Alpine

General Tips

Building a package in Alpine

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Category_talk:Developer_Documentation#Building_from_source_and_creating_packages

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Custom_Kernel

Xorg video playback stutters upon suspend / resume

I added the following configuration to xorg.conf

Section "Device"
  Identifier "Intel Graphics"
  Driver "intel"
  Option "AccelMethod" "uxa"
EndSection

This seems to resolve video playback issues. What happens is that the video will not play, though audio will. Only the first frame or so is visible. Video seems to be unable to display. This is a documented fix. The important part is AccelMethod. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_Graphics Also documented in forums that I can't seem to find at the moment.

Python3 Script Won't Run

$ ztdl
env: can't execute python

solution:

python3 /usr/local/bin/ztdl

Cloning HDD

When cloning a hdd, do the following:

• clonezilla or otherwise rsync partitions and recreate partitions to similar boundaries

by default clonezilla might fail, due to -C not being set. There is an icds option for restore, but it can either be edited into /usr/sbin/ocs-onthefly for partclone or just rsync then:

• edit etc fstab uuids
• edit (boot partition) grub/grub.cfg root=uuid=whatever to root=/dev/sda3
• can also be in /dev/sda1 - extlinux.conf

NOTE: normal editing of extlinux.conf can also be done with the extlinux in /etc/

Kernel, Initramfs recovery

If upgrade fails halfway through for any reason (hdd failing, system in a broken state), you may be left with a unbootable machine. Keep an extra /boot/vmlinuz-lts and /boot/initramfs-lts and also a copy of that kernels /lib/modules/<kernelvers> around in case. I keep mine in a folder named /boot/recovery. Backup hdds help here. If you have a corrupt initramfs, or kernel, move the old files back over to /boot from another machine. Now, from the alpine machine (not from a different dist chroot, which didn't work for me btw), boot up, and run mkinitfs again. The command is easy to mess up, so here's the correct one (as of 3.12)

mkinitfs -c /etc/mkinitfs/mkinitfs.conf -b / <kernelvers>

The kernel vers for the new kernel can be found from /lib/modules. It should also have a folder, as the script will load modules into the initramfs ref: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Running_Alpine_in_a_Docker_Container

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/NVME

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Bootloaders

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Setting_up_a_software_RAID_array

UTF-8 Characters

If you see certain foreign language characters not showing up correctly, you can try installing different fonts.

apk search ttf

But I found that changing in FF opensans to sans-serif fixed some of them for me. opensans had partial support for international characters.

History File Size

Alpine uses ash, not bash.

printenv

Histfilesize / histsize should be set correctly.

Search for package

There's obv

apk search <packagename> 

but, there is also

apk search -v --description 'something descriptive'

e.g.

apk search -v --description 'browser'

Links

Configure_Wake-on-LAN