Alpine Package Keeper: Difference between revisions

From Alpine Linux
(→‎Repository pinning: tweak and expand)
Line 78: Line 78:
== Repository pinning ==
== Repository pinning ==


Specify additional repositories in /etc/apk/repositories
You can specify additional "tagged" repositories in {{Path|/etc/apk/repositories}:


{{Cat|/etc/apk/repositories|
{{Cat|/etc/apk/repositories|
http://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v2.3/main
http://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v2.5/main
@edge http://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main
@edge http://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main
@testing http://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing
@testing http://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing
}}
}}


After which you can pin dependencies to these tags using:
After which you can "pin" dependencies to these tags using:


{{cmd|apk add stableapp newapp@edge bleedingapp@testing}}
{{cmd|apk add stableapp newapp@edge bleedingapp@testing}}


Apk will now by default only use the untagged repositories,
Apk will now by default only use the untagged repositories, but adding a tag to specific package:
but adding a tag to specific dependency:


1. will prefer that tag for the name
1. will prefer the repository with that tag for the named package---even if a later version of the package is available in another repository


2. allowing pulling in dependencies from that tag (though,
2. ''allows'' pulling in dependencies for the tagged package from the tagged repository (though it ''prefers'' to use untagged repositories to satisfy dependencies if possible)
 
it prefers untagged packages to satisfy deps if possible)


= Update the Package list =
= Update the Package list =

Revision as of 16:30, 8 November 2012


Because Alpine Linux is designed to run from RAM, package management involves two phases:

  • Installing / Upgrading / Deleting packages on a running system
  • Restoring a system to a previously configured state (e.g. after reboot), including all previously installed packages and locally modified configuration files. (RAM-Based Installs Only)


apk is the tool used to install, upgrade, or delete software on a running sytem.
lbu is the tool used to capture the data necessary to restore a system to a previously configured state.

This page documents the apk tool - See the Alpine Local Backup page for the lbu tool.

Overview

The apk tool has the following applets:

add Add new packages to the running system
del Delete packages from the running system
fix Attempt to repair or upgrade an installed package
update Update the index of available packages
info Prints information about installed or available packages
search Search for packages or descriptions with wildcard patterns
upgrade Upgrade the currently installed packages
cache Maintenance operations for locally cached package repository
version Compare version differences between installed and available packages
index create a repository index from a list of packages
fetch download (but not install) packages
audit List changes to the file system from pristine package install state
verify Verify a package signature

Packages and Repositories

Software packages for Alpine Linux are digitally signed tar.gz archives containing the programs, configuration files, and dependency metadata. They have the extension .apk, and are often called "a-packs"

The packages are stored in one or more repositories. A repository is simply a directory with a collection of *.apk files. The directory must include a special index file, named APKINDEX.tar.gz to be considered a repository.

The apk utility can install packages from multiple repositories. The list of repositories to check is stored in /etc/apk/repositories, one repository per line. If you booted from USB stick (/media/sda1) or CD-ROM (/media/cdrom), your repository file probably looks something like this:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

/media/sda1/apks/

In addition to local repositories, the apk utility uses busybox wget to fetch packages using http:, https: or ftp: protocols. The following is a valid repository file:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

/media/sda1/apks http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v2.1/main https://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v2.1/main ftp://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v2.1/main
Note: Currently there are no public https or ftp repositories. The protocols are available for local repositories

Repository pinning

You can specify additional "tagged" repositories in {{Path|/etc/apk/repositories}:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

http://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v2.5/main @edge http://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main @testing http://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing

After which you can "pin" dependencies to these tags using:

apk add stableapp newapp@edge bleedingapp@testing

Apk will now by default only use the untagged repositories, but adding a tag to specific package:

1. will prefer the repository with that tag for the named package---even if a later version of the package is available in another repository

2. allows pulling in dependencies for the tagged package from the tagged repository (though it prefers to use untagged repositories to satisfy dependencies if possible)

Update the Package list

Remote repositories change as packages are added and upgraded. To get the latest list of available packages, use the update command. The command downloads the APKINDEX.tar.gz from each repository and stores it in the local cache, typically /var/lib/apk/ or /etc/apk/cache/.

apk update


Tip: If using remote repositories, it is a good idea to do an update just before doing an add or upgrade command. That way you know you are using the latest software available.

Add a Package

Use add to install packages from a repository. Any necessary dependencies are also installed. If you have multiple repositories, the add command installs the newest package.

apk add openssh apk add openssh openntp vim

If you only have the main repository enabled in your configuration, apk will not include packages from the other repositories. To install a package from the edge/testing repository without changing your repository configuration file, use the command below. This will tell apk to use that particular repository.

apk add cherokee --update-cache --repository http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing/ --allow-untrusted

Note: Be careful when using third-party or the testing repository. Your system can go down.

Remove a Package

Use del to remove a package (and dependencies that are no longer needed.)

apk del openssh apk del openssh openntp vim

Upgrade a Running System

To upgrade all the packages of a running system, use upgrade:

apk update apk upgrade

To upgrade only a few packages, use the add command with the -u/--upgrade option:

apk update apk add --upgrade busybox

Note: Remember that when you reboot your machine, the remote repository will not be available until after networking is started. This means packages newer than your local boot media will likely not be installed after a reboot. To make an "upgrade" persist over a reboot, use a local cache.

Search for Packages

The search command searches the repository Index files for installable packages.

Examples:

  • To list all packages available, along with their descriptions:

    apk search -v

  • To list all packages are part of the ACF system:

    apk search -v 'acf*'

  • To list all packages that list NTP as part of their description, use the -d/--description option:

    apk search -v --description 'NTP'

Info on Packages

The info command provides information on the contents of packages, their dependencies, and which files belong to a package.

For a given package, each element can be chosen (for example, -w to show just the webpage information); or all information is displayed with the -a command.

Example:

apk info -a zlib

zlib-1.2.5-r1 description:
A compression/decompression Library

zlib-1.2.5-r1 webpage:
http://zlib.net

zlib-1.2.5-r1 installed size:
94208

zlib-1.2.5-r1 depends on:
libc0.9.32

zlib-1.2.5-r1 is required by:
libcrypto1.0-1.0.0-r0
apk-tools-2.0.2-r4
openssh-client-5.4_p1-r2
openssh-5.4_p1-r2
libssl1.0-1.0.0-r0
freeswitch-1.0.6-r6
atop-1.25-r0 

zlib-1.2.5-r1 contains:
lib/libz.so.1.2.5
lib/libz.so.1
lib/libz.so 

zlib-1.2.5-r1 triggers:

As shown in the example you can determine

  • The description of the package (-d/--description)
  • The webpage where the application is hosted (-w/--webpage)
  • The size the package will require once installed (in bytes) (-s/--size)
  • What packages are required to use this one (depends) (-R/--depends)
  • What packages require this one to be installed (required by) (-r/--rdepends)
  • The contents of the package, that is, which files it installs (-L/--contents)
  • Any triggers this package sets. (-t/--triggers) Listed here are directories that are watched; if a change happens to the directory, then the trigger script is run at the end of the apk add/delete. For example, doing a depmod once after installing all packages that add kernel modules.
Tip: The info command is also useful to determine which package a file belongs to. For example:

apk info --who-owns /sbin/lbu

will display
/sbin/lbu is owned by alpine-conf-x.x-rx

Additional apk Commands

In progress...

Local Cache

Overview

To have the packages available during boot, apk can keep a cache of installed packages on a local disk.

Added packages can then be automatically (re-)installed from local media into RAM when booting, without requiring, and even before there is a network connection.

The cache can be stored on any writable media, or at the same location as the .apkovl file from the local backup utility lbu.


Enabling Local Cache with current releases

Execute the script

setup-apkcache

and it will assist in enabling a local cache.

The script creates a symlink named /etc/apk/cache that points to the cache directory.

Tip: On a diskless installation, to make the disk where the cache directory is present be automatically mounted at boot you can create an empty file .boot_repository inside the cache directory.

Cache maintenance

Removing older packages

When newer packages are added to the cache over time, the older versions of the packages default to remain in the cache directory.

The older versions of packages can be removed with the clean command.

apk cache clean

Or to see what is deleted include the verbose switch:

apk -v cache clean

Download missing packages

If you accidentally delete packages from the cache directory, you can make sure they are there with the download command,

apk cache download

Delete and download in one step

You can combine the two steps into one with the sync command - this cleans out old packages and downloads missing packages.

apk cache -v sync

Automatically Cleaning Cache on Reboot

To automatically attempt to validate your cache on reboot, you can add the above command to a /etc/local.d/*.stop file:

Contents of /etc/local.d/cache.stop

#!/bin/sh # verify the local cache on shutdown apk cache -v sync # We should always return 0 return 0
Tip: Usually the only time you need to reboot is when things have gone horribly wrong; so this is a "best effort" to cover forgetting to sync the cache; It is much better to run sync immediately after adding or upgrading packages.
Note: Custom shutdown commands were formerly added to a /etc/conf.d/local; but that method is now deprecated.



Special Caching Configurations

Enabling Local Cache on HDD installs

Note that HDD 'sys' installs don't need an apk cache to maintain their state, it allows to serve packages over the network, though, e.g. to get installed by other local machines.

Manually create a cache dir and then symlink it to /etc/apk/cache:

mkdir -p /var/cache/apk ln -s /var/cache/apk /etc/apk/cache

Local Cache on tmpfs volumes

In some circumstances it might be useful to have the cache reside on tmpfs, for example if you only wish for it to last as long as the system is up.

NOTE: apk is coded to ignore tmpfs caches, and this is correct behaviour in most instances. Using tmpfs as a package cache can consume large amounts of system memory if you install a lot of packages, possibly resulting in a crashed system. You can limit this by restricting the size of your cache to a small number (128M in the example below).

To do it, you need to create an image inside which your cache can live. We do this by creating an image file, formatting it with ext2, and mounting it at /etc/apk/cache.

apk add e2fsprogs dd if=/dev/zero of=/apkcache.img bs=1M count=128 mkfs.ext2 -F /apkcache.img mkdir -p /etc/apk/cache mount -t ext2 /apkcache.img /etc/apk/cache apk update

As usual, if you want to download currently installed packages into the cache, use apk cache sync.


Manually Enabling Local Cache (required for releases prior to v2.3)

  1. Create a cache directory on the storage device where you keep the lbu backups (typically, /dev/sda1.)

    mkdir /media/sda1/cache

Tip: If you get an error that says "mkdir: can't create directory /media/usbdisk/cache: Read-only file system", then you probably need to remount your disk read-write temporarily. Try

mount -o remount,rw /media/sda1

and then don't forget to run

mount -o remount,ro /media/sda1

when you are done with the following commands
  1. Create a symlink to this directory from /etc/apk/cache.

    ln -s /media/sda1/cache /etc/apk/cache

  2. Run an lbu commit to save the change (/etc/apk/cache is in /etc and is automatically backed up.)

    lbu commit

Tip: If you needed to remount your disk read-write before, run

mount -o remount,ro /media/sda1

now that you are done with saving the changes

Now whenever you run an apk command that pulls a new package from a remote repository, the package is stored on your local media. On startup, Alpine Linux will check the local cache for new packages, and will install them if available.

Advanced APK Usage

Holding a specific package back

In certain cases, you may want to upgrade a system, but keep a specific package at a back level. It is possible to add "sticky" or versioned dependencies. For instance, to hold the asterisk package to the 1.6.2 level or lower:

apk add asterisk=1.6.0.21-r0

or

apk add 'asterisk<1.6.1'

after which a

apk upgrade

will upgrade the entire system, keeping the asterisk package at the 1.6.0 or lower level

To later upgrade to the current version,

apk add 'asterisk>1.6.1'