Installation

From Alpine Linux
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Typical Hardware Requirements

  • At least 100 MB of RAM (A graphical desktop system may require up to 1 GB minimum.)
  • The "sys" or "data" run modes (see below) will require a writable storage device.

Install Procedure

Similar to many other distributions, the first installation steps usually consist of

  1. Downloading one of the latest stable-release ISOs, and comparing the downloaded image's sha265sum checksum to the one in the corresponding *.sha256 checksum file, and to verify its GPG signature.
  2. Either burning the ISO onto a blank CD with your favorite CD burning software, or creating a bootable USB drive.
  3. Booting from the CD or USB drive, and logging in to the command line as user root with its initally empty password.

(For installing on ARM systems, see Alpine on ARM.)

However, contrary to most other distributions, this initially booted Alpinelinux system (command line environment) is first copied entirely into RAM, and runs completely independent from the (slow) initial boot media.

And then, the setup-alpine script, and other tools, are used to configure the initial Alpinelinux system, install further packages, and prepare the system for the next boot.

The system can boot into three general Alpinelinux runtime modes:

diskless mode This is the default boot mode of the .iso images. With the setup-alpine selection "disk=none" the whole system runs from RAM. Customized configuration and package selections may still be preserved on permanent storage media by using lbu, the "local backup utility", and by using a local package cache. The boot device may, for example, be some read-only CD, a USB drive, or a Compact Flash or SD card.

data mode This mode also runs mostly from RAM, with the exception of a selected writable data partition that gets mounted as /var. This mode is better-suited when some larger amount of data needs to be preserved between reboots, e.g. mailspools, databases, or log files.

sys mode This is a traditional hard-disk install. The setup-alpine script defaults to creating three partitions on the selected disk, for /boot, swap and / (filesystem root). This mode may, for example, be used for generic desktop, and development machines.

Additional Hints

Booting from external devices

Insert the boot media to a proper drive or port of the computer and turn the machine on. But depending on the computer it may be necessary, e.g. to press the `F12` key to get a selection to choose the media to boot from.

Questions asked by setup-alpine

The setup-alpine script will ask to configure several things, including:

  • Keyboard map (e.g. us and variant of us-nodeadkeys)
  • Hostname (The name for the computer.)
  • Network options
  • DNS options: For privacy reasons, it is NOT recommended to use 8.8.8.8 (google servers).
  • Timezone
  • Proxy ("None" to connect directly to the internet.)
  • SSH (Openssh is part of the default images.)
  • NTP (Chrony is part of the default images.)
  • Mode (Select between "diskless", "data" or "sys" as described above.)


Booting and using the new system

After the installation is completed, depending on the run mode, the initial installation media may be removed and the system may be rebooted from the newly installed device, to confirm that it works.



Further Documentation

Post-Install

Further Help and Information

See Also

  1. Newbie_Alpine_Ecosystem
  2. Alpine newbie install manual
  3. https://mckayemu.github.io/alpineinstalls/ All informatin for Spanish users
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