Install Alpine Linux

Alpine is a really small linux distribution. It can be installed in a really tight disk drive with barely no RAM. It is good for testing purposes but it can also be used in production servers.

These are guidelines to install Alpine Linux inside a Ravada KVM Guest.

Base Guest

The guest should have more than 256 MB of RAM. If you are planning to run many services you should create the virtual machine with more memory. You can increase it later if you want to keep it slim.

At least 1GB disk drive is required. A swap partition should also be added when creating the virtual machine.

../_images/create_alpine.png — Create Alpine Virtual Machine

When the machine is created start it from Admin Tools menu, click on Virtual Machines to see a list. At the right there is a bunch of buttons. Click on view to start and access the virtual machine console.

../_images/create_alpine_view.png — Start and View Virtual Machine

Setup

Alpine Linux has a setup script that eases the installation process. These are the default settings we use in a Ravada-KVM Virtual Machine.

Start the setup typing:

setup-alpine

If you see an error about missing mirrors you must stop the process pressing CTRL+C , then set manually a mirror like this one:

export MIRRORS=http://mirror.leaseweb.com/alpine/
setup-alpine

Keyboard

First choose a keyboard layout and variant.

Hostname

Type a hostname for the virtual machine. If you call it with the same name when you created the machine before it would be easier for you:

Networking

The setup will detect a network interface, probably eth0. Accept this value. Also you should probably accept using dhcp and answer no to manual network configuration, unless you know what you are doing.

Password

Type a new password for the root user.

Timezone

Select a timezone, the default UTC won’t do any harm when you are testing, but if you know the actual timezone, type it.

Proxy

If you are downloading packages through a proxy tell it now, you probably should keep it to none.

Mirror

Choose a mirror for Alpine to download packages from. Type 1 if you set the mirror manually with an export before. If not type f and it will check your connection and choose the best one, it may take a while.

SSH Server

Answer openssh when asked about an SSH server.

Partitioning

The setup script will ask the disk

Available disks are:
- vda
- vdb
Which disk(s) would you like to use? [none] vda
How would you like to use them ? [?] sys
WARNING: Erase the above disk(s) and continue [y/N]: y

Now the setup process will install minimal applications to start the server.

Reboot

Once it is installed reboot to continue setting this virtual machine.

reboot

Installing more software

You should at least install these applications and start udev:

apk add qemu-guest-agent acpi udev

rc-update add udev
rc-update add udev-trigger
rc-update add udev-settle
rc-update add udev-postmount
rc-update add qemu-guest-agent

Shutdown and restart

Type these commands from the console to restart and shutdown the server:

reboot

poweroff

Advanced Settings

Add a swap partition

If you added a swap volume in the Ravada installation form you must define it later after the Alpine setup script.

Define de partition

The swap device will be probably in /dev/vdb , check first with df it is not mounted already. If it is not shown it is ok.

Using fdisk you should find an empty disk and you must create the partitions like this:

localhost:~# fdisk /dev/vdb
Command (m for help): n
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-2080, default 1):
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-2080, default 2080):
Using default value 2080
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table

Create the swap

mkswap /dev/vdb1

Test it

Type this to start using the swap space:

swapon -a

This command will check the memory utilization, at the bottom there should be now a swap entry:

free

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1031924      48896     983028        100       2884      10964
-/+ buffers/cache:      35048     996876
Swap:      1262140          0    1262140

Add it to the system

echo "/dev/vdb1       swap    swap    defaults 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

Now the swap space is configured, after rebooting the system it should show typing the free command.