0 seconds of 7 minutes, 34 seconds Prateek Jangid

How to Install Alpine Linux on VirtualBox

There are various types of available Linux distros to satisfy the
different user requirements, and Alpine Linux is one of them. Alpine
Linux is the perfect choice if you are looking for a compact and
lightweight distro.

The main purpose of Alpine Linux is minimalism in terms of high

security, scope, and space. In this, the location of programs in memory
is randomized using a technique called position-independent
executables. This prevents any attacker from taking over the machine
and exploiting memory quirks. Alpine Linux achieves its small size by
providing most utilities in an executable using the BusyBox suite.

If you want to use the Alpine Linux but wants to give it a try before
making it the current OS of the system, you can use the VirtualBox. In
this tutorial, we will briefly explain how to install and use the Alpine
Linux on VirtualBox.

How to Install Alpine Linux on VirtualBox

Before moving to the setup process, here are some prerequisites that
you need to follow:

Installed VirtualBox in the system

Latest ISO file of Alpine Linux
Minimum 10 GB storage
At least 2GB of disk space

Like other Linux distributions, you can easily install the Alpine Linux
on VirtualBox.

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First, go to the official website of Alpine Linux and download its

standard version. Depending on your system architecture, you can
download the x86_64 or x86 version.

The x84_64 version is suitable for today’s modern systems, so we will

download it here.

Once the ISO file is downloaded, it goes to your “Downloads” directory

by default. This downloaded file represents Alpine Linux and is
required to install it on VirtualBox.

Now, open the virtual machine and click on “New”.

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First, name the OS of your choice. Here, we named it “Alpine Linux

3.17”. Select “Linux” under “Type” and “Linux 2.6 / 3.x / 4.x (64-bit)”
for “Version”. Then, click “Next”.

Now, please provide a memory for the virtual machine from your
system. Since Alpine is a small distro, it only requires a little memory.
You can run it easily by giving up to 2GB of memory, but we provided
7GB here to make it run more smoothly.

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Next, we need to create a hard disk to store the data. To do this, click on
“Create a virtual hard disk now” and proceed by clicking on “Create”.

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Proceed by selecting “VirtualBox Disk Image (VDI)” for the type of file
disk.

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Next, we choose a “Dynamically allocated” disk because in a fixed size,

the disk has a fixed size and you cannot change it. Conversely, you can
increase or decrease its size in a dynamically allocated disk.

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You can select a disk size of up to 10GB by default, since Alpine Linux
has a smaller size. For the system to work properly, we fixed the disk
size at 50GB.

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As you can see, Alpine Linux is now ready to install.

Now, go to Settings > System > Motherboard and tick on the “optical”
and “hard disk” options as shown in the following image:

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Next, go to “Storage” and click on “empty”. Afterward, click on the

icon that is marked in the following image and select the downloaded
ISO file.

After making the previous settings, start the Alpine Linux by clicking
on the “Start” button. After setting everything right, you will see the
following screen when you click on “Start”.

Note: In this situation, you are using Alpine but it is still not fully
installed.

Alpine Linux also has the login. The default user on Alpine is “root”.
Login to the localhost login prompt by typing “root”.

Type “setup-alpine” to set up Alpine and press “Enter”.

Now, Alpine asks you to select the keyboard first. Here, we select that
keyboard by typing “us”. When prompted for the next keyboard
variation, type “us” again and press “Enter” to proceed.

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The system now asks you to enter the hostname. Here, you can enter
the hostname as per your choice.

Next, we are not going to configure the “etho” network interface. Press
“Enter” two times for automatic configuration.

When prompted for manual network configuration, type “n” and enter
for automatic configuration. Make sure that you connected to the
internet and it gives the dynamically allocated IP addresses.

To change the password for the root user, enter any strong password
that you want, twice.

Note: For security reasons, you will not see anything typed while typing
the password.

Once the password is set, our screen returns to the setup menu. When
prompted for your time zone, you have to enter the area. Use “?” to list
the appropriate list for your timezone. You will see that the list of all
the zones will appear in front of you.

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Since our timezone is “Asia”, we proceed by using it. Immediately after

this, it asks for the sub-timezone. Type “?” again to get a list of sub-
timezones by type. Under this, our sub-time zone is “Kolkata”, so we
will write that.

Next is a proxy URL which we do not need. Proceed by pressing

“Enter”. Chrony works for our NTP client, so press “Enter” again to
proceed. This process may take some time.

Alpine now needs to install some packages and wants to know where to
download the packages. An extensive list of mirrors is available from
which you can choose. Currently, Alpine is going through 70 packages
and sees which package is the fastest, but this process takes some time.
If you can wait, press “Enter” to find the fastest one.

Here, we write “r”. By doing this, it randomly takes any package.

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It asks you to set up the user. But for now, without setting up the user,
we proceed by pressing “Enter”. After this, it asks you for root SSH
login permission. If you need to enter a password while doing the root
SSH login, type “yes”; otherwise, proceed by typing “no”.

Now, Alpine starts downloading some tools. First, it asks to choose an

SSH server. Out of which, we choose the OpenSSH by default.

Finally, you must choose the disk on which you want to install the
Alpine Linux. As you can see, we have only one disk. Apart from this, we
have no other option. So, we choose “sda”.

Next, write “sys” to use the disk as the sys drive. When the system
prompts you to erase the disc, type “y” and press “Enter”.

The previous process may take some time, but Alpine is installed after
that. Finally, reboot the system by typing “reboot”.

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When Alpine restarts, you will see the name that you provided as the
system hostname. To proceed, type “root” and enter the password that
you entered earlier.

Next, point the repositories using the following command:

cd /etc/apk/

Here, we open the repositories using the Vi editor. For this, run the
following command:

vi repositories

Upon running the previous command, you will see the following
repositories. Out of this, we remove the “#” from the previous two
repositories to un-command them. By doing so, the repositories are
enabled for Alpine Linux.

Run the following update command to ensure that the repositories are
working correctly:

apk update

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You can see that the repositories of Alpine Linux are working correctly,
and around 17000 packages are available under it.

To set up the graphical interface of Alpine Linux, use the following

command:

setup-xorg-base

This command installs all the necessary packages for the graphical
interface of Alpine Linux.

Next, we install “pciutils” via the following command to monitor the

status of PCI devices, list them, and set their configuration registers:

apk add pciutils

Now, we need to install the video drivers. First, we search for the video
drivers using the following command:

apk search xf86-video

All these video drivers are available in the Alpine repository.

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Here, we only install the selected video drives which are as follows:

apk add xf86-video-fdev xf86-video-intel xf86-video-vesa

All the previous three video drivers are essential and are successfully
installed. These are necessary for the graphical interface of Alpine
Linux to work.

Now, let’s install some input drivers for devices like the keyboard and
mouse. We first search the input drivers in the Alpine repository using
the following command:

apk search xf86-input

We only install the “vmmouse” and “synaptics” input drivers.

apk add xf86-input-synaptics xf86-input-vmmouse

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Next, install the virtualbox guest addition; it is available in the Alpine

repository by default:

apk add virtualbox-guest-additions

Afterward, install all the gnome utilities. Here, we install all the
necessary utilities through the following command:

apk add gnome bash-completion gnome-terminal gnome-desktop

gnome-shell gnome-system-monitor gnome menus gnome-
calculator gnome-disk-utility gnome-control-center

The previous utilities may take some time to install.

Now, you need to add some services. Here, we add four services (dbus,
udev, virtualbox-guest-additions, and gnome desktop manager) using
the following command:

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Finally, create a login user with a home directory. For this, provide the
username and password correctly.

Reboot the system to check that “gdn” is appropriately installed.

As you can see, the gnome desktop manager is successfully installed.

Now, using this login user, you can start the gnome desktop manager
of Alpine Linux.

Conclusion
One of the main features of Alpine Linux is its small size. Installing
Alpine Linux is tricky compared to other Linux distros. In this tutorial,
we learned the installation process of Alpine Linux on VirtualBox,
which is lengthy. After installing Alpine, we described the entire
process of its configuration.

For this Linux distro, the graphical interface must be installed

separately, and some packages and drivers must also be added
separately. With this tutorial, you can install the Alpine Linux on
VirtualBox without hassle.
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