Bootstrapping Alpine on PC Engines ALIX.3
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Experience with bootstrapping 1.7.17 Alpine Linux on a CF card for PC Engines ALIX.3C2 LX800 (This information is based on the Soekris instructions)
We assume our CF reader is at /dev/sdb, with a 512+ MB CF formatted card loaded and will be mounted on /mnt/flash. We also assume root priviledges.
export FLASHDEVICE=/dev/sdb1 export MNT=/mnt/flash
First, we download the latest usbdrive tarball
wget http://dev.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v1.7/usbdrive/alpine-1.7.17-i386.tar.gz
and unpack it on our CF card
mount $FLASHDEVICE $MNT tar xzf ../alpine-1.7.17-i386.tar.gz -C $MNT
Next step is to tell syslinux and the kernel we are using a serial console. We do so by creating a custom syslinux.cfg
cat > $MNT/syslinux.cfg <<EOF
serial 0 115200
timeout 0
default generic-alix
label generic-alix
kernel /kernel/generic/bzImage
append initrd=/kernel/generic/hd-ext3.gz rw alpine_dev=hda1:vfat root_dev=none:tmpfs alpine_base=base.tar.bz2 pkg_dev=hda1:vfat pkg_subdir=/apks cfg_dev=hda1:vfat modloop=/kernel/generic/modloop.cmg console=ttyS0,115200
EOF
Finally, we make the CF bootable
syslinux $FLASHDEVICE umount alpine
Insert the flash card, and boot:
Linux 2.6.23-hardened-r7 #3 Thu Apr 24 09:11:33 UTC 2008 i586 unknown
# cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 5 model : 10 model name : Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by AMD PCS stepping : 2 cpu MHz : 498.049 cache size : 128 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu de pse tsc msr cx8 pge cmov clflush mmx mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow bogomips : 997.58 clflush size : 32