Managing Alpine Linux¶

• Table of contents
• Managing Alpine Linux
  • Create a UEFI bootable usb stick
  • Installing in IPv6 only networks
  • Installing with encrypted root filesystem

Create a UEFI bootable usb stick¶

• Download the alpine iso
• Create one fresh new partition on the USB stick - NEEDS TO BE GPT
  • partition type must be EFI (ef00)
• Format the partition with mkfs.vfat
• mount the ISO (mount -o loop /path/to/iso /somewhere)
• mount the USB stick (mount /dev/sdX1 /somewhere_else)
  • copy files from the alpine ISO: cd /somewhere; tar c . | ( cd /somewhere_else; tar xv ; sync)
• umount the usb stick
• umount the ISO

You can now use the USB stick for UEFI booting.

Installing in IPv6 only networks¶

• Select DHCP
• After it acquires an IP address stop and change to a different console
• Add valid DNS servers to /etc/resolv.conf
  • In our case: for instance nameserver 2a0a:e5c0:2:a::a
• Test pinging: ping ungleich.ch

Installing with encrypted root filesystem¶

• apk add cryptsetup
• abort setup-alpine
• mounting manually the crypted device
• switching to setup-disk /mnt
• bind mounting the dev/sys/proc/efivars into /mnt
• modifying /etc/mkinitfs/mkinitfs.conf to include cryptsetup AND nvme!
• running mkinitfs
• install grub-efi
• modify /etc/default/grub
• apk add efibootmgr in the chroot
• run grub-install --efi-directory=/boot
• apk add dhcpcd
• grub-mkconfig > /boot/grub/grub.cfg
• setup root password in chroot
• post reboot: switch repos to edge (required for variety of packages)