Alpine Install: from a disc to PC Engines APU

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Overall description: Alpine Installation from an official image tar file downloaded to a real second generation PC Engines APU systems (apu2, apu3, apu4), where it will be single OS only.

This document will guide you to install Alpine into second generation PC Engines APU systems, it was tested with an apu2d4 and Alpine 3.11.6..

Terminology

  • BIOS: it's a system into computer hardware machine laptop or desktops, embedded that will manage the early boot process, see more in the Alpine and UEFI page.
  • New machine: will be your real machine fresh and ready to install your new Alpine operating system, with an installed ISO image where to put the downloaded media installation.
  • Bootable USB: will be your hardware drive input to put the image downloaded iso media with the operating system Alpine to install as source media; this drive are commonly named USB unit.
  • Serial console: is an input port on the device.. DB9 serial port for serial console, located at the board to use as char device, it's common in those devices.
  • Source media: will be the just burned / disc from the downloaded iso file of Alpine operating system. Will be Attach to the serial console to property boot the source disc as media installation.
  • Target media: will be the storage medium device into the new computer target where the Alpine files for operating system will be installed, its one partition from the HardDisk of the new computer.

Booting the Alpine ISO disc

  1. It's probably a good idea to ensure that the BIOS / Firmware is up to date.
  2. Create_a_Bootable_USB thumb drive with the current standard x86_64 image from the downloads page.
  3. Attach to the serial console. Configure your terminal emulator for 115200 8n1.
  4. Power on the APU.
  5. When BIOS prompted, hit F10 and select to boot from USB.
  6. At the boot prompt, quickly type a slash to interrupt the default boot, which has a short timeout.
  7. Continue entering the remainder of this command at your leisure. It should have only one slash at the start, to be clear: /boot/vmlinuz-lts modules=loop,squashfs,sd-mod,usb-storage nomodeset console=ttyS0,115200 initrd=/boot/initramfs-lts
  8. Alpine should come up as normal.


This page exists to provide a basic overview to get started. Before actually installing, it can help to skim through the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), as well as to refer to the official installation guide at docs.alpinelinux.org.

Tip: This is a wiki!

If something isn't correct, or is incomplete, you will have to figure it out, or ask for the correct solution in the community.

And then carefully edit the wiki page.

Just as those before who did it for you.

Minimal Hardware Requirements

Main article: Requirements
  • At least 128 MB of RAM. [A graphical desktop system may require up to 512 minimum.]. Note that an installation itself (from ISO) generally requires at least 320 MB during installation.
  • At least 0-700 MB space on a writable storage device. [Only required in "sys" or "data" mode installations. It is optional in "diskless" mode, where it may be used to save newer data and configurations states of a running system.]
  • A working internet connection is required to complete "sys" mode installation.
Note: Most of the steps outlined on this page applies to all Architectures supported by Alpine Linux. For more specific installation instructions, refer to their respective pages. Refer custom installation instructions for headless system, virtualization etc.

Installation Overview

Alpine Linux can be installed and run in three modes i.e Diskless Mode, Data Disk Mode and System Disk Mode. The installation procedure for Alpine Linux requires basic understanding of the three modes explained in brief below:

Diskless Mode

Main article: Diskless Mode

In Diskless mode the entire operating system with all applications are first loaded into RAM and then only run from there. This mode is extremely fast and can save on unnecessary disk spin-ups, power, and wear. Alpine Linux uses this method to boot the .iso installation images. The setup-alpine script configures the installed system to continue to boot like this if "disk=none" is specified.

Data Disk Mode

Main article: Data Disk Mode

In Data Disk mode also the operating system runs from system RAM, thus it enjoys the same accelerated operation speed as "diskless" mode. However, swap storage and the entire /var directory tree get mounted from a persistent storage device. This mode is useful for having RAM accelerated servers with variable amounts of user-data that exceed the available RAM size.

System Disk Mode

System or sys Disk Mode is the traditional hard-disk install. Alpine Linux can be installed to an entire hard disk using setup-alpine script or to custom partitions using setup-disk. For further info, refer System Disk Mode.

General course of action

It is really helpful for many use cases to prepare and complete the Installation until the base configuration step, then proceed with installation of the target system with any one of the various alternate courses of action.

Alternate courses of action

Examples of preparation options:

  • Download some specific driver to configure the hardware, and/or install some software tool that may be missing in the live system by using the alpine package manager apk.
  • Do a Manual partitioning of the harddisk that avoids overwrite of an entire disk.

Examples of such options:

There are many more setup-scripts available. All these tools may also be run later to adjust specific configurations. For example, to set up a graphical environment as covered under Post-Installation below.

Preparing for the installation

Downloading installation image

Download the stable-release installation image-file for the target computer's architecture with their corresponding sha256 (checksum) and GPG (signature) files.

Note: Download sha256 (checksum) and GPG (signature) files only from official site and not from mirrors.

Now you have three files of the following format.. 

alpine-standard-*.iso
alpine-standard-*.iso.sha256
alpine-standard-*.iso.asc

alpine-standard-3.20.3-x86_64.iso is the 3.20.3 version Standard image file in iso format for x86_64 architecture. Image file can also be gz for certain cases.

Verifying downloaded image

From Security point of view, verify the downloaded image file for both checksum and GPG signature before proceeding further. The three required utilities i.e sha256, curl and gpg or their equivalents are available in every operating system including Linux, windows, Mac and BSD derivaties.

Tip: Ensure that all the three downloaded files remain in the same folder. If not, adjust the commands accordingly.

The sha256 checksum verifies the integrity of the downloaded image i.e no modifications occurred during download.

sha256sum -c alpine-*.iso.sha256

The GPG signature verifies the link between the downloaded image to the individual who signed it. Signature verification involves two steps:

Step 1. Download and import the gpg signature from official website

curl https://alpinelinux.org/keys/ncopa.asc | gpg --import ;

Step 2. Verify that the image signature matches with the one downloded in Step 1.

gpg --verify alpine-*.iso.asc alpine-*.iso

Preparing installation media

See also: Burning ISOs
Note: These instructions are exclusively for x86_64 and x86. For ARM boards, see Alpine on ARM.

All data currently on the installation media will be lost, when Alpine Linux installation image is written on it. Be extremely careful to correctly identify the device name for the installation media using the commands lsblk and blkid.

In Linux, dd command can write the downloaded image file to the installation media i.e target device.

Note: Modify the input file(if) and output file(of) according to the name and path to your image file and target device. Do not use partition numbers for the target device i.e use /dev/sdX instead of /dev/sdbXY.

# dd if=alpine-standard-3.20.3-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress; eject /dev/sdX

If your version of dd does not support the option "status=progress", remove it. The eject command removes the target device from the system and ensures the write cache is completely flushed.

In Windows, Rufus has been tested to create bootable USB flash drives and worked for Alpine Linux 3.12.x with the following settings:

  • Partition scheme: MBR Target system: BIOS or UEFI
  • File system: FAT32 Cluster size: 4096 bytes (default)

Verifying Installation media

After detaching and re-attaching the device, a bit-wise comparison can verify the data written to the device (instead of just data buffered in RAM). If the comparison terminates with an end-of-file error on the .iso file side, all the contents from the image have been written (and re-read) successfully: 

 # cmp ~/Downloads/alpine-standard-3.20.3-x86_64.iso /dev/sdX
 cmp: EOF on alpine-standard-3.20.3-x86_64.iso

Booting Installation Media

Insert the Installation media to a proper drive or port of the computer and turn the machine on, or restart it, if already running.

Note: To successfully boot and install Alpine Linux, disable secure boot in the BIOS. Once Alpine Linux is installed, this can be enabled.

If the computer does not automatically boot from the desired device, one needs to bring up the boot menu and choose the media to boot from. Depending on the computer, the menu may be accessed by repeatedly pressing a key quickly when booting starts. Some computers require that you press the button before starting the computer and hold it down while the computer boots. Typical keys are: F9-F12, sometimes F7 or F8. If these don't bring up the boot menu, it may be necessary to enter the BIOS configuration and adjust the boot settings, for which typical keys are: Del F1 F2 F6 or Esc.

Installation Step Details

Boot Process

The boot process of the alpine installation image first copies the entire operating system into the RAM memory, and then already starts a complete Alpine Linux system from there. It will initially only provide a basic command line environment that does not depend on reading from any (possibly slow) initial boot media, anymore.

Local log-in is possible as the user root. Initially, the root user has no password.

At the command prompt, an interactive script named setup-alpine is available to configure and install Alpine Linux. The script can be customized by the optional environment variables, in case of "data" or "sys" mode. For e.g USE_EFI=1 BOOTSIZE=512 setup-alpine, sets the disklabel type to gpt, creates 512MB /boot partition with vfat filesystem and uses grub as bootloader.

Base configuration

Launch the Alpine Linux Installation by running the setup-alpine script :

# setup-alpine

The question-and-answer dialog of setup-alpine takes care of the base configuration. It sets up a network connection to access Internet to configure the system to boot into one of three different Alpine Linux "disk" modes: "diskless"(none), "data" or "sys". If you choose to edit any option, the relevant file is opened in vi for editing.

Example setup-alpine session

The setup-alpine script offers the following configuration options:

  1. Keyboard Layout (Local keyboard language and usage mode, e.g. us and variant of us-nodeadkeys.)
  2. Hostname (The name for the computer.)
  3. Network (Setup network connection to access Internet.)
    • Available interfaces are: eth0 wlan0.(List depends on your hardware.)
    • Which one do you want to initialize? (or '?' or 'done') [eth0] (Enter 'done' after configuring atleast one interface for Internet access.)
    • Do you want to do any manual network configuration? (y/n) [n] (Default uses "DHCP".)
  4. DNS Servers (If none of the interfaces configured in previous step uses dhcp, set DNS server. If unsure, leave DNS domain name blank and using 9.9.9.9 2620:fe::fe for DNS is typically adequate.)
  5. Root password (the password used to login to the root account)
  6. Timezone (Optionally display times/dates in your local time zone)
  7. HTTP/FTP Proxy (Proxy server to use for accessing the web/ftp. Use "none" for direct connections to websites and FTP servers.)
  8. Mirror (From where to download packages. Choose the organization you trust giving your usage patterns to.)
  9. Setup a user (Setting up a regular user account)
  10. NTP (Network Time Protocol client used for keeping the system clock in sync with a time server. Package "chrony" is part of the default install image.)
  11. SSH (Secure SHell remote access server. "OpenSSH" is part of the default install image. Use "none" to disable remote login, e.g. on laptops.)
  12. In most cases, either one of following line(s) is displayed as follows:
    No disks found. or Available disks are: sda (128.0 GB JMicron Tech )
  13. Disk Mode ( A pre-setup of the "diskless" system or base configuration is completed by answering "none" when asked for the following questions.)
    • Which disk(s) would you like to use? (or '?' for help or 'none') none
    • Enter where to store configs (/media/ or 'none') none
    • The location of the package cache none

Base configuration is complete with the above step. Refer to the alternate courses of action to proceed further.

setup-alpine based System Disk Install

setup-alpine script based installation, needs an entire hard disk(s) for Alpine Linux and uses a partitioning layout with (/)root partition, /boot partition and a swap partition, where environment variables determine filesystem, size of the boot partition and the bootloader used. If your use case matches the above, at the final step of base configuration, type the appropriate hard disk device name instead of none. If multiple disks are chosen, RAID is used.

  • At the Disk Mode stage, sda or relevant disk(s) must be chosen in the below screen:
    • Which disk(s) would you like to use? (or '?' for help or 'none') sda
    • Confirmation for the chosen disk(s) appears. The following disk is selected: sda (128.0 GB JMicron Tech ).
Warning: Pay close attention to the disk name and size. If you enter sys in the next step, no further questions will be asked and data on the chosen disk(s) will be overwritten!. Enter Ctrl+c to abort the installation process. Proceed only if you are 100% sure.


  • How would you like to use it? ('sys', 'data', 'lvm' or '?' for help) sys

If sys is chosen, the setup-alpine script will complete the traditional hard-disk installation of Alpine Linux on the chosen disk(s) without further questions. Once the installation is complete, you can skip the next steps and proceed to reboot the system to boot into the newly installed Alpine Linux and configure further.

Custom partitioning

Manual partitioning of the harddisk may be needed to prepare the harddisk for "sys" mode install using setup-disk and for storing the config file using lbu commit and package cache for Diskless and for /var mount for Data disk mode installs. Refer Setting up disks manually page for specific configurations related to RAID, encryption, LVM, etc...

Preparing for the first boot

If System Disk Mode of installation was performed, ignore this section and proceed to reboot.

If the new local system was configured to run in "diskless" or "data" mode, and you do not want keep booting from the initial (and possibly read-only) installation media, create a customizable boot device. Once everything is in place, save your customized configuration with lbu commit before rebooting.

Reboot

First, remove the initial installation media from the boot drive, or detach it from the port it's connected to. The system may now be power-cycled or rebooted to confirm everything is working correctly. The relevant commands for this are poweroff or reboot. Login into the new system with the root account.

Completing the installation

The installation script installs only the base operating system. No applications e.g. web server, mail server, desktop environment, or web browsers are installed.

Please look at Post-Installation, for some common things to do after installation.

Custom Installation Instructions

Custom-made headless apkovl can be done by first booting the install media on some computer with a display and keyboard attached, or in a virtual machine, and doing an intermediate "diskless" setup of just the boot media (more details below), i.e. using the offical setup-alpine to configure the system's network, possibly for dhcp if needed, a ssh server, and a login user. Choosing "disks=none" for now, yet, configure to store configs on the boot media (if it is writable, otherwise on a separate storage media). And afterwards calling lbu commit to store the configs as local backup. Then your completed setup, including its securely created own private keys, will readily get (re)loaded on every subsequent (headless) boot from your custom-build <hostname>.apkovl.tar.gz stored on the boot media (or on an auxilary media or server location, in case the boot media is read-only).

Also see other Installation Category pages.

Post-Installation

Tip: Alpine Linux packages stay close to the upstream design. Therefore, all upstream documentation about configuring a software package, as well as good configuration guides from other distributions that stay close to upstream, e.g. those in the ArchWiki, or Gentoo wiki are to a large degree, also applicable to configuring the software on Alpine Linux, thus can be very useful.

Daily driver guide

Alpine Linux is built to be small and resource efficient. It is still a general purpose Linux distribution designed for power users. If you feel the defaults are too lightweight for desktop use, it is easy to get most of the regular stuff working and use it as a daily driver.

Note: This guide assumes you have already installed a minimal Alpine Linux system in sys mode with working Internet by following the Installation guide. The following four steps are mandatory to install any Desktop:
  1. Create a non-privileged user account for security reasons.
  2. Ensure that community repository is enabled
  3. Install graphics driver for your video hardware.
  4. Install a desktop using Setup-desktop script or manually install any desktop of your choice.

Basics

Advanced

Other topics

Topics not strictly related to using Alpine Linux as desktop are listed below:

See also

Which disk choose to use?

To choose the disk destination ..

How would be used?

Then choose type of installation .. those are described at Setup modes section at Alpine setup scripts wiki page. "sys" mode is the familiar install to disk well known for usage as main OS to computers.

After all a confirmation question will raised, type "y" if everything are ok and the setup will proceed to erase, format and copy the files to the destination disk choose!

After reboot

  1. Before rebooting, edit /boot/extlinux.conf.
    1. Add SERIAL 0 115200 as the first line in the file.
    2. In the APPEND line, replace quiet with console=ttyS0,115200
  2. Remove the thumb drive.
  3. Cross your fingers and reboot. The system should boot properly with console on serial.
  4. Edit /etc/update-extlinux.conf so that if extlinux.conf is regenerated it will retain these settings:
    1. Update the line with serial_port to read serial_port=0
    2. Update the serial_baud line to read serial_baud=115200
    3. Update the default_kernel_opts line to replace quiet with console=ttyS0,115200
  5. Run update-extlinux
  6. Examine /boot/extlinux.conf.
    1. Make sure it looks OK. Compare with /boot/extlinux.conf-old.
    2. If something looks wrong, mv /boot/extlinux.conf-old /boot/extlinux.conf to roll back the changes and try to figure out what went wrong
  7. Cross your fingers and reboot. The system should boot properly with console on serial.

See Also

  1. Alpine and UEFI
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