Deploying, provisioning, and managed Alpine servers on ‘bare metal’
A guide to some of your options for your target install ’type’ when using Alpine Linux
This configuration is like diskless mode except that home, parts of /var, and others are mounted for persistence. Also, like a data install with only parts of /var made persistent.
home
/var
Use the setup-* scripts to setup networking for bootstrap package installation on Alpine Linux
You need to add the tools that will let you format/create one or more additional volumes/filesystems of your choice.
For a semi-{data,diskless} setup you need to modify the standard ‘setup-alpine’ procedure. Here we provide the details.
Once you are sure everything is correct for the initial boot into your configured system, commit (store) your changes.
Easily create an encrypted LVM ‘sys’ (aka ‘classic’) install using Alpine Linux 3.16.0
To complete the install you must reboot. And then wait for system to come up.
Cryptographically verify your Alpine Linux download
Various methods of partitioning storage media on the Linux command line (CLI)
Obtain the right Alpine Linux image for your Raspberry Pi model
Prepare the Alpine Linux bootstrap SD card for your Raspberry Pi using Gnome ‘Disks’
Copy the needed files to your SD card, from the Raspbery Pi tarball for Alpine Linux
Some systems might take an excessively long time to boot when no peripherals are attached (not only with the Pi series). In those cases it may be useful to add the rng-tools package to speed up the gathering of entropy.
It is an administrative best practise to avoid logging in and/or operating with elevated privileges, to the extent reasonable to do so. Therefore one needs a user that is not root for performing most operations.
Disallowing SSH login with only a username and password is a well known security best practise, therefore we implement it.
Where possible it is a best practise to safely check your filesystems before mounting them. Here we add the needed packages.
Unless you need headless, or unattended reboots or power up, it is highly recommended to use an encrypted configuration backup.
Information on setting kernel parameters for Alpine Linux
Tweaks to Alpine Linux for specific hardware including packages and kernel parameters
You should backup your system. Really. Oh, and it should be to at least one other system.
Add colour and context information to the ash prompt.
Tmux is a handy tool that gives the ability to have multiple (text) windows in a single terminal session, as well as persisting your session in case of disconnect.
The default MOTD is potentially confusing, and is annoying in any event, once you have set up your system.
It can be especially useful to use network booting to create virtual machines without using install media on the VM. To do that we netboot with iPXE.
While the LBU mechanism with backups allows restoring to previous state it lacks commented history. It also does not apply to ‘sys’ mode installs.
For many systems you should have plenty of available RAM and storage to add the online documentation (mostly in the form of man pages).
man
For many users vi (the default editor for Alpine) is difficult and confusing to use.
vi
Tracking configuration changes in etckeeper is great, but even better is storing in an off-system private repository.
Using rest-server as repository for restic-based backups, on Alpine Linux
rest-server
restic