Existing Alpine installation

From postmarketOS

To turn Alpine into postmarketOS:

  • Install Alpine Linux
  • Enable the community repository
  • Add one of these mirrors to the top of /etc/apk/repositories, Change master to the correct release for your alpine version (eg: postmarketos v22.06 on alpine 3.16, see releases):
https://mirror.postmarketos.org/postmarketos/master
  • Add this key as a file called "build.postmarketos.org.rsa.pub" into /etc/apk/keys

or

  • Add postmarketOS public key with apk:
# apk add -u --allow-untrusted postmarketos-keys
  • Use your device package kernel for your device: (skip this if installing onto a desktop\laptop computer)
# apk add -u postmarketos-base device-nokia-n900
  • Install the packages for the UI you want, for example:
# apk add -u postmarketos-ui-xfce4

or

# apk add -u postmarketos-ui-weston

(Use device-qemu-amd64 for a x86_64 virtual machine installation, but this will also install a kernel -- maybe it makes sense to introduce a new "docker device" without any kernel, you could experiment with that if you want.)

If you want to use the postmarketOS initramfs, make sure that you adjust the partition labels accordingly.

Note that alpine users start at 1000 and postmarketos users start at 10000. Some files provided by postmarketos-base may not match the existing system. eg: /etc/conf.d/tinydm

See also

  • pmaports#106 Turning an existing x86_64 Alpine Linux installation into a postmarketOS one fails
  • pmaports#66 troubleshooting the first installation which was done this way