But it is also possible to copy the boot system to a partition (e.g.
The boot device of the newly configured local "diskless" system may remain the initial (and possibly read-only) installation media. (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.) If a writable partition is available, setup-alpine can be told to store the configs and the package cache on that writable partition. 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. apkovl files that are saved to writable storage and loaded when booting. It enables committing and reverting system states by using. However, setup-alpine can also configure the installed system to boot like this if "disk=none" is specified.Ĭustom configurations and package selections may optionally still be preserved or "persist" across reboots by using the Alpine local backup tool lbu.
It is similar to what other linux distributions may call a "frugal" install and boot into with a "toram" option. It's is extremely fast and can save on unnecessary disk spin-ups, power, and wear. This means the entire operating system with all applications are first loaded into RAM and then only run from there. For example, to set up a graphical environment as covered under Post-Install below. All these tools may also be run later to adjust specific configurations. There are many more setup-scripts available.
setup-disk to add a "data" mode partition, or do a classic full install of the "diskless" system onto a "sys" disk or partition.setup-apkcache to configure a local package cache storage location.setup-lbu to configure a "local backup" location for the diskless system, and lbu commit to then save the local configuration state.Installing something that may be missing in the live system to configure the hardware, e.g.Preparing a custom partitioning or filesystem scheme that avoids to use and/or overwrite an entire disk ( details below).The base configuration of the "diskless" system may be completed by running setup-alpine and answering "none" when asked for the disk to use, and where to store configs, as well as for the location for the package cache. And then use more specific setup-scripts afterwards, to proceed with the final installation.
For example, to download and install some specific driver or software tool. Note: It can be helpful to know that it is possible to first only complete a base configuration of the initial "diskless" installation system in order to to prepare the system. These modes are explained in more detail in the following subsections. The question-and-answer dialog of setup-alpine takes care of the base configuration and allows to configure the system toīoot into one of three different Alpine Linux disk modes: "diskless", "data", or "sys". Initially, the root user has no password.Īt the command prompt, an interactive script named setup-alpine is available to configure and install the initial Alpine Linux system. It will initially only provide a basic command line environment that does not depend on reading from any (possibly slow) initial boot media, anymore. The boot process of the installation image first copies the entire operating system into the RAM memory, and then already starts a complete Alpine Linux system from there.
Either burning the ISO image-file onto a blank CD/DVD/Blu-ray disk with disk burning software, or flashing the installation image onto a bootable storage device (USB-device, CF-/MMC-/SD-card, floppy.Downloading and verifying the proper stable-release ISO installation image-file for the computer's architecture, and the corresponding sha256 (checksum) and GPG (signature) files.
iso images, see Alpine on ARM for peculiarities.Īs usual, the regular installation procedure starts with three basic steps (additional details for all the steps follow below): Note: For single-board-computer (SBC) architectures which can not boot. įor more information please check Requirements Installation Overview The general course of action
At least 0-700 MB space on a writable storage device.3.8 Rebooting and testing the new system.3.5 Custom partitioning of the harddisk.3.3 Verifying the written installation media.3.2 Flashing (direct data writing) the installation image-file onto a device or media.