Install Alpine on VirtualBox

How To Install Alpine on VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a Sun/Oracle virtualization product for x86 architecture. This document describes one way to install alpine to that platform.

Before You Start

First [{{#latestalp:alpine|url}} download latest Alpine CD image].

Create the Virtual Machine

Start by creating new VM and setting it to run linux with 2.6 series kernel.


Set amount of memory. Since alpine runs in memory the recommended 256 MB might be too little for your needs.


Create a disk. I wanted to emulate a Compact Flash system, so the setting is 2GB. This could be much higher if you like.

Start the Virtual Machine

After Starting the VirtualBox, the first run wizard will ask for a cd image. Mount your downloaded alpine.iso image here.

Install Alpine

After Alpine boots type root to login.
Find out the virtual harddisk ID.

dmesg | grep disk

With default setting in the VirtualBox this will be sda.