How to set up Alpine as a wireless router

From Alpine Linux
Revision as of 04:22, 3 January 2021 by Rickyrockrat (talk | contribs)

Pi Zero W Wireless Router

This is a page to describe building a Wireless Access Point with two wired ethernet ports for building a home router that connects to the internet with one wired port, and internal Lan with the second wired port and the on-board WiFi.

The intent is to provide this:

                                    |<-->eth1 <-->| 
Internet <--> eth0 <-->FireWall<-->br0           Internal<--> ssh,bind,dhcp, with ssh reverse ssh connections.
                                    |<-->wlan0<-->|

Overview

I generally run Debian and when forced by Red Hot Irons, Red Hat. This is my first foray into Alpine. So far I am very impressed. I mirrored the 3.12 armhf repos so I had things local when I needed them. Word to the wise. That is 13G of apk files.
One *really* nice feature of Alpine is apk, the yum/apt replacement:

  • It is simple, short, and to the point.
  • The same tool provides *repo* level dependency reporting!
  • Install of single packages without repo signing (I never did get the signing correct).

Install

  • Find a microsd (or HDD) you can wipe. We will assume it is /dev/sdc.
  • make a 256M fat16/fat23 partition (sudo mkfs.vfat -n ALPBOOT /dev/sdc1)
  • the rest of the device can be ext2 (ext3/4 on HDD) (sudo mke2fs -m1 -L alext3 /dev/sdc2).
  • untar the alpine-rpi-3.12.3-armhf.tar.gz and copy all files to the fat16/32 partition 16 is good for up 2 2G.

References

apk notes:

  • Create and index and check dependencies on a list of apk files: apk index -o APKINDEX.unsigned.tar.gz *.apk
  • Install a package: apk add iw OR apk add /path/to/iw-5.4-r0.apk
  • remove a package: apk del iw
  • repositories are in: /etc/apk/repositories
 * Local URL: /media/mmcblk0p1/apks
 * Remote URL: http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.12/main

FAT16/32 limits
udhcpc
ez-ipupdate
Dynamic_DNS
Alpine Linux Bridge
Connect to wireless AP
dnsmasq listen restrictions
Disable IPV6
dnsmasq Docs
HostApd Docs
[rsync://rsync.alpinelinux.org/alpine Alpine Repos]
Set Static DNS names

Pi Specific

Pi Wifi Repeater
WiFi Bridge
Alpine Install
PiZeroW Install
Classic Sys Install on Pi

Not Related, but Interesting

AP and Managed Mode
AP and MQTT