Alpine Linux

Alpine Linux is a lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and Busybox.

This distribution is commonly found as the base OS for container images due to its small footprint. It's also an attractive option as a minimal Linux distribution since everything is kept minimalistic (no systemd).

Package Management

Packages are handled using the apk utility.

Command	Description
apk update	Update repo metadata
apk upgrade	Upgrades all installed packages on the system
apk search $package	Search for a specific package
apk add $package [$package2 ...]	Installs or updates the packages
apk add --no-cache $packages	Install without relying on any local caches (otherwise, you may need to delete /var/cache/apk/* to maintain small container/VM images)
apk add --update-cache $packages	Update metadata first before installing or updating packages.
apk add --virtual=$name $packages	Install packages under a virtual package name. All packages installed will be collected in this virtual package name. This is useful if you need to later uninstall this collection of packages as you only need to uninstall the virtual package.
apk del $package	Uninstalls a package
apk del --purge $name	Uninstalls packages including all configuration files and any other files from cache.

Service Management

Command	Description
rc-status	Show the current runlevel
rc-status --list	Show all available runlevels
rc $runlevel	Change the current runlevel
rc-service --list	List all services
rc-update add $service [$runlevel]	Enable a service on the specified runlevel (or default if not given)
rc-update del $service	Remove the service from the default runlevel
rc-service $service start /etc/init.d/$service start	Start a service
rc-service $service restart /etc/init.d/$service restart	Restart a service
rc-service $service stop /etc/init.d/$service stop	Stop a service

Tasks

Removing unnecessary firmware files

Alpine Linux installs a bunch of unnecessary firmware packages. You can remove these by running:

# apk add linux-firmware-none

Update Kernel parameters

Edit /etc/update-extlinux.conf, and change the value at default_kernel_opts.

Run update-extlinux to update grub.

Set a static IP address

Network configuration in Alpine Linux is set in /etc/network/interfaces.

If you are using DHCP:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

If you want to set a static IP address:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
        address 10.1.2.101/22
        gateway 10.1.1.1
        hostname alpine-vm1

Apply changes by restarting networking:

# /etc/init.d/networking restart

## or with service
# service networking restart

See Also

• https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Main_Page
• https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Alpine_Linux_package_management