Make Alpine Image

The following was run in an Alpine container.

apk add abuild alpine-conf syslinux xorriso squashfs-tools grub mtools doas git
adduser builder
su -l builder
git clone --depth=1 https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports.git
abuild-keygen -a -i
# Disclaimer: THe follow needs to be based on what is done above.
export PACKAGER_PRIVKEY=/home/builder/.abuild/builder-69f74891.rsa
./aports/scripts/mkimage.sh --repository http://172.27.176.1/mirror/alpine/v3.22/main/
  • This is using the local mirror on the host machine at: http:// 172.27.176.1/mirror/alpine/v3.22/
  • It may be possible to have git clone do even less by focusing only on the script directory.
  • Need to add --profile so it only builds one image instead of all.

Output

af8a53c162ec:~$ ./aports/scripts/mkimage.sh --repository http://172.27.176.1/mirror/alpine/v3.22/main/
OK: 0 B in 0 packages
v3.22.3-105-g58283386ebd [http://172.27.176.1/mirror/alpine/v3.22/main]
OK: 5646 distinct packages available
>>> mkimage-x86_64: Building minirootfs
>>> mkimage-x86_64: Creating alpine-minirootfs-260503-x86_64.tar.gz
>>> mkimage-x86_64: Building netboot
>>> mkimage-x86_64: --> kernel x86_64 lts ac0f25db8eb54040aaf546701673f0b48610d416 linux-lts linux-firmware wireless-regdb
Parallel mksquashfs: Using 8 processors
Creating 4.0 filesystem on /tmp/update-kernel.mlNcfm/boot/modloop-lts, block size 131072.
...
By defualt this creates everything.

Troubleshooting

  • ERROR: --usermode not allowed as root
    • Fix: Run the command under teh nobody user by prepending the command with su -s /bin/sh nobody.
      • Setting the shell to /bin/sh with the -s argument is because it is configured with no login shell by default and would output

        This account is not available

    • Reference: https://coders-home.de/en/alpine-3-23-mkimage-sh-error-usermode-not-allowed-as-root-1720.html
  • ERROR: Need $PACKAGER_PRIVKEY to be set for modloop_sign=yes
    • Fix: Run abuild-keygen -a -i

Failed Ideas

  • Using the nobody user 
    mkdir /.abuild && chown nobody:nobody /.abuild && su -s /bin/sh nobody -c "abuild-keygen -a -i"
su -s /bin/sh nobody -c "./scripts/mkimage.sh --repository http://172.27.176.1/mirror/alpine/v3.22/main/"
    • This likely would have worke.d*

echo “PACKAGER_PRIVKEY="$privkey"” » “$ABUILD_USERCONF”

Other Notes

  • apk index -> create repository index file from packages
    • A use case for this would be booting Alpine from a FAT-32 USB and including additional packages so they don’t need to be fetched from the Internet.

TODO

  • Create profile with Gnome installed.
  • Look at genapkovl-mkimgoverlay.sh
    • Example: https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/blob/master/scripts/genapkovl-dhcp.sh?ref_type=heads