If using Alpine Linux 2.2.3 or later
Warning: This will erase everything on your machine's harddisk. Don't blame me if someone sues you for this, your cat dies etc. You are warned.
The following is meant to be an absolute newbie guide
- Burn the Alpine ISO image to a CD
- Put the CD into the new computer and turn on the power. Make sure the computer is capable to boot from a CD. Your manual for the computer or the BIOS can help.
- Wait for the text login: to appear, type root and press enter.
- Run the setup-alpine script
- Choose your keyboard layout. If you don't know your keyboard layout choose us. Here us was chosen.
- Then I chose the us variant.
- Host name, which will be the name of your computer, you can just press enter if you want to use the default name
- Choose your network card, most people can just go with the default (press enter)
- Most people will use DHCP, so press enter again, or you can enter in your static IP address
- You will be asked if you want to do any manual network configuration, press enter for no
- Type in your root password twice.
- Choose a time zone, you can get a list my pressing ?. If you want a sub zone, e.g. Africa, type in Africa and press enter, ? will give you a list of sub zones in Africa.
- Press f to choose the fastest mirror.
- Choose an SSH server, this allows you to remotely manage your machine. OpenSSH is what the big distro's use, Dropbear is a tiny SSH replacement. Choose none for best security.
- Choose an NTP client, this keeps your machine's time accurate using an Internet time server. Openntpd is what the big distro's use, while Chrony is a tiny replacement.
- Choose a disk you want to install Alpine onto, as an example, sda is the first disk in your computer.
- Now choose how you would like to use it, for this guide, choose sys, this will install the entire OS onto your hard drive
- You are given a final chance to back out, type in Y to continue
- Choose your keyboard layout. If you don't know your keyboard layout choose us. Here us was chosen.
- The installation is now complete and you will be asked to reboot. Type in reboot and press enter
Continue Setting up your Computer
- Alpine Linux package management (How to add/remove packages on your Alpine)
- Alpine boot services (Configure a service to automatically boot at next reboot)
- Setting up a ssh-server (Using ssh is a good way to administer your box remotely)
- Tutorials and Howtos (Various tutorials, including how to setup a XFCE desktop)
If using Alpine Linux 2.2.2 or earlier
A number of steps are nowadays included in the setup-disk and setup-lbu scripts, which are invoked by setup-alpine. But in these older systems, these steps have to be performed manually.Run
setup-alpine to configure the keyboard, hostname and networking.
setup-alpine
Now for the manual steps. Install needed programs for the setup:
apk add e2fsprogs syslinux mkinitfs
Create partitions with fdisk.
fdisk /dev/sda
Let's say you have 2 partitions: /dev/sda1 as "Linux" (type 83) and /dev/sda2 as "linux swap" (type 82). The partition containing /boot---here, /dev/sda1---must be marked bootable (command "a" within fdisk).
Next, create your filesystem(s) and swap:
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1
mkswap /dev/sda2
Mount the filesystem:
mount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /mnt
Clone the current running config created by setup-alpine (hostname, networking root password):
lbu package - | tar -C /mnt -zxf -
Install base packages on the mounted disk:
apk add --root=/mnt --initdb $(cat /etc/apk/world)
Append the / and swap to /etc/fstab:
echo -e "/dev/sda1 / ext4 defaults 1 1" >> /mnt/etc/fstab
echo -e "/dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0" >> /mnt/etc/fstab
Configure the boot loader, extlinux. We use the provided syslinux.cfg as base.
cp /media/cdrom/syslinux.cfg /mnt/boot/extlinux.conf
vi /mnt/boot/extlinux.conf
It should contain something like:
timeout 20
prompt 1
default grsec
label grsec
kernel /boot/grsec
append initrd=/boot/grsec.gz root=/dev/sda1 modules=ext4 quiet
Install the bootloader on your /boot partition:
extlinux -i /mnt/boot
Install the early-stage bootloader in the disk's MBR (note that it's /dev/sda not /dev/sda1!)
dd if=/usr/share/syslinux/mbr.bin of=/dev/sda
This also works:
cat /usr/share/syslinux/mbr.bin > /dev/sda
Unmount, remove cdrom, and reboot. (If you can't eject, just remove it manually as the machine reboots)
umount /mnt
umount /.modloop
eject
reboot
In recent versions of Alpine, the second line can be accomplished by rc-service modloop stop. (See this FAQ entry).
After reboot, you should be able to log in as root with the password you created in
setup-alpine.
