alpine-wiki

Alpine Install: from a disc to pc engine APU single only boot

Overall description: Alpine Installation from an official image tar file downloaded to a real second generation PC Engines APU systems (apu2, apu3, apu4), where it will be single OS only.

This document will guide you to install Alpine into second generation PC Engines APU systems, it was tested with an apu2d4 and Alpine 3.11.6..

Feels lost here? check How to use this guide section of this document

Terminology

Requirements

Preparing the source medium to install

Download the source medium to install and put into your home documents in a modern computer. The source medium to install in this case are
just 64-bit only, the download URL will be as following format: http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v<VERSION>/releases/<ARCH>/alpine-standard-<VERSION>.0-<ARCH>.iso where ARCH and VERSION could be:

EXAMPLE if you plan to using 3.12 version the available links to download will be:

Usin Graphical download way: Just point the web browser to that url and the download of the iso file will start. A file with .iso extension type, with name like "alpine-standard-3.17.0-x86_64.iso" (if amd64) or like alpine-standard-3.12.1-x86.iso (if i386); will be downloaded commonly into the Download directory of your home documents filesystem.

Usin Command line method way: in unix-like terminal execute: wget -c -t8 --no-check-certificate http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.12/releases/x86_64/alpine-standard-3.12.0-x86_64.iso, and where you run the command, in that place/dir will be downloaded the file.

Booting the Alpine ISO disc

  1. It’s probably a good idea to ensure that the BIOS / Firmware is up to date.
  2. Create_a_Bootable_USB thumb drive with the current standard x86_64 image from the downloads page.
  3. Attach to the serial console. Configure your terminal emulator for 115200 8n1.
  4. Power on the APU.
  5. When BIOS prompted, hit F10 and select to boot from USB.
  6. At the boot prompt, quickly type a slash to interrupt the default boot, which has a short timeout.
  7. Continue entering the remainder of this command at your leisure. It should have only one slash at the start, to be clear: /boot/vmlinuz-lts modules=loop,squashfs,sd-mod,usb-storage nomodeset console=ttyS0,115200 initrd=/boot/initramfs-lts
  8. Alpine should come up as normal.

When the machine start, you must be sure to choose the optical drive (commonly named CD/DVD Rom drive), so the disc/iso will boot and after a while a command line shell will show you:

Note When starting Alpine it will ask for the login, just typing root and pressing enter allows you to start:

runing the setup script

After entering the root environment and gets the console prompt installation media, you must perform these commands, that will:

This will start some questions, these are in the following order:

Before reboot

  1. Before rebooting, edit /boot/extlinux.conf.
    • Add SERIAL 0 115200 as the first line in the file.
    • In the APPEND line, replace quiet with console=ttyS0,115200
  2. Remove the thumb drive.
  3. Cross your fingers and reboot. The system should boot properly with console on serial.
  4. Edit /etc/update-extlinux.conf so that if extlinux.conf is regenerated it will retain these settings:
    • Update the line with serial_port to read serial_port=0
    • Update the serial_baud line to read serial_baud=115200
    • Update the default_kernel_opts line to replace quiet with console=ttyS0,115200
  5. Run update-extlinux
  6. Examine /boot/extlinux.conf.
    • Make sure it looks OK. Compare with /boot/extlinux.conf-old.
    • If something looks wrong, mv /boot/extlinux.conf-old /boot/extlinux.conf to roll back the changes and try to figure out what went wrong
  7. Cross your fingers and reboot. The system should boot properly with console on serial.

The wifi setup after install

Please follow the guide alpine-tutorial-wifi-routering.md, you will need to download the needed packages manually from another device and then but it on the installed Alpine computer using USBstorage external device.

NOTES: offline mode

If you cannot setup a internet connection you cannot install Alpine linux, unless you used 64bit intel/amd and “extended” iso install media. Most of the packages need to setup this procedure are not included in standard images, specially those for ARM devices like RasberryPi ones becouse WIFi setup.

How to use this guide

This guide structure all the commands in blocks, each block its separated by a line spaced, so you must type each line as is.. and hit enter, so you noted that then you typed each separated clocks of commands, copy/type only blocks separated by an empty line, all new(next) lines are made by just enter. the terminal will detect if must execute or not.

This guide is for install process, many parts will need you understand minimal knowledge of linux.

This guide assumed you have a serial port allowed in the targeted computer, also its important you shuold understand the way of the configuration in this guide.

Warning Some Linux or/and Mac terminals have security cut/paste locks, so if you paste, the first line will be preceded by garbage, check always the first char of your paste.

Licensing clarifications

CC BY-NC-SA: the project allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creators involved. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms, includes the following elements:

https://codeberg.org/alpine/alpine-wiki/src/branch/main#license

See also

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