Install Alpine on Rackspace
 Do not follow instructions here until this notice is removed. |
THIS IS A WIP, AND WAS JUST COPIED FROM INSTALLING ALPINE ON EC2
Create a minimal rackspace server
Debian 7 512MB, 20GB
Create apk overlay suitable for hard disk based tmpfs boot
The first step is to create Alpine configuration file with basic configuration of the host. We need the new box to start networking and ssh in the beginning so we can reconnect to it after reboot.
Create basic layout for the overlay:
mkdir overlay
cd overlay
mkdir -p etc/ssh etc/network etc/runlevels/{default,boot,sysinit,shutdown} root/.ssh etc/lbu
You can also use default Alpine configuration files. In this case you should use ssh key to authorize yourself (as root password is empty, and ssh has empty passwords disabled).
If you want to keep the existing host identity (e.g. SSH key), you can copy them over:
cp -a /etc/{passwd,group,shadow,gshadow,hostname,resolv.conf,network/interfaces,ssh} etc/
cp /etc/network/interfaces etc/network
Copy over your ssh authorized_keys and make sure its included in future:
cp -a /root/.ssh/authorized_keys root/.ssh echo "/root/.ssh" > etc/lbu/include
Find out which shell is used for root:
grep ^root /etc/passwd
If its /bin/sh, you are good. If not, edit etc/passwd and change it to /bin/sh.
sed -i -e '/^root:/s:/bin/bash:/bin/sh:' etc/passwd
Make sure there is no whitespace at end of lines in interfaces file. Busybox ifup is very picky.
Make sure your etc/resolv.conf exists; if not create etc/resolv.conf with the nameserver configuration like:
nameserver dns.ip.ad.dr
Create the apk world (var/lib/apk/world) with essential packages:
mkdir -p var/lib/apk echo "alpine-base iproute2 openssh bash" > var/lib/apk/world
(bash is technically not needed, but include it in case you forgot to edit your etc/passwd file correctly)
Double check the IP configuration and ssh keys.
Finally, make the essential services start up automatically and create the overlay file:
ln -s /etc/init.d/{hwclock,modules,sysctl,hostname,bootmisc,syslog} etc/runlevels/boot/
ln -s /etc/init.d/{devfs,dmesg,mdev,hwdrivers} etc/runlevels/sysinit/
ln -s /etc/init.d/{networking,sshd} etc/runlevels/default/
ln -s /etc/init.d/{mount-ro,killprocs,savecache} etc/runlevels/shutdown/
tar czf ../host.apkovl.tar.gz *
Verify the overlay with "tar tzf" to see that it contains everything in proper places, and ensure it is in the / directory
tar tzvf host.apkovl.tar.gz cp host.apkovl.tar.gz /
Install Alpine cd-rom image on hard disk
We need to copy over two sets of information: the boot kernel (kernel, initramdisk and boot configuration) and operating system boot data (overlay, apk packages and kernel modules). These can reside on same partition if they fit. However, /boot is usually small, so you might want to put the apks on separate partition. This guide assumes they are on sda1 (/boot) and sda2 (/) with both having ext3 filesystems. If you don't have ext3 on / or /boot, then you might be able to disable swap and reformat the swap partition as ext3 and use that.
Download an alpine iso and mount it; for example
wget {{#latestalp:alpine|url}}
mount alpine*.iso /cdrom -o loop
Copy the apkovl and the contents of cd-rom image to root of current installation:
cp host.apkovl.tar.gz / cp -a /cdrom/* /
mkdir -p /boot/grub cat - >/boot/grub/grub.conf <<EOF default=0 timeout=3 hiddenmenu
title Alpine Linux root (hd0) kernel /boot/grsec alpine_dev=xvda1:ext4 modules=loop,squashfs,sd-mod,ext4 console=hvc0 pax_nouderef BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/grsec initrd /boot/grsec.gz EOF
- Syslinux automatically adds BOOT_IMAGE to the kernel command line; grub does not, so make sure you specify it in the grub.conf
- You do not need any other grub files - just boot.conf
- symlink the grub.conf to menu.lst
ln -sf ./grub.conf /boot/grub/menu.lst Reboot.