Semi-Automatic Installation

Keyboard layout is controlled by the loadkmap service file. In /etc/conf.d/loadkmap a variable (KEYMAP) is defined. The file named in this variable is the keymap that will be loaded.

The various keymaps are available in the package kbd-bkeymaps, located in /usr/share/bkeymaps. Inside that directory, are multiple directories with the global categories for keymaps (e.g us and ca for United States and Canada respectively). Within those directories are the local variants of each keymap category. For example, to have the common keyboard type, you would use /usr/share/bkeymaps/us/us.bmap.gz.

One easy way to select the keymap is by using setup-keymap. Simply running it will make it go over various available keymaps, prompt you for which one you want to use, and then configure loadkmap for you. It will also remove the kbd-bkeymaps package after copying the required keymap. Alternatively, you may directly pass keymap name as command line arguments to setup-keymap.

Your hostname is the name of your computer. It is important that hostnames on your local area network be unique. If you need recommendations as to what to make your hostname, you can refer to RFC 1178.

The primary hostname setting is whatever the contents of /etc/hostname are. However, there are some common restrictions as to what it should or shouldn’t be (also listed in the RFC mentioned above). As such, you can use setup-hostname to make the process safer. You can either invoke it with no arguments to be prompted, or you can run it with an argument to set your hostname.

For example, if you want your hostname to be "alpine", you might run it like so:

Note, however, that this will not populate /etc/hosts - your local hardcoded DNS cache. If you want to accelerate some loopback operations, you can modify that file too. For example, if you were to set your hostname to "alpine", with no particular domain for your network (if you have one of those, you likely do not need these instructions), your /etc/hosts file could look like so:

With that done, you should apply the hostname using either rc-service hostname restart or /etc/init.d/hostname restart.

Before you configure the rest of the system, you should set up networking. This will allow you, for instance, to fetch bootloaders, configure sshd (to continue this setup from the comfort of a different, graphically-enabled machine), and other such desirable features.

On musl, the timezone is defined by the TZ environment variable. It should either mention a POSIX-style timezone, directly point at a file, or have a standard Area/SubArea definition, The definition must be found under /usr/share/zoneinfo, /share/zoneinfo or /etc/zoneinfo.

You may use the setup-timezone script, which will prompt you for timezone you are in. It will then install tzdata package, copy the required file and remove the package.

Alternatvely, you can do it manually. Then you have to install the tzdata package to get /usr/share/zoneinfo. You can see the available Areas by looking that directory, and the available SubAreas by looking into your chosen Area’s directory. Once chosen, you may either keep the package installed, or you may copy your chosen file into /etc/zoneinfo.

For example, if your chosen area is America/New_York, you would run this:

If you want to be able to install packages, you’re going to want to have some repositories. By default, your boot medium will come with a built-in repository that is on the boot medium itself. However, now that you have networking, you may wish to install packages outside the relatively small pool available on the boot medium. Repositories for the package manager (apk) are configured in a file named /etc/apk/repositories, and valid signing keys are located under /etc/apk/keys/. Your boot medium should come with valid pre-configured keys, but no external repositories. Currently, you can see the list of available mirrors and their status over at mirrors.alpinelinux.org.

Here is an example /etc/apk/repositories file, that uses all stable repositories from the primary mirror of the latest release version:

Assuming your network configuration is done, you may also use the setup-apkrepos utility, which will fetch a list of valid repositories, and give you a choice between them (and options such as "random").

At this point, you should set up a root password. This is easy to do - simply run passwd and follow the prompts.

SSH is very convenient to have - it means you can be in the comfort of your terminal emulator, rather than a raw getty (the full-screen emulator that shows up when booting up an alpine install medium). Now that we have networking, we can set up an ssh daemon.

There are currently two primary secure shell daemons available - openssh and dropbear. The latter is more simple, but has its own (incompatible) key format, and can only be configured through command line arguments - as such, it is not recommended for beginners. You can install either one using apk add name, where name is either "dropbear" or "openssh" respectively. After that, you may want to start it, and possibly enable it - using rc-service openssh start and rc-update add openssh respectively.

Note that this can also be done for you by the setup-sshd utility - it will ask you which one you would like, install, start and enable it for you.

It may be useful to make sure that your clock is correct. This can be achieved by using an NTP daemon. Some of the common ones are chronyd and openntpd. You can install them by using apk add name, where name is the desired daemon. After that, you may want to start it, and possibly enable it - using rc-service name start and rc-update add name respectively.

Note that this can also be done for you by the setup-ntp utility - it will ask you which one you would like, install, start and enable it for you.