Architecture

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Revision as of 14:08, 20 December 2024 by Prabuanand (talk | contribs) (Removed Architectures Category so that it lists only architectures as sub-category)
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This page provides brief information on components that make up Alpine Linux. Refer wiki overview page for more details.

Architectures supported

Alpine Linux Hardware Support Matrix
Architecture Port Description Since
x86 x86 32 bit i686 compatible (or later) CPUs with at least CMOV and SSE2 All
x86_64 AMD64 compatible 64-bit x86 instruction set All
ARM armhf 32 bit ARM with hard-float ABI - for ARMv6 devices- Raspberry Pi 1, Zero, ZeroW, cm1 (defconfig bcmrpi) v3.0
armv7 32 bit ARM - for ARMv7 devices - Raspberry Pi 2, 3, 3+, Zero2W, cm3, cm3+ (defconfig bcm2709) v3.9
aarch64 64 bit ARM - for ARMv8+ devices - Raspberry Pi 3, 3+, 4, 400, Zero2W, cm3, cm3+, cm4, 5 (defconfig bcm2711) v3.5
PowerPC ppc64le 64 bit PowerPC (little-endian) mostly for POWER8 and POWER9 v3.6
IBM System Z s390x IBM Z mainframes, especially IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE (z196 minimum) v3.6
RISC V riscv64 64 bit RISC V v3.20
LoongArch loongarch64 64 bit LoongArch v3.21


Alpine Packaging

Package Building

Alpine Package Building Ports

  • APKBUILD - Package build scripts
  • aports - Official Alpine ports git repository

Package Building Tools

Package Format

Alpine uses packages in the .apk file format.

Package Management Tools

  • apk - Alpine Package Keeper (see Apk spec for more detail)

Boot Process

Todo: The following section need a clean up with proper wikilinks


Boot Loader

The Bootloader is responsible for finding the initfs, cmdline and kernel, and handling execution over to the kernel.

Some bootloaders allow the user to interactively pick which OS or kernel to use (if more than one is available).

EFI

BIOS

  • The default setup uses GRUB2.

Other

Kernel

Versioning

Flavors
  • lts - long-term support kernel, general purpose
  • virt - for running under virtual machines
  • edge - Latest stable kernel
  • rpi - Raspberry Pi
  • rpi2 - Raspberry Pi 2 (Alpine ≤v3.18 only, merged with rpi in current versions)
  • rpi4 - Raspberry Pi 4 (Alpine ≤v3.18 only, merged with rpi in current versions)
  • ashai - Apple M1

Signing

Command line options

  • modules="<modules>" - specify list of modules to be loaded by initramfs /init needed to mount real root filesystem.

Initfs

The kernel will decompress the stream of compressed cpio archives passed to it by the 'append' bootloader option to the root of 'rootfs', a tmpfs automatically mounted at '/' by the kernel at boot.

'/init' Script

Not to be confused with /sbin/init(see below)

This script is in the root of the initfs filesystem and is called by the kernel upon completion of its boot process. It is responsible for doing whatever steps are necessary to mount the real root file system to / and hand over control to /sbin/init.

  • Parses kernel command line options.
  • Uses nlplug-findfs to discover devices.
  • [Optionally] prompts for disk encryption secrets and unlocked encrypted partitions.

Initfs Module Handling

Modules required to mount the root filesystem and boot must either built into the kernel or available from with the initramfs filesystem through use of appended initrd cpio.gz files provided by the bootloader.

The /init script will first modprobe the modules specified by the modules= kernel command line option and by the name of the specified rootfs type. It will then load the contents of /etc/modules, which may include module options. Modules may be blacklisted from autoprobing (but NOT explicit insertion!) using the blacklist= kernel command line option which appends blacklist entries to '/etc/modprobe.d/boot-opt-blacklist.conf'.

Minimal Required Set

Todo: /media is not required even though it is included in the alpine-baselayout


Directory Structure
  • / /bin /boot /dev /etc /lib /lib/modules /media /media/cdrom /media/usb /mnt /proc /sbin /sys /usr /usr/bin /usr/sbin
Devices
  • /dev/null
  • /dev/console
  • /dev/kmsg
Mounts
  • /proc
  • /sys
  • /dev (can be disabled?)
Configuration
  • /etc/passwd
  • /etc/group
  • /etc/fstab
Binaries

Feature Sets

Feature sets consist of lists for the set of modules and files that need to be included in a final initramfs to support the indicated feature.

Init

/sbin/init is the first process to be started in the live system after the initramfs completes its work. It is part of the Busybox package and should not be confused with the /init script mentioned above.

Loading of Kernel Modules

/etc/init.d/modules loads all modules specified in /etc/modules and /(etc|run|usr/lib|lib)/modules-load.d/*.conf

See also

Retrieved from "https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/w/index.php?title=Architecture&oldid=28512"