I’ve started using Alpine Linux as a fun experiment. I use Nix heavily, and I don’t feel like it’s very well documented for Alpine Linux. My experience is that it works extremely well and is a nice way to use normal, glibc packages.

A note on installation #

I won’t cover the Alpine Linux installation process in detail, but here are a couple of notes.

Use the following command to install Alpine Linux when you boot into Alpine:

setup-alpine

On a normal workstation with full disk encryption, I choose syscrypt for my disk type. After the installation completes, you can run the following to walk you through a guided installation for a desktop environment:

setup-desktop

Commands to install Nix #

These commands should be run as root.

[BONUS] Install rootless Docker on Alpine #

First, install Docker:

apk add docker docker-rootless-extras docker-cli-compose

In /etc/rc.conf set rc_cgroup_mode="unified" and then run the following command to start cgroups automatically on boot:

rc-update add cgroups

Ensure /etc/subuid and /etc/subgid are configured for your user:

myuser="heywoodlh"
echo "${myuser}:231072:65536" >> /etc/subuid
echo "${myuser}:231072:65536" >> /etc/subgid

Add the following to /etc/init.d/docker-rootless (make sure to put you replace to values in command_user, supervise_daemon_args to reflect your user configuration):

#!/sbin/openrc-run

name=$RC_SVCNAME
description="Docker Application Container Engine (Rootless)"
supervisor="supervise-daemon"
command="/usr/bin/dockerd-rootless"
command_args=""
command_user="heywoodlh"
supervise_daemon_args=" -e PATH=\"/home/heywoodlh/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:$PATH\" -e HOME=\"/home/heywoodlh\" -e XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=\"/run/user/1000\""

reload() {
    ebegin "Reloading $RC_SVCNAME"
    /bin/kill -s HUP \$MAINPID
    eend $?
}

Make the file executable:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/dockerd-rootless

Then run the following to start rootless Docker on boot for your user and start the service:

rc-update add dockerd-rootless
rc-service dockerd-rootless restart