Alpine Install: from a disc to PC Engines APU

From Alpine Linux
Revision as of 17:25, 12 January 2026 by Huub (talk | contribs) (→‎Terminology)

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 embedded into the hardware, that manages the early boot process, see more in the Alpine and UEFI page. Note that PC Engines APU boards have the legacy BIOS (MBR), not UEFI. Nevertheless Alpine Linux can boot from these boards.
  • New machine: the APU machine fresh and ready for the installation of the Alpine operating system.
  • Bootable USB: the USB-flash disk with the downloaded Alpine iso image as install media; this drive is commonly named USB stick.
  • Bootable microSD": a microSD card with the downloaded Alpine iso image as install media;
  • Serial port:: the APU has a DB9 connector used as serial port (RS232 protocol) for use as a character console. It is common in "headless" devices.
  • Source media: will be the just burned / disc from the downloaded iso file of Alpine operating system. Will be installed on the usb-port or the internal microSD slot to boot the install.
  • Target media: the disk in the APU where the Alpine operating system will be installed. The use of a mSATA disk is recommended, another choice would be microSD (less reliable) or (not convenient) a USB-flash drive.

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.

Continue as per Installation.

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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