Revision as of 14:19, 12 December 2020

This page explains the basics and gets you started, but before you actually install, it can also help to skim through the Frequenty Asked Questions (FAQ).

Typical Hardware Requirements

At least 100 MB of RAM (A graphical desktop system may require up to 1 GB minimum.)
A writable storage device. Optional for saving data and configuration of systems running in "diskless" mode. Required for running in "sys" or "data" mode (explained below).

Installation Overview

(Note: To install on ARM processor based boards that do not have .iso images available, refer to Alpine on ARM instead.)

The installation is started by carrying out three basic steps (additional details follow further below):

1.) Downloading and verifying the proper stable-release ISO image for your computer's architecture, and the corresponding sha256 (checksum) and GPG (signature) files.

2.) Either burning the ISO image onto a blank CD/DVD/Blue-ray disk with your favorite disk burning software, or flashing the image onto a bootable storage device (USB-device, CF-/MMC-/SD-card, floppy, ...).

3.) Booting the computer from the prepared disk or storage device.

The boot process then copies the entire system into the RAM memory, and runs it completely from RAM. This means that the started command line environment does not depend on reading from the (slow) initial boot media anymore.

Log-in as the user root with its initially empty password.

Now an interactive script called setup-alpine can be used to configure the initial Alpine Linux system. Alternatively, more specific setup-scripts, the apk package manager, and all the general command line tools can be used first, for example, to install custom package requirements, and to prepare the system for setup-alpine or the next boot.

Note that setup-alpine can configure the system to boot into one of three general Alpinelinux runtime modes:

diskless mode This is the default boot mode of the .iso images. setup-alpine configures this if selecting to install to "disk=none", and it means that the whole operating system and the applications run extremely fast from within RAM (saving unnecessary disk spin-ups, power and wear). A customized configuration and package selection may still be completely preserved on permanent storage media by using the "local backup utility" lbu and a local package cache. [Fixme: setup-alpine still needs this detour to prepare a partition for this.] In setup-alpine, select to store configs and the package cache on a partition. (That mounted partition may later also be used by configuring some important applications to keep their data on it.)

data mode This mode is still accelerated by running the system from RAM, however swap storage and the whole /var directory tree gets mounted from a persistent storage device (two newly created partitions). This location holds e.g. all log files, mailspools, databases, etc., as well as lbu backup commits and the package cache. The mode is useful for having RAM accelerated servers with amounts of variable user-data that exceed the available RAM size, and to let the entire current system state (not just the boot state) survive a system crash according to the particular filesystem's guarantees. [Fixme: Storing lbu configs to disk is not auto-configured after configuring the data partition, one still has to select saving configs to "none" first (the new data partition is not listed), and to manually set e.g. LBU_MEDIA=sda2 in /etc/lbu/lbu.conf and execute echo "/dev/sda2 /media/sda2 vfat rw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab afterwards, to have the partition (here sda2) used.] The boot device may remain to be the one initially used, and can even be immutable (read-only).

sys mode This is a traditional hard-disk install. If this mode is selected, the setup-alpine script defaults to create three partitions on the selected storage device, /boot, swap and / (the filesystem root). This mode may be used for generic desktop and development machines, for example.

Questions asked by `setup-alpine`

The setup-alpine script offers to configure:

Keyboard map (e.g. us and variant of us-nodeadkeys)
Hostname (The name for the computer.)
Network (e.g. automatic DHCP IP address discovery)
DNS Servers (For privacy reasons, it is NOT recommended to use servers like google's 8.8.8.8 etc.)
Timezone
Proxy ("None" for direct connections to the internet.)
SSH (Openssh is part of the default images.)
NTP (Chrony is part of the default images.)
Runtime Mode (Select between "diskless" (disk=none), "data" or "sys", all described above.)

Additional Details

This material needs expanding ...

This "Additional Details" section needs to be consolidated with the work at https://docs.alpinelinux.org (not finished) (Restructuring things there, moving and linking from here or there?).

Verifying the downloaded image file

Commands to verify the checksum and GPG signature of a downloaded image file on different systems.
OS type	`sha265` check	`sha265` calculation (to be compared manually)	`GPG` signature verification
Linux	`sha256sum -c alpine-*.iso.sha256`		`curl https://alpinelinux.org/keys/ncopa.asc \| gpg --import ;` `gpg --verify alpine-<version>.iso.asc alpine-<version>.iso`
Windows (PowerShell installed)	- ? -	`Get-FileHash .\alpine-<image-version>.iso -Algorithm SHA256`	- ? -

Booting from external devices

Insert the boot media to a proper drive or port of the computer and turn the machine on, or restart it, if already running.

If the computer does not automatically boot from the desired device, one needs to bring up the boot menu selection for choosing the media to boot from. Depending on the computer the menu may be accessed by quickly (repeatedly) pressing a key when booting starts, or sometimes it is needed to press the button before starting the computer and keep holding it when it boots. Typical keys are: `F9`-`F12`, sometimes `F7` or `F8`. If these don't bring up the boot menu, it may be necessary to enter the BIOS configuration and adjust the boot settings, for which typical keys are: `Del.` `F1` `F2` `F6` or `Esc.`

Rebooting and testing the new system

After the installation is completed, the system may be power-cycled or rebooted to confirm that everything is working. If the configured runtime mode was "sys", then remove the initial installation media to boot the newly installed system.

The relevant commands for this are reboot or poweroff.

Further Documentation

Installing

Directly booting an ISO file (without flashing it to a disk or device)
Setting up Networking (incl. non-standard configurations)

Post-Install

Setting up a new user

Enable Community Repository (Providing additional packages)
Package Management (apk) (general search/add/del packages etc.)
setup-xorg-base (display graphics, if required)
- Xfce_Setup / Desktop-notes / Xfce_Desktop

Local backup utility lbu (persisting RAM system configurations)
- Back Up a Flash Memory Installation ("diskless mode" systems)
- Manually_editing_a_existing_apkovl (the stored custom configs)
Init System (OpenRC) (Configure a service to automatically boot at next reboot)
- Multiple Instances of Services
- Writing Init Scripts

Hosting services on Alpine (Links to several mail/web/ssh server setup pages)
Runnig programs and services in their own Firejail Security Sandbox

Upgrading Alpine (checking for and installing updates)
How_to_make_a_custom_ISO_image_with_mkimage

Further Help and Information

Running glibc programs (Installation and development)

How to Contribute
Developer Documentation
Wiki etiquette to collaborate on this documentation

Tip: Alpine linux packages stay close to the upstream design. Therefore, all upstream documentation about configuring a software package, as well as good configuration guides from other distributions that stay close to upstream, like e.g. in the Arch Wiki, are to a large degree also well applicable to configure the software on alpine linux, thus can be very useful.

Other Guides

There may still be something useful to find and sort out of the newbie's install notes in this wiki, but beware that they can contain highly opinionated content and lack explanations.

@@ Line 37: / Line 37: @@
 '''diskless mode''' This is the default boot mode of the .iso images. <code>[[Alpine_setup_scripts#setup-alpine|setup-alpine]]</code> configures this if selecting to install to "disk=none", and it means that the whole  operating system and the applications run extremely fast from within RAM (saving unnecessary disk spin-ups, power and wear). A customized configuration and package selection may still be completely preserved on permanent storage media by using the "local backup utility" <code>[[Alpine_local_backup|lbu]]</code> and a [[Alpine_Linux_package_management#Local_Cache|local package cache]]. [Fixme: <code>setup-alpine</code> still needs [[Alpine_local_backup#Saving_and_loading_ISO_image_customizations| this detour]] to prepare a partition for this.] In setup-alpine, select to store configs and the package cache on a partition. (That mounted partition may later also be used by configuring some important applications to keep their data on it.)
-'''data mode''' This mode is still accelerated by running the system from RAM, however swap storage and the whole {{Path|/var}} directory tree gets mounted from a persistent storage device (two newly created partitions). This location holds e.g. all log files, mailspools, databases, etc., as well as <code>[[Alpine_local_backup|lbu]]</code> backup commits and the package cache. The mode is useful for having RAM accelerated servers with amounts of variable user-data that exceed the available RAM size, and to let the entire current system state (not just the boot state) survive a system crash according to the particular filesystem's guarantees. [Fixme: Storing lbu configs to disk is not auto-configured after configuring the data partition, one still has to select saving configs to "none" first (the new data partition is not listed), and to manually set e.g. LBU_MEDIA=sda2 in /etc/lbu/lbu.conf and execute <code>echo "/dev/sda2 /media/sda2 vfat rw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab</code> to have the partition (here sda2) available afterwards.] The boot device may remain to be the one initially used, and can even be immutable (read-only).
+'''data mode''' This mode is still accelerated by running the system from RAM, however swap storage and the whole {{Path|/var}} directory tree gets mounted from a persistent storage device (two newly created partitions). This location holds e.g. all log files, mailspools, databases, etc., as well as <code>[[Alpine_local_backup|lbu]]</code> backup commits and the package cache. The mode is useful for having RAM accelerated servers with amounts of variable user-data that exceed the available RAM size, and to let the entire current system state (not just the boot state) survive a system crash according to the particular filesystem's guarantees. [Fixme: Storing lbu configs to disk is not auto-configured after configuring the data partition, one still has to select saving configs to "none" first (the new data partition is not listed), and to manually set e.g. LBU_MEDIA=sda2 in /etc/lbu/lbu.conf and execute <code>echo "/dev/sda2 /media/sda2 vfat rw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab</code> afterwards, to have the partition (here sda2) used.] The boot device may remain to be the one initially used, and can even be immutable (read-only).
 '''sys mode''' This is a traditional hard-disk install. If this mode is selected, the <code>[[setup-alpine]]</code> script defaults to create three partitions on the selected storage device, {{Path|/boot}}, {{Path|swap}} and {{Path|/}} (the filesystem root). This mode may be used for generic [[Desktops|desktop]] and development machines, for example.