Post installation

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General Notes

  • When # is displayed before a command that means the command needs to be run with root privileges,
  • Anything in < > is likely just a placeholder that you need to replace (example: <editor> file.txt)
  • Some information in here might be a repeat of information in other wiki pages, if you find a section where that is the case please add a link to the original wiki page.


Network setup

Wi-Fi

Ethernet (Wired)

This material needs expanding ...

Documentation on Ethernet (Wired) internet setup needs to be created/expanded, maybe information from other wiki's/docs might be helpful?


Creating a new user account

After installing Alpine by default you only get a root account. You will probably want to create an account that is not root,

# adduser <YourUsername>

Note: replace <YourUsername> with the username of your choice


You will probably want to install doas so you can allow <YourUsername> to use root privileges

# apk add doas


If you want your user to be able to use root privileges add them to the Wheel group

# adduser <YourUsername> wheel


Allow members of the Wheel group to use root privileges with doas:

# <editor> /etc/doas.d/doas.conf

add this to a new line:

permit persist :wheel


Switch to the new account type exit in the shell and login with the new user,


Groups

Groups are needed for certain operations on your system (e.g audio to manage your system audio), below is a list of groups,

Note: may be incomplete, if you see a group missing please add it along with a description

disk:x:6:root,adm Only if need usage vith virtual machines and access to other partitions over new disks for lp:x:7:lp If will need to use printing services and printers management floppy:x:11:root Backguard compatible group, use only if need access to external special devices audio:x:18: Need for audio listening and management of sound volumes as normal user cdrom:x:19: For access to disck writers and mounting DVD, BR or CD rom disk as normal user dialout:x:20:root Need for dial private connections and use of modems as normal users tape:x:26:root Need have into this if plan to use special devices for backup.. rarelly in no servers video:x:27:root For usage of cameras, mor thant one GPU special features, as normal user netdev:x:28: For network connections management as normal user kvm:x:34:kvm Only if as normal user will manage graphically virtual machines.. rarelly on no servers games:x:35: Need if you want to play games also specially need if will share score between users cdrw:x:80: To write RW-DVD, RW-BR or RW-CD disk on a disk writing device apache:x:81: Need if you will perfom development as normal user and want to publish locally on web server usb:x:85: Need to access to special usb devices, deprecated group users:x:100:games If you plan to used common files for all users, mandatory as desktop usage


To add your user to a group use the following command:

# adduser <YourUsername> <group>

Note: you need to log out for the group change(s) to take effect


Shell

Note: No other shells besides ash is included with Alpine by default, you will need to install another shell if you want a different one


By default AlpineLinux uses the ash shell, but many users may prefer bash, zsh, fish or another shell, to change this run the following command:

$ chsh

enter your password and you should get the following output:

Contents of $ chsh

Changing the login shell for user Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default Login Shell [/bin/ash]:


now enter the path for the shell you want to use (e.g /bin/bash) and press enter to confirm this change,

Note: You may need to log out or reboot for this change to take effect, ash is a part of busybox so you can revert back to ash at anytime with the same steps


Repositories

The Alpine software repositories have three branches:

  • Main: Main packages are the Alpine software that has direct support and updates from the Alpine core and main team. They also have official special documentation, are always available for all releases and will have substitutions if some are not continued from upstream. Commonly, those packages are selected due to their responsibility and stability with respect to upstream availability. When those in testing perform well or are mature, they go to the main branch.
  • Community: Community packages are those made by users in concert with the official developers and integrated into the Alpine packages. They are user supported. Support could end if the user ends support with respect to Alpine work. For example, could not include substitution in next release due to lack of support by the upstream author. They are in edge and when accepted, go to the community branch.
  • Edge: New packages come into testing repositories of the edge Alpine version and are those made by any contributor or man power on Alpine. The edge contains unstable current development content. This branch has no release linked or related to Alpine. They are in testing and when accepted, go to the community branch.


By default only the main repository is enabled, most users will probably want to enable the community repository, to enable a repository remove the # in front of the url along with any blank space.


(Example) Disabled:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

#http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/community

(Example) Enabled:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/community



To edit the repositories open the file in a text editor:

# <editor> /etc/apk/repositories


Example default configuration:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

#/media/cdrom/apks http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/main # http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/community #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing
Note: The edge repositories contain unstable and/or possibly untested packages use at your own risk!


To avoid having to manually update the verison in /etc/apk/repositories for each Alpine Linux update, change v3.15 to latest-stable

Example:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

#/media/cdrom/apks http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/latest-stable/main http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/latest-stable/community #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing
Note: Changing the repositories to latest-stable may initiate unexpected release upgrades, do this at your own risk!


For security reasons it may be a good idea to change the url's from http to https

Example:

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

#/media/cdrom/apks https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/main https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/community #https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main #https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community #https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing
Note: some Alpine Linux package mirrors may not support https, if that is the case you will need to revert back or change mirrors


Once you have edited /etc/apk/repositories sync the repositories with:

# apk update


Installing a Display Server (for graphical sessions)

Xorg

Most desktop enviroments (DE) or Windows Managers (WM) require Xorg (also called: X11, X), although in the future many will fully migrate to Wayland currently Xorg is still widely used,


There is two ways you can get Xorg installed,


By default Alpine Linux provides a script that will install Xorg, run the following command to install Xorg:

# setup-xorg-base

or

# apk add xorg-server xorg-server-common xorg-server-dev xorgproto xorgxrdp xorgxrdp-dev

Note: the apk add method is probably incomplete


Wayland

See also: Wayland

This material needs expanding ...

Wayland documentation needs to be expanded


Fonts

If you plan to use a graphical environment you may need/want to install fonts

Note: depending on the desktop environment/window manager fonts may or may not be installed automatically or as dependencies

See: Fonts


Installing a desktop environment or window manager

See: Desktop environments and Window managers


Sound

By default Alpine doesnt come with any Sound managment out of the box, these are your options:

Note: If your unsure pipewire is the recommended option


Man pages

Most Linux distributions have man pages, man pages allow you type man <package> in a terminal and get some useful information about packages installed on your system quicky without a internet connection, by default Alpine does not include man, you can add that with one of the following:

  • # apk add man-pages Installs basic manual pages.
  • # apk add mandoc Installs the man command to be able to open man pages.
  • # apk add mandoc-apropos Installs the apropos command to search in man pages.
  • # apk add docs Installs all the *-doc sub-packages of installed packages.
Note: man pages may not be available for every package


Language support

This material needs expanding ...

Please feel free to help us complete it.

  • Fix unicode defaults: sed -i 's/#unicode="NO"/#unicode="NO"\nunicode="YES"/' /etc/rc.conf
  • apk add musl-locales Installs a limited set of locales (languages) for musl (C library) generated console messages.
  • Listing defined locales is possible with locale -a
  • cp /etc/profile.d/locale.sh /etc/profile.d/locale.sh.sh Copies the default locale settings. Then the custom override file can be edited nano /etc/profile.d/locale.sh.sh.
  • apk add lang Pulls in the translation packages of all installed packages.
  • apk list hunspell* To list available hunspell dictionary packages.
  • apk list *-xy *-xy-* To list translation packages for your specific (xy) language (for example, pt for Portuguese).


Miscellaneous

Some other miscellaneous things that might be useful:

basic tools

Alpine is a minimalist Linux distribution. If you expected a behavior like other Linux distributions, the similarity to them will be minimal at best. Run:

# apk add sed attr dialog bash bash-completion grep util-linux pciutils usbutils binutils findutils readline lsof less nano nano-doc curl

{{{1}}}


Troubleshooting

I dont have permission to do anything in my user's home directory

By default the permissions of your new user(s) home directory may be limited to the root account, run one of these commands to change that:

# chmod 700 /home/<YourUsername>

or

# chmod 777 /home/<YourUsername>


See also