
shorewall-3.4.5                (3.4.3)
shorewall-doc-3.4.5            (3.4.2)
shorewall-lite-3.4.5           (3.4.3)
slmodem-2.9.11_pre20070505     (2.9.11_pre20061021-r2)
squid-2.6.13-r1                (2.6.12)
tcpdump-3.9.5-r3               (3.9.5-r2)
thttpd-2.25b-r7                (2.25b-r6)
wireshark-0.99.6               (0.99.5)
zaptel-1.2.18                  (1.2.16)