Installation
The following information will assist you with the installation of Alpine Linux.
Installation Quick-Start in 3 Easy Steps
1st
Download one of the latest stable-release ISOs. Then compare the image's checksum to the one in the corresponding checksum file (*.sha256) and verify its GPG signature.
2nd
If you have a CD drive from which you can boot, then burn the ISO onto a blank CD using your favorite CD burning software. Else create a bootable USB drive.
3rd
Boot from the CD or USB drive, login as root with no password, and voilà! Enjoy Alpine Linux!
One of the first commands you might want to use is setup-alpine.
Installation Handbook
Basics
Alpine can be used in any of three modes:
- diskless mode
- You'll boot from read-only medium such as the installation CD, a USB drive, or a Compact Flash card. Tip: To prepare either a USB or Compact Flash card, you can use theWhen you use Alpine in this mode, you need to use Alpine Local Backup (lbu) to save your modifications between reboots. That requires some writable medium, usually removable. (If your boot medium is, for example, a USB drive, you can save modifications there; you don't need a separate partition or drive.) See also Local APK cache.
setup-bootablescript; see the pages linked above for details.Note: When thesetup-alpinescript asks for a disk, say "none". It will then prompt whether you'd like to preserve modifications on any writable medium. - data mode
- As in diskless mode, your OS is run from a read-only medium. However, here a writable partition (usually on a hard disk) is used to store the data in /var. That partition is accessed directly, rather than copied into a tmpfs; so this is better-suited to uses where large amounts of data need to be preserved between reboots. Note: TheThis mode may be used for mailspools, database and log servers, and so on.
setup-alpinescript handles installing Alpine in this mode, too, when you supply a writable partition instead of "none", and request mode "data". - sys mode
- This is a traditional hard-disk install (see link for details). Both the boot system and your modifications are written to the hard disk, in a standard Linux hierarchy. Note: TheThis mode may be used for desktops, development boxes, and virtual servers.
setup-alpinescript handles installing Alpine in this mode, too, when you supply a writable partition instead of "none", and request mode "sys". By default, it will create three partions on your disk, for /boot, /, and swap; however you can also partition your disk manually.
Advanced
- Create UEFI boot USB
- Setting up storage with RAID, LVM, LUKS encryption, iSCSI, or suchlike
- Setting up disks manually
- Partitioning and Bootmanagers
- Migrating data
- Details about Alpine setup scripts
- Install to HDD with dual-boot
- Create A VirtualBox Guest with Grub and XFS
- Replacing non-Alpine Linux with Alpine remotely
- Installing Alpine Linux in a chroot
- Install Alpine on LXC
- Install Alpine on Ubuntu with LXD
- Install Alpine on VirtualBox, VMware, coLinux, Qemu, Amazon EC2, or RackSpace
- Xen Dom0 (Setting up Alpine as a dom0 for Xen hypervisor)
- Xen Dom0 on USB or SD
- Create Alpine Linux PV DomU
- Xen LiveCD
- Setting up a basic vserver
- Setting up the build environment on HDD
- Setting up a compile vserver for official or for third party packages
Post-Install
- Setting up Networking
- Package Management (apk) (How to add/remove packages on your Alpine)
- Alpine local backup (lbu) (Permanently store your modifications in case your box needs reboot)
- Init System (OpenRC) (Configure a service to automatically boot at next reboot)
- Setting up Xorg
- Setting up a ssh-server (Using ssh is a good way to administer your box remotely)
- setup-acf (Configures ACF (webconfiguration) so you can manage your box through https)
- Hosting services on Alpine(Links to several mail/web/ssh server setup pages)
- Changing passwords
- Setting the timezone (Not needed for the default musl- or uClibc-based installs)