29/6/23, 02:16 Installation - Alpine Linux

Alpine Linux

Installation

This page exists to provide the basic overview to get started. But before actually installing, it can also help to skim
through the Frequenty Asked Questions (FAQ), as well as to refer to the official installation guide at
docs.alpinelinux.org (https://docs.alpinelinux.org/).

Tip: This is a wiki!

If something isn't correct (anymore), or still incomplete, you will have to try figuring it out, or ask for the correct
solution in the community (https://alpinelinux.org/community/).

And then carefully edit the wiki page.

Just as those before you did it for you.

Minimal Hardware Requirements

At least 100 MB of RAM. [A graphical desktop system may require up to 1 GB minimum.]. Note that an
installation itself (from iso) generally requires around 1GB during installation.
At least 0-700 MB space on a writable storage device. [Only required in "sys" or "data" mode
installations (explained below). It is optional in "diskless" mode, where it may be used to save newer
data and configurations states of a running system.]

For more information please check Requirements

Installation Overview

The general course of action

Note:
For single-board-computer (SBC) architectures which can not boot .iso images, see Alpine on ARM for
peculiarities.
For headless system, initial network setup may be fed by pre-built apkovl overlay file, custom-made
or via 3rd party (https://github.com/macmpi/alpine-linux-headless-bootstrap/)

As usual, starting an installation procedure requires some basic steps (additional details for all the steps follow below):

1. Downloading and verifying the proper stable-release ISO installation image-file (https://alpinelinux.org/d
ownloads/) for the target computer's architecture with their corresponding sha256 (checksum) and GPG
(signature) files.
https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation 1/10
29/6/23, 02:16 Installation - Alpine Linux

2. Either burning the ISO image-file onto a blank CD/DVD/Bluproper-ray disk with disk burning software, or
flashing the installation image onto a bootable storage device (USB-device, CF-/MMC-/SD-card, floppy,
...).
3. Optionally, custom-made headless apkovl can be done by first booting the install media on some
computer with a display and keyboard attached, or in a virtual machine, and doing an intermediate
"diskless" setup of just the boot media (more details below), i.e. using the offical setup-alpine to
configure the system's network, possibly for dhcp if needed, a ssh server, and a login user. Choosing
"disks=none" for now, yet, configure to store configs on the boot media (if it is writable, otherwise on a
separate storage media). And afterwards calling lbu commit to store the configs as local backup.
Then your completed setup, including its securely created own private keys, will readily get (re)loaded
on every subsequent (headless) boot from your custom-build <hostname>.apkovl.tar.gz stored on
the boot media (or on an auxilary media or server location, in case the boot media is read-only).
4. Booting the target computer from the prepared disk or storage device.

The boot process of the alpine installation image first copies the entire operating system into the RAM memory, and
then already starts a complete Alpine Linux system from there. It will initially only provide a basic command line
environment that does not depend on reading from any (possibly slow) initial boot media, anymore.

Local log-in is possible as the user root. Initially, the root user has no password.

At the command prompt, an interactive script named setup-alpine is available to configure and install the initial
Alpine Linux system.

The question-and-answer dialog of setup-alpine takes care of the base configuration and allows to configure the
system to boot into one of three different Alpine Linux "disk" modes: "diskless"(none), "data", or "sys".

These modes are explained in more detail in the following subsections.

Note: It is really helpful for many cases that it is possible to first only complete a basic setup of the initial "diskless"
installation media in order to prepare for the installation of the target system. For example, also to download and
install some specific driver or software tool. And to possibly use more specific setup-scripts afterwards in order to
proceed with the final installation in a custom way. A most basic pre-setup of just the "diskless" system may be
completed by running setup-alpine and answering "none" when asked for the disk to use, for where to store
configs, and for the location of the package cache.

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation 2/10
29/6/23, 02:16 Installation - Alpine Linux
Examples of preparation options:

Preparing a custom partitioning or filesystem scheme that avoids to use and/or overwrite an entire disk
(details below).
Installing something that may be missing in the live system to configure the hardware, e.g. by using
the alpine package manager apk.

Examples of proceeding options:

setup-lbu to configure a "local backup" location for the diskless system, and lbu commit to then
save the local configuration state.
setup-apkcache to configure a local package cache storage location.
setup-disk to add a "data" mode partition, or do a classic full install of the "diskless" system onto a
"sys" disk or partition.

There are many more setup-scripts available. All these tools may also be run later to adjust specific configurations.
For example, to set up a graphical environment as covered under Post-Installation below.

Diskless Mode

This means the entire operating system with all applications are first loaded into RAM and then only run from there.
This is the method already used to boot the .iso installation images, however setup-alpine can also configure the
installed system to continue to boot like this if "disk=none" is specified. The mode is extremely fast and can save on
unnecessary disk spin-ups, power, and wear. It is similar to what other linux distributions may call a "frugal" install or
boot into with a "toram" option.

Custom configurations and package installations may optionally still be preserved or "persist" across reboots by using
the Alpine local backup tool lbu. It enables committing and reverting system states by using .apkovl files that are
saved to writable storage and loaded when booting. If additional or updated packages have been added to the system,
these may also be made available for automatic (re)installation during the boot phase without any (re)downloading, by
enabling a local package cache on the writable storage.

[FIXME-1 (https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/alpine-conf/-/issues/10473): Storing local configs and the package

cache on internal disks still require some manual steps to have the partition listed, i.e. making a /etc/fstab entry,
mountpoint, and mount, *before* running setup-alpine. The linked workaround also still requires to commit these
configurations to disk manually before rebooting.]

If a writable partition is available, setup-alpine can be told to store the configs and the package cache on that
writable partition. (Later, another directory on that same partition or another available partition may also be mounted
as /home, or for example, for selected important applications to keep their run-time and user data on it.)

The boot device of the newly configured local "diskless" system may remain the initial (and possibly read-only)
installation media. But it is also possible to copy the boot system to a partition (e.g. /dev/sdXY) with setup-
bootable.

Data Disk Mode

This mode also runs from system RAM, thus it enjoys the same accelerated operation speed as "diskless" mode.
However, swap storage and the entire /var directory tree get mounted from a persistent storage device (two newly
created partitions). The directory /var holds e.g. all log files, mailspools, databases, etc., as well as lbu backup

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation 3/10
29/6/23, 02:16 Installation - Alpine Linux
commits and the package cache. This mode is useful for having RAM accelerated servers with variable amounts of
user-data that exceed the available RAM size. It enables the entire current system state (not just the boot state) to
survive a system crash in accordance with the particular filesystem guarantees.

[FIXME-2 (https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/alpine-conf/-/issues/10474)]: Setup-alpine will create the data partition

and mount it as /var, but setup-alpine's "data" disk mode can not yet configure lbu config storage settings
automatically. The current workaround, is to select "none" at the 'where to store configs' prompt (as the new data
partition is not listed anyway) and configure lbu manually after setup-alpine exits, and before rebooting:

1. Identify the created data partition, e.g. /dev/sdXY, and its filesystemtype, e.g. using lsblk
2. Manually edit the lbu backups location in /etc/lbu/lbu.conf and configure LBU_MEDIA=sdXY
(according to the previous findings).
3. Save the configuration on that partition for the next boot with lbu commit.
4. If (a new) partition fails to get mounted, execute: mkdir /media/sdXY ; echo "/dev/sdXY
/media/sdXY fstype noauto,rw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab, and try lbu commit again.

In data disk mode, the boot device may also remain the initial (and possibly read-only) installation media, or be copied
to a partition (e.g. /dev/sdXY) with setup-bootable.

System Disk Mode

This is a traditional hard-disk install.

If this mode is selected, the setup-alpine script creates three partitions on the selected storage device, /boot,
swap and / (the filesystem root). This mode may, for example, be used for generic desktop and development machines.

For custom partitioning, see Setting up disks manually.

To install along side another operating systems, see Dualbooting.

Basic Installation Step Details

This material needs expanding ...

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

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation 4/10
29/6/23, 02:16 Installation - Alpine Linux

Verifying the downloaded image-file

Commands to verify the checksum and GPG signature of a downloaded image-file on different systems.

SHA256 calculation (to be

OS type SHA256 check GPG signature verification
compared manually)

curl https://alpinelinux.org/keys/ncopa.asc |
gpg --import ;
sha256sum -c
Linux alpine-
gpg --verify alpine-<version>.iso.asc
*.iso.sha256
alpine-<version>.iso

shasum -a 256 alpine-

MACOS -?- -?-
*.iso

doas pkg_add gnupg;

sha256 -C
ftp -o -
alpine-
OpenBSD https://alpinelinux.org/keys/ncopa.asc
*.sha256
| gpg --import ; gpg --verify alpine-
alpine-*.iso
<version>.iso.asc alpine-<version>.iso

/usr/local/bin/shasum
FreeBSD -?- -?-
-a 256 alpine-*.iso

/usr/local/bin/shasum
NetBSD -?- -?-
-a 256 alpine-*.iso

Get-FileHash
Windows
.\alpine-<image-
(PowerShell -?- -?-
installed) version>.iso -
Algorithm SHA256

Flashing (direct data writing) the installation image-file onto a device or media

Unix/Linux

Under Unix (and thus Linux), "everything is a file" and the data in the image-file can be written to a device or media
with the dd command. Afterward, executing the eject command removes the target device from the system and
ensures the write cache is completely flushed.

dd if=<iso-file-to-read-in> of=<target-device-node-to-write-out-to> bs=4M oflag=sync status=progress; eject

<target-device-node-to-write-to>

Be careful to correctly identify the target device as any data on it will be lost! All connected "bulk storage devices" can
be listed with lsblk and blkid.

# lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sdX 0:0 0 64,0G 0 disk
├─sdX1 0:1 0 2G 0 part

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation 5/10
29/6/23, 02:16 Installation - Alpine Linux
└─sdX2 0:2 0 30G 0 part /mnt/sdX2

# blkid
/dev/sdX1: LABEL="some" UUID="..." TYPE="vfat"
/dev/sdX2: LABEL="other" UUID="..." TYPE="ext4"

For example, if /dev/sdX is the desired target device, first make sure you un-mount all mounted partitions of the target
device. For example sdX1 and sdX2:

umount /dev/sdX1 /dev/sdX2

For dd's output-file (of=), however, do not specify a partition number. For example, write to sdX, not sdX1:

Warning: This will overwrite the target device /dev/sdX, so before executing, make sure you have a backup of the
data if you can't afford to lose it.

dd if=~/Downloads/alpine-standard-3.00.0-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M oflag=sync status=progress; eject /dev/sdX

Windows

For example, there is the Rufus (https://rufus.ie/) program. Rufus will enable you to create bootable USB flash drives
under Windows.

Rufus has been tested and works for Alpine Linux 3.12.x with the following settings:

Partition scheme: MBR

Target system: BIOS or UEFI
File system: FAT32
Cluster size: 4096 bytes (default)

Verifying the written installation media

After detaching and re-attaching the device, a bit-wise comparison can verify the data written to the device (instead of
just data buffered in RAM). If the comparison terminates with an end-of-file error on the .iso file side, all the contents
from the image have been written (and re-read) successfully:

# cmp ~/Downloads/alpine-standard-3.00.0-x86_64.iso /dev/sdX

cmp: EOF on alpine-standard-3.00.0-x86_64.iso

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 and choose
the media to boot from. Depending on the computer, the menu may be accessed by repeatedly pressing a key quickly
when booting starts. Some computers require that you press the button before starting the computer and hold it down

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation 6/10
29/6/23, 02:16 Installation - Alpine Linux
while the computer 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.`

Custom partitioning of the harddisk

It is possible to specify configurations for RAID, encryption, LVM, etc. as well as manual partitioning.

For "diskless" or "data disk" mode installs, manual partitioning may be needed to prepare the harddisk for committing
local backups of the system state with lbu commit, to have a place for a package cache, or to use it for a /var
mount.

For a "sys" install, custom partitioning is needed only if the desired scheme differs from overwriting an entire disk, or
using the default set of a /boot, swap and root partition on the disk.

See Setting up disks manually for the alpine options for RAID, encryption, LVM, etc. and manual partitioning.

Questions asked by setup-alpine

The setup-alpine script offers the following

configuration options:

Keyboard Layout (Local keyboard language and

usage mode, e.g. us and variant of us-
nodeadkeys.)
Hostname (The name for the computer.)
Network (For example, automatic IP address
discovery with the "DHCP" protocol.)
DNS Servers (Domain Name Servers to query.
For privacy reasons it is NOT recommended to
route every local request to servers like google's
8.8.8.8 .)
Timezone
Proxy (Proxy server to use for accessing the web.
Use "none" for direct connections to the internet.)
Mirror (From where to download packages.
Choose the organization you trust giving your
usage patterns to.) Example setup-alpine session
SSH (Secure SHell remote access server.
"Openssh" is part of the default install image. Use
"none" to disable remote login, e.g. on laptops.)
NTP (Network Time Protocol client used for keeping the system clock in sync with a time server.
Package "chrony" is part of the default install image.)
Disk Mode (Select between diskless (disk="none"), "data" or "sys", as described above.)

Warning: The data on a chosen device will be overwritten!

Preparing for the first boot

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation 7/10
29/6/23, 02:16 Installation - Alpine Linux
If setup-alpine has finished configuring the "sys" disk mode, the system should be ready to reboot right away
(see next subsection).

If the new local system was configured to run in "diskless" or "data" mode, and you do not want keep booting from the
initial (and possibly read-only) installation media, the boot system needs to be copied to another device or partition.

The target partition may be identified using lsblk (after installing it with apk add lsblk) and/or blkid, similar
to previously identifying the initial installation media device.

The procedure to copy the boot system is explained at setup-bootable

Once everything is in place, save your customized configuration with lbu commit before rebooting.

Rebooting and testing the new system

First, remove the initial installation media from the boot drive, or detach it from the port it's connected to.

The system may now be power-cycled or rebooted to confirm everything is working correctly.

The relevant commands for this are poweroff or reboot.

Completing the installation

The installation script installs only the base operating system. No applications e.g. web server, mail server, desktop
environment, or web browsers are installed.

Please look under Post-Installation below, for some common things to do after installation.

Further Installation Instructions

Note: Specific topics should be kept on separate, individually manageable topic-pages and only get listed with a
direct reference (link) on this general page.

Installation
Kernels (kernel selection, e.g. for VMs or RPi)
How to make a custom ISO image with mkimage (installation media with its own configuration)
Directly booting an ISO file (without flashing it to a disk or device)
Dual/multi-boot install to HDD partition
Netboot Alpine Linux using iPXE

Also see other Installation Category pages.

Post-Installation
Setting up a new user (to allow remote, console, or graphical logins)
Setting up Networking (including non-standard configurations)
Package Management (apk) (how to search/add/del packages etc.)
Upgrading Alpine (checking for and installing updates)
https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation 8/10
29/6/23, 02:16 Installation - Alpine Linux

Enable the community repository (access to additional packages)

man command/man pages
Change default shell
Running glibc programs (installation and development)

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)

Writing Init Scripts
Multiple Instances of Services

setup-xorg-base (setup graphical base environment)

Desktop Environments

Hosting services on Alpine (links to several mail/web/ssh server setup pages)

How to get regular stuff working (things one may miss in a too lightweight installation )
Running applications and services in their own Firejail Security Sandbox

Broader Usage Guides

See: Tutorials and Howtos

General 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, e.g. those in the ArchWiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/), are to a large degree, also applicable to configuring
the software on Alpine Linux, thus can be very useful.

FAQs
How to Contribute
Developer Documentation
Wiki etiquette (to collaborate on this documentation)
Comparison with other distros (how common things are done on Alpine)

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation 9/10
29/6/23, 02:16 Installation - Alpine Linux

Retrieved from "https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/w/index.php?title=Installation&oldid=23673"

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation 10/10