Running Alpine in Live mode in QEMU
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.