How to install Alpine Linux on bare metal
Alpine Linux can be installed in various locations, including AWS, Google Compute and more. This article however shows you how to install Alpine Linux on your own hardware, which seems like a good place to start.
Boot to CD
Start by browsing to the Alpine Linux Downloads site.
- In the Extended section, click the x86_64 button to download the Extended version of Alpine Linux.
- Burn a CD from the downloaded ISO (alpine-extended-3.18.3-x86_64.iso at the time of writing).
- Alternatively you can create a bootable USB stick using Ventoy.
- Boot your machine from the CD or USB stick.
The system loads in a few seconds and you will be presented with a command prompt login. The default username is root with no password.
setup-alpine
You are now ready to setup alpine. Start by running the following command, and then answering the prompts (below are some example responses):
setup-alpine
Select keyboard layout: [gb]
Select variant: [gb-intl]
Enter system hostname: alpine.local
Which one do you want to initialize? [eth0]
Ip address for eth0 [dhcp]
Do you want to do any manual network configurations? [n]
Changing password for root
New password:
Retype password:
Which timezone are you in? [UTC]
HTTP/FTP proxy URL? [none]
Which NTP client to run? [chrony]
Available mirrors [2] (you can press f to detect the fastest mirror)
Setup a user? [no]
Which ssh server? [openssh]
Allow root ssh login? [prohibit-password] (root will be able to login with ssh key but not password)
Enter ssh key or URL for root [none]
Which disk(s) would you like to user? [sda]
How would you like to use it? [lvmsys]
WARNING: Erase the above disk(s) and continue (y/n) y
Installation is complete. Please reboot.
alpine:~# poweroff
Your system will now shutdown allowing you to remove the CD, and then reboot the system.
You are now ready to make some initial configuration settings.
Thanks for visiting,
Steven