Very Good Video! May I suggest to get access to a lot more packages, edit /etc/apk/repositories file and remove "#" from the line that ends with "community". This allows a lot more packages from the community to be used. I know this was only a test so, I would suggest doing this on both in a test and a production environment.🖥
That is a very valid point! We are actually going to cover that when we do media playback using FFmpeg which is available in that repository if we did not want to build it from source in a future video. There are quite a lot of useful packages available besides that which are community maintained that enhance the usefulness of Alpine, so that is very good advice that you gave generally. Thank you for watching and sharing this!
Thanks Greg. I was curious to try out Alpine linux on my Raspbery pi 2, and I was soooo confused when there was no .ISO that needed to be written to the sdcard. Very different than raspian, or dietpi!
Would you care for a followup video on how to actually upgrade from one version to another on a ram-based alpine including kernel upgrades and all that good stuff? 3.19 just released
That is a great idea! I am planning on releasing a video this week based on your suggestions to cover exactly that. Thank you for watching and subscribing! 😊
Great video Greg but I cannot get Alpine to boot up. I'm using Linux to wipe and partition the SD card to FAT32. I extract the alpine**.tar.gz file to the SD card and eject to safely remove the card. I insert it into the RPi3b and boot. All I'm getting is the RPI rainbow screen. Even after several minutes nothing happens. I've been able to run Alpine in VM but can't get it to work on the SD card. I've even tried other cards. Any suggestions or links? Thanks. N
@neiltan1939 You may want to try to "clean" the sd card by recreating the partition or clearing the entire card before extracting the alpine linux files. Sometimes there are things in the MBR that reference previous uses of that sd card that can interfere with boot on the Pi, so if you are installing from Windows, you can use diskpart from the CLI, select the disk (sd card), and then using the command clean, and there are other options like dd and other options to remove the partition table on Mac and linux as well, but that is the likely cause of your issue. Thank you for your question and for watching! 😊
managed to run into every possible problem during this video - if your SD card is over 32 GB, windows does not let you create a fat32 partition, and neither does diskpart; have to use rufus - if you enter the wrong network name or password during setup-alpine, you have to wipe/clear cache and start over - if you enter the SD card as the place to store the configs and APK cache, it will continue using tempfs as the mount for /, and since mine only had 213 mb (raspbi zero 2W only has 500 MB ram) no packages would install - the alpine wiki has better instructions for making a disk-based installation tried looking for something else since i haate debian's repos and had no luck switching to debian testing, but no luck, so I will keep trying for alpine
Thanks for the write up @checkmate080, this is very detailed! This tutorial is a bit old and probably needs an update, but is not a guide for the disk based installation. For SD cards over 32G, you can use exfat as well of just create a partition that is 32G and it will format as fat32, but since this video, Alpine has started releasing ISO images that take care of everything automatically, so using Rufus as you said or even Raspberry Pi Imager is a good option to skip that complexity. If you make a mistake while configuring setup-alpine, you can run it again and it will overwrite the previous values, so there is no need to start over. In fact, until you commit the changes, you can just reboot the pi and the unsaved changes will be cleared when not in disk mode. I am not sure why you had issues installing packages on the zero 2w. Having used many of those and even pi v1, it has not had an issue with installing packages even though the resources are limited. The cache storage location is where it stored the APK files and is not where the packages are run from once installed. The core value of Alpine is that it runs the overlay fs by default so all packages are installed every time at boot and then differences from the defaults are stored and applied from the apkovl file on the boot drive to apply your configuration. It may be that this OS is not suited to your use case which is why it is causing issues. Good luck with your project and thank you for commenting and for watching! 😊
Absolutely! Jump cuts make any loading times faster generally😋. Seriously though, in other videos in the series and especially recent live streams, I do show the unabbreviated boot times which are still significantly faster than other operating systems subjectively, but it is still not as fast as a ROM embedded system which would pretty much be up after power up. In my defense, I did think I would show the entire boot process while shooting it, but in the edit it felt more appropriate for flow to keep things moving. Good catch, and thank you for watching! 😊
@@xtendedgreg I can imagine that the optimal strategy to quickly boot different Pis might well be different. You're booting a Pi2/3 which is... well it's an A53x4 it's fairly quick. I'm trying to get an application on the original Pi Zero W to boot in a good handful seconds. That's an ARM11. That core hasn't been fresh for nigh on 20 years now. People forget how glacially slow it is, Pentium Pro from 1996 and Hitachi SH-5 which is more its contemporary and similar power and semi budget run circles around it, and there's only one of these cores as opposed to 4. Do i NEED my 3D printer to instantly turn on? Honestly, i only turn it on once every couple weeks, it would be more economical to just wait every time than to put effort into it. But i care. And i don't want to give it better hardware because well it doesn't strictly need it just for motion planning and remote control. Alpine does seem useful though; because i'm not in the mood to sacrifice an SD-Card every couple months.
Installing Linux on Rpi is easy..., because there are many support materials. But Rpi is now too expensive for me. I wish installing Alpine on those cheap Chinese Risc-V boards like Milk-V ($6) were easier like it.
I haven't tried that board, but I know RISC-V architecture processors generally are becoming more popular and mainstream as companies work on reducing overhead associated with licensing costs. The issue that I have always found with open source hardware as a CPU such as RISC-V is that it leaves a lot of room for customization which is a good thing, but has its drawbacks as well. Since each manufacturer can integrate whatever they want, there tends to be deviations from manufacturer to manufacturer creating driver and support inconsistencies that are still being worked out in the definition of standards to govern their implementation. While I have no doubt that RISC-V will continue to gain steam, I think that has been the primary inhibitor to developers implementing more streamline support, but I am sure it will get better with time. Really great comment, and thanks for watching! 😊
That is great to hear! For a lot of applications, the 64 bit native version of Alpine on the RPI can do a lot to improve performance! Thanks for watching!
Very underrated channel. Recommended 👍🏼
Much appreciated and thank you for watching 😊!
fantastic video Greg!
I am glad you liked it and thank you for watching! 😊
ohhh that ending feature is cool!
I am glad you liked it and thank you for watching! ☺️
Thanks for the tutorial, very easy to follow and straightforward. nice
I'm glad that you liked it and thank you for watching! 😊
Very Good Video! May I suggest to get access to a lot more packages, edit /etc/apk/repositories file and remove "#" from the line that ends with "community". This allows a lot more packages from the community to be used. I know this was only a test so, I would suggest doing this on both in a test and a production environment.🖥
That is a very valid point! We are actually going to cover that when we do media playback using FFmpeg which is available in that repository if we did not want to build it from source in a future video. There are quite a lot of useful packages available besides that which are community maintained that enhance the usefulness of Alpine, so that is very good advice that you gave generally. Thank you for watching and sharing this!
grazie per questo splendito tutorial , ora la mia alpine si è avvita correttamente
I am very happy that you liked it! Thank you for watching! 😊
Nice walkthough.
I am glad that you found it helpful. Thank you for watching!😊
Thanks Greg. I was curious to try out Alpine linux on my Raspbery pi 2, and I was soooo confused when there was no .ISO that needed to be written to the sdcard. Very different than raspian, or dietpi!
It certainly is! Glad I could help and thank you for watching! 👍
Would you care for a followup video on how to actually upgrade from one version to another on a ram-based alpine including kernel upgrades and all that good stuff? 3.19 just released
That is a great idea! I am planning on releasing a video this week based on your suggestions to cover exactly that. Thank you for watching and subscribing! 😊
@@xtendedgregthats gr8! lookin forward to it
Great video Greg but I cannot get Alpine to boot up. I'm using Linux to wipe and partition the SD card to FAT32. I extract the alpine**.tar.gz file to the SD card and eject to safely remove the card. I insert it into the RPi3b and boot. All I'm getting is the RPI rainbow screen. Even after several minutes nothing happens. I've been able to run Alpine in VM but can't get it to work on the SD card. I've even tried other cards. Any suggestions or links? Thanks. N
@neiltan1939 You may want to try to "clean" the sd card by recreating the partition or clearing the entire card before extracting the alpine linux files. Sometimes there are things in the MBR that reference previous uses of that sd card that can interfere with boot on the Pi, so if you are installing from Windows, you can use diskpart from the CLI, select the disk (sd card), and then using the command clean, and there are other options like dd and other options to remove the partition table on Mac and linux as well, but that is the likely cause of your issue. Thank you for your question and for watching! 😊
managed to run into every possible problem during this video
- if your SD card is over 32 GB, windows does not let you create a fat32 partition, and neither does diskpart; have to use rufus
- if you enter the wrong network name or password during setup-alpine, you have to wipe/clear cache and start over
- if you enter the SD card as the place to store the configs and APK cache, it will continue using tempfs as the mount for /, and since mine only had 213 mb (raspbi zero 2W only has 500 MB ram) no packages would install - the alpine wiki has better instructions for making a disk-based installation
tried looking for something else since i haate debian's repos and had no luck switching to debian testing, but no luck, so I will keep trying for alpine
Thanks for the write up @checkmate080, this is very detailed! This tutorial is a bit old and probably needs an update, but is not a guide for the disk based installation.
For SD cards over 32G, you can use exfat as well of just create a partition that is 32G and it will format as fat32, but since this video, Alpine has started releasing ISO images that take care of everything automatically, so using Rufus as you said or even Raspberry Pi Imager is a good option to skip that complexity.
If you make a mistake while configuring setup-alpine, you can run it again and it will overwrite the previous values, so there is no need to start over. In fact, until you commit the changes, you can just reboot the pi and the unsaved changes will be cleared when not in disk mode.
I am not sure why you had issues installing packages on the zero 2w. Having used many of those and even pi v1, it has not had an issue with installing packages even though the resources are limited. The cache storage location is where it stored the APK files and is not where the packages are run from once installed. The core value of Alpine is that it runs the overlay fs by default so all packages are installed every time at boot and then differences from the defaults are stored and applied from the apkovl file on the boot drive to apply your configuration. It may be that this OS is not suited to your use case which is why it is causing issues. Good luck with your project and thank you for commenting and for watching! 😊
"The boot process is very fast" he exclaims after a jump cut.
Absolutely! Jump cuts make any loading times faster generally😋. Seriously though, in other videos in the series and especially recent live streams, I do show the unabbreviated boot times which are still significantly faster than other operating systems subjectively, but it is still not as fast as a ROM embedded system which would pretty much be up after power up. In my defense, I did think I would show the entire boot process while shooting it, but in the edit it felt more appropriate for flow to keep things moving. Good catch, and thank you for watching! 😊
@@xtendedgreg I can imagine that the optimal strategy to quickly boot different Pis might well be different. You're booting a Pi2/3 which is... well it's an A53x4 it's fairly quick.
I'm trying to get an application on the original Pi Zero W to boot in a good handful seconds. That's an ARM11. That core hasn't been fresh for nigh on 20 years now. People forget how glacially slow it is, Pentium Pro from 1996 and Hitachi SH-5 which is more its contemporary and similar power and semi budget run circles around it, and there's only one of these cores as opposed to 4.
Do i NEED my 3D printer to instantly turn on? Honestly, i only turn it on once every couple weeks, it would be more economical to just wait every time than to put effort into it. But i care. And i don't want to give it better hardware because well it doesn't strictly need it just for motion planning and remote control.
Alpine does seem useful though; because i'm not in the mood to sacrifice an SD-Card every couple months.
@@SianaGearz Really good example use case! I wish you good luck on your search and testing!😊
Installing Linux on Rpi is easy..., because there are many support materials. But Rpi is now too expensive for me. I wish installing Alpine on those cheap Chinese Risc-V boards like Milk-V ($6) were easier like it.
I haven't tried that board, but I know RISC-V architecture processors generally are becoming more popular and mainstream as companies work on reducing overhead associated with licensing costs. The issue that I have always found with open source hardware as a CPU such as RISC-V is that it leaves a lot of room for customization which is a good thing, but has its drawbacks as well. Since each manufacturer can integrate whatever they want, there tends to be deviations from manufacturer to manufacturer creating driver and support inconsistencies that are still being worked out in the definition of standards to govern their implementation. While I have no doubt that RISC-V will continue to gain steam, I think that has been the primary inhibitor to developers implementing more streamline support, but I am sure it will get better with time. Really great comment, and thanks for watching! 😊
Very good video, thanks. I have RP3+ and the image "alpine-rpi-3.18.3-aarch64.tar.gz" which was that works for me.
That is great to hear! For a lot of applications, the 64 bit native version of Alpine on the RPI can do a lot to improve performance! Thanks for watching!