Unattended Boot and Install
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Introduction
This wiki describes a modified version of the original method I posted for Headless installation on a Raspberry Pi. While the original version worked for other architectures, like x86_64, it was targeted at and posted in the Raspberry Pi section since that was my primary focus at the time. Revisions to that page by other authors removed the mention of x86_64 altogether so this version will be more generally written in the hopes that it will be easier to find and that it's applicability will be clearer.
Additionally, this version improves upon the original (in my opinion) by automatically logging in the root user and optionally running a shell script. This provides a means to perform unattended installations or other scripted tasks and does not require modification of the stock Alpine installation media / files.
The following functionality is provided:
- Automatic DHCP configuration of a network interface, either wired or wireless
- Automatic configuration of sshd with password-less root login enabled
- Automatic login of the root user on tty7
- Automatic script execution (optional)
Download a pre-built overlay file here.
Basic Use
For Alpine supported Raspberry Pi models, download the applicable Alpine installation tarball and extract it to an SD card formatted with a single FAT partition. Copy the headless.apkovl.tar.gz file to the root of the SD card.
Contents of /etc/network/interfaces
Notice that the wireless interface (wlan0) uses dhcp from the home network as usual and that an IP address is not used at all on the wired interface (eth0).
Enable and create a local start-up script to add route entries at boot:
# rc-update add local default # touch /etc/local.d/RouteAdd.start # chmod +x /etc/local.d/RouteAdd.start