Running Alpine in Live mode in QEMU

From Alpine Linux
Revision as of 17:16, 6 May 2020 by Sb1 (talk | contribs)

To just give Alpine Linux a try in diskless mode, qemu can be used to boot the .iso file without any need for a virtual HDD image or further configuration.

qemu -m 512 -cdrom alpine-3.2.0-x86_64.iso

Issue

grsec nomodeset

at boot prompt to avoid being forced in graphical mode and loosing access.

Question: Is there a way to pass an apkovl as paramater at this stage?
Response to self: Yes. I do it like this and I mount /dev/vda1 as /media/config to store the apkovl and the apkcache:

mkdir -p /media/usb/images
qemu-img create -f raw /media/usb/images/mykvm.config 32M
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 384 \
-name mykvm \
-cdrom /media/usb/images/alpine-3.2.0-x86_64.iso \
-drive file=/media/usb/images/mykvm.config,if=virtio \ 
-net lan \
-boot d &

And inside the KVM:

fdisk /dev/vda
mkdosfs /dev/vda1
mkdir -p /media/vda1
# Newer versions seem to automount partitions. Not needed:
# echo "/dev/vda1 /media/config vfat rw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
mount /dev/vda1 /media/vda1
setup-alpine  # (select vda1 for saving state)
lbu commit

The next reboot then loads the generated apkovl and apkcache found on /dev/vda1, fully running-from-ram based on the latest official ISO.