ALPM-FS

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Alpine-Mini Chroot 👻

Prereqs: Be on a linux system with tar, wget, bash, parted and assumes x86_64 target. for EFI stub boot.

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(Optional) build your kernel from the ground up: we'll give full control by starting at the smallest point possible. See KernelComp

Coolest part of this project: Initial auto download is 3.3mb. (Alpine MiniRoot FS) Extracted is < ~9mb, goal being a kind of TUI-os + turn it into a fully working system for bare-metal.

And for the process to take less than 30 seconds. (Unless you compile kernel ofc.)

Download the repo and extract or git clone https://github.com/h8d13/ALPM-FS

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Add to assets/ and in utils/chroot_launcher.sh

Using unshare:

#examples see unshare manpage
#sudo ./run.sh (--reset) shared | slave | private
#--reset to redownload ALPM-FS fresh. # should be before unshare options
## unshare options...
#--fork
#--uts --hostname alpine-test
#--user --map-root-user
#--pid
#--net
#--ipc
#...

This will download the base mini-FS and set it up using the assets. (Which you can obviously modify) You will then be inside the env.

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Configure

You can then just use it like a normal Alpine install apk add micro-tetris

(You can add -vvv if you want to see exactly where the 14kb of Tetris are going)

1989 Tetris Obf

Then tetris

Type exit when you want to leave the chroot.

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Making it Bootable

Transform this chroot environment into a fully bootable Alpine Linux UEFI system!

See ALPM-FS.conf BEFORE proceeding. Here

Create the image

sudo ./utils/create_boot_img.sh alpine-boot.img 3G

3GB minus the /efi part size.

This will:

• Create a GPT/UEFI bootable disk image
• Install kernel and GRUB2/reFIND EFI stub bootloader
• Configure boot services, fstab, zram
• Set up a complete bootable system

Test with QEMU

sudo ./test_qemu.sh

Test it with chroot: sudo ./utils/chroot_usb.sh /dev/sdX2

Write to USB

Usually reset the disk partition table just to make sure :) and zero it out if needed.

Recommended: Use the helper script to automatically create a data partition:

sudo ./utils/write_img_usb.sh alpine-boot.img /dev/sdX

This will: Write the bootable image to the USB as part2, part1 being /efi.

Tip

Finally: using partitionmanager I resize the disk for it to take the full USB. Default credentials: root / alpine (change after first boot!) Also need to run apk update && apk upgrade once you are in.

TODO: Proper mgmnt of repos... Have no idea how they work :D

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Post base install

Setup essentials

Generally on alpine you're going to want to to run setup-alpine this is a script that let's you configure stuff like network, passwords, a user, etc all things that are required for graphical sessions.

BUT when it asks you about disks or save locations just answer none to last 3 prompts for disks, since we have created a live system.

Setup personals

Finally they also have helpers for setup-desktop <desktop> and setup-wayland-base for example (Which desktop environment? ('gnome', 'xfce', 'mate', 'sway', 'lxqt', 'plasma' or 'none')

I would not recommend gnome as it's going to be a past version since ver48 introduced dependencies on systemd. Plasma works beautifully with sound of the box!

I've also included a Sway setup script where you can simple su <user> then go to doas ./root/mods/sway_user.sh. Probably also recommended to install something like SDDM or lightdm or similar (a firewall, etc). But I left it without and you can run sway as your user to start it.

More stuff

Keymaps

If you ran setup-alpine it should have prompted you. Otherwise you can use loadkeys fr

For sddm:

export KB_LAYOUT=$(ls /etc/keymap/*.bmap.gz 2>/dev/null | head -1 | sed 's|/etc/keymap/||' | sed 's|\.bmap\.gz$||')
echo "XKB_DEFAULT_LAYOUT=$KB_LAYOUT" | doas tee -a /etc/environment

Firewall

$ doas ufw enable
$ doas rc-update add ufw default
$ doas ufw allow out 443
$ doas ufw default deny incoming

Or you can be more restrictive/specific:

$ doas ufw default deny outgoing
$ doas ufw allow out 443
$ doas ufw allow out 22
$ doas ufw allow out 53
$ doas ufw allow out 80
$ doas ufw default deny incoming

Note

Also can be found in .github where I documented some of the tricks/ressources I've used.

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak install minitext
flatpak run io.github.nokse22.minitext

Of course this is an example please install something more useful. Also doas apk add gnome-2048 because always need that at hand.

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STATS

FOR NERDS

Boot time

[3.399605] Mounting root: ok. (Grub)

[3.100839] Mounting root: ok. (Refind)

Reference sizes

VM Final size (using linux-virt): 87.5 MiB

Final size (lts / mainline): 195 MiB

With hardware drivers + mesa: 800 MiB

Full Intel HW + Full MESA: 1.1GB

Sway

With 3 github pages open on FF and Sway: Memory: 2.09 GiB / 15.29 GiB (13.7%)

At idle: 664.33 MiB / 15.29 GiB (4.2%)

And all I need to code: Packages: 637 (apk)

Plasma

Or full plasma install: 3.59 GiB (Disk Used Ext4) - 6.3.6

At idle 1.30 GiB / 15.29 GiB (8.5%)

(With VSCodium and some more stuff) on edge/testing: 4.76 GiB (Disk Used Ext4) - 6.5.3