Fequently Asked Questions

General

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

Before reporting any bugs, please search the bug database to make sure that the bug is not already reported.

Preferred way to send bug reportes is via the sendbug application shipped with alpine. Run setup-sendbug to configure your default sender email address and your outgoing SMTP server.

Once that is done, run

sendbug

If your alpine box is unable to send emails for some reason it is also possible to just to send an email to bugs [at] alpinelinux.org. Please make the bug report as specific as possible.

For general tips how to write a good bug reports, see this article.

NOTE: On alpine releases prior 1.7.5 you will need to use send-pr instead of 'sendbug. Use setup-problem-reporting to configure your email adress and outgoing SMTP server.

TIP: If you have problems with the vi editor, try installing nano. Set the environment variable EDITOR to make send-pr use nano.

apk_add nano
echo "EDITOR=nano" >> /etc/profile
export EDITOR=nano
sendbug

Can I track the progress of my bug report ?

The bug reporting database is currently at

http://bugs.alpinelinux.org/cgi-bin/gnats.lsp

Note this is a read only view of the database - you still have to send updates in via email, as described above.

How can I contribute?

You can contribute by using the software and give feedback. You can contribute by helping with the documenting your experiences using this wiki.

Your contributions are highly appreciated.

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 if set in the file /etc/TZ. If this is not set time will displayed in UTC. Set how other uClibc based distros does 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 over timezones see http://astronomy.physics.tamu.edu/Java/Tools/Misc/Clock/zones.html

OpenNTPD reports an error with "adjtime"

Your log display 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, I probably can. Please check if your wanted package exist in gentoo portage by searching in http://packages.gentoo.org. Please post a package request on alpine-devel mailing list and we will look at it.

If there is no Gentoo package, then the best would be to create and ebuild and submit it to http://bugs.gentoo.org. Once your package is in gentoo its very easy to create and maintain the package in Alpine. During special conditions, we might create and maintain this package in the Alpine portage overlay, but its best if it could be officially included in Gentoo.

Currently, packages that require gettext, iconv, java or mono will be rejected for technical reasons. Packages requiring xorg, ruby, python perl, php or will most likely also be rejected but not for technical reasons.

How can i build my own package?

If you need compile you will need a toolchain to do it for you. Use the alpine-buildroot as base and set up a Gentoo hardened uclibc chroot.

If you want to create a package that just containins scripts, then you can simply create a tar.gz package and give it a proper name. There is a utlity, apk_create, to assist you in creating packages. The man page has details on internals.