Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “sbc”
Download and verify installation media
Download and verify installation media Download the installation media You should obtain the appropriate install media as well as sha256 and GnuPG signatures for that media.
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 30, 2022
Add and use filesystem tools
Add and use filesystem tools Overview You need to add the tools that will let you format/create one or more additional volumes/filesystems of your choice.
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 29, 2022
Copy tarball to boot under Gnome
Copy tarball to boot under Gnome Steps Screenshots are from GNOME but most GUI desktops are similar.
Select install tarball wherever you have it downloads (often in your Downloads directory), right-click and select ‘Extract To…’ Browse to the boot partition of the SD card Select the boot partition of the SD card as extraction destination The result will be a directory containing the boot files on the boot partition; we actually want the files in the top-level (root) of the boot partition.
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 29, 2022
Prepare SD card using GNOME Disks
Prepare SD card using GNOME Disks Procedure Start with an empty (unpartitioned, unformatted) SD card. If you disk is not empty, you will need to do a search on how to clean the disk and create an msdos disklabel (aka partition table).
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 29, 2022

Alpine Linux as a Server
Daniel’s documentation for using Alpine Linux for local servers on x86-64 and Raspberry Pi family. These documents use only the ‘main’ repository, except in one or more optional HowTo guides.
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 28, 2022
Creating initial boot media
Creating initial boot media Create the initial boot image Obtain and verify install tarball Prepare your SD card Do pre-boot tweaks
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 28, 2022
Do pre-boot tweaks
Do pre-boot tweaks On Windows 10 TBD
On Linux GUI (GNOME) Screenshots are from GNOME but other GUI desktops are similar
On Mac OS TBD
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 28, 2022
Obtain and verify install tarball
Obtain and verify install tarball Obtain the official Alpine Linux image Choose tarball to download based on the model of Pi you have
Partial table of model of Raspberry Pi to Linux kernel max architecture available (where aarch64 > armv7 > armhf).
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 28, 2022
Prepare your SD card
Prepare your SD card Partition the SD card On Windows 10 Using built-in GUI ‘Disk Management’ feature TBD
Using diskpart TBD
Using PowerShell TBD
On Linux (many distros) GUI Using Gnome ‘Disks’ applet
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 28, 2022
Setup network required for package installation
Setup network required for package installation Use Alpine Linux setup sub-scripts for network/DNS Execute setup-keymap # To make sure you can successfully do keyboard input Execute setup-hostname.
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 28, 2022
Use Alpine Linux on Raspberry Pi as a server
Use Alpine Linux on Raspberry Pi as a server Special Notes NOTE: For boot to succeed /media/mmcblk0p1/usercfg.txt must exist. See kernel parameters and device-tree settings for information on what you can set in that file.
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 28, 2022
Create semi-data/semi-diskless install
Create semi-data/semi-diskless install Overview This guide presumes you are booted into a fresh install media (no stored configuration). It further presumes that neither the pure diskless configuration from the Alpine wiki, the data configuration from the Alpine wiki, nor the system disk (classic) configuration from the Alpine wiki suits your situation.
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 27, 2022
Server install & configure
Server install & configure Overview This set of guides and recommendations is aimed at the use of Alpine as your local servers on physical hardware where you have access to the console on boot.
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 27, 2022
Use modified 'setup-alpine' procedure
Use modified ‘setup-alpine’ procedure Overview You’ll want to be careful during the LBU configuration and APK cache configuration sections using the default setup-alpine script. You also need to have pre-mounted the partition(s) that will hold the LBU and APK cache (see Create semi-data/semi-diskless install).
By Daniel F. Dickinson on April 27, 2022

Pi Unbound; The Gift of DoT
Keeping your DNS queries from your local network to public DNS servers private in transit by using DNS over TLS on a Raspberry Pi is ridiculously easy.
By Daniel F. Dickinson on December 20, 2021
Intel NUC(-like) as a Server
The Intel NUC (and boards based on the same SoC) are quite powerful for their price point, and use less electricity than even a mini tower.
By Daniel F. Dickinson on May 18, 2021
Intro to Raspberry Pi OS
Preface Raspberry Pi OS is the official operating system for the Raspberry Pi family of educational single board computers. This article discusses some useful information on using Pi OS (including remotely) and provides links to more.
By Daniel F. Dickinson on September 20, 2020