#+date: <2022-10-22 Sat 00:00:00> #+title: Alpine Linux Essentials: Installing and Setting Up a Secure Minimal Server #+description: Detailed procedure for deploying Alpine Linux to achieve a secure, lightweight server environment optimized for web hosting and containerization. #+slug: alpine-linux #+filetags: :alpine:linux:server: * Alpine Linux [[https://alpinelinux.org][Alpine Linux]] is a very small distro, built on musl libc and busybox. It uses ash as the default shell, OpenRC as the init system, and apk as the package manager. According to their website, an Alpine container "requires no more than 8 MB and a minimal installation to disk requires around 130 MB of storage." An actual bare metal machine is recommended to have 100 MB of RAM and 0-700 MB of storage space. Historically, I've used Ubuntu's minimal installation image as my server OS for the last five years. Ubuntu worked well and helped as my original server contained an nVidia GPU and no onboard graphics, so quite a few distros won't boot or install without a lot of tinkering. Alpine has given me a huge increase in performance across my Docker apps and Nginx websites. CPU load for the new server I'm using to test Alpine hovers around 0-5% on average with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-6100 CPU @ 3.70GHz. The only services I haven't moved over to Alpine are Plex Media Server and Syncthing, which may increase CPU load quite a bit depending on how many streams are running. ** Installation In terms of installation, Alpine has an incredibly useful [[https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation][wiki]] that will guide a user throughout the installation and post-installation processes, as well as various other articles and guides. To install Alpine, find an appropriate [[https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/][image to download]] and flash it to a USB using software such as Rufus or Etcher. I opted to use the Standard image for my x86_{64} architecture. Once the USB is ready, plug it into the machine and reboot. Note that you may have to use a key such as =Esc= or =F1-12= to access the boot menu. The Alpine Linux terminal will load quickly and for a login. To log in to the installation image, use the =root= account; there is no password. Once logged-in, execute the setup command: #+begin_src sh setup-alpine #+end_src The setup script will ask a series of questions to configure the system. Be sure to answer carefully or else you may have to re-configure the system after boot. - Keyboard Layout (Local keyboard language and usage mode, e.g., us and variant of us-nodeadkeys.) - Hostname (The name for the computer.) - Network (For example, automatic IP address discovery with the "DHCP" protocol.) - DNS Servers (Domain Name Servers to query. For privacy reasons, it is NOT recommended to route every local request to servers like Google's 8.8.8.8.) - Timezone - Proxy (Proxy server to use for accessing the web. Use "none" for direct connections to the internet.) - Mirror (From where to download packages. Choose the organization you trust giving your usage patterns to.) - SSH (Secure SHell remote access server. "Openssh" is part of the default install image. Use "none" to disable remote login, e.g. on laptops.) - NTP (Network Time Protocol client used for keeping the system clock in sync with a time-server. Package "chrony" is part of the default install image.) - Disk Mode (Select between diskless (disk="none"), "data" or "sys", as described above.) Once the setup script is finished, be sure to reboot the machine and remove the USB device. #+begin_src sh reboot #+end_src ** Post-Installation There are many things you can do once your Alpine Linux system is up and running, and it largely depends on what you'll use the machine for. I'm going to walk through my personal post-installation setup for my web server. 1. Upgrade the System First, login as =root= in order to update and upgrade the system: #+begin_src sh apk -U upgrade #+end_src 2. Adding a User I needed to add a user so that I don't need to log in as root. Note that if you're used to using the =sudo= command, you will now need to use the =doas= command on Alpine Linux. #+begin_src sh apk add doas adduser adduser wheel #+end_src You can now log out and log back in using the newly-created user: #+begin_src sh exit #+end_src 3. Enable Community Packages In order to install more common packages that aren't found in the =main= repository, you will need to enable the =community= repository: #+begin_src sh doas nano /etc/apk/repositories #+end_src Uncomment the community line for whichever version of Alpine you're running: #+begin_src sh /media/usb/apks http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.16/main http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.16/community #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing #+end_src 4. Install Required Packages Now that the community packages are available, you can install any packages you need. In my case, I installed the web server packages I need for my services: #+begin_src sh doas apk add nano nginx docker docker-compose ufw #+end_src 5. SSH If you didn't install OpenSSH as part of the installation, you can do so now: #+begin_src sh doas apk add openssh #+end_src Next, either create a new key or copy your SSH key to the server from your current machines: #+begin_src sh # Create a new key ssh-keygen #+end_src If you need to copy an existing SSH key from a current machine: #+begin_src sh # Copy key from existing machines ssh-copy-id @ #+end_src 6. Firewall Lastly, I installed =ufw= above as my firewall. To set up, default to deny incoming and allow outgoing connections. Then selectively allow other ports or apps as needed. #+begin_src sh doas ufw default deny incoming doas ufw default allow outgoing doas ufw allow SSH doas ufw allow "WWW Full" doas ufw allow 9418 # Git server port #+end_src 7. Change Hostname If you don't like the hostname set during installation, you just need to edit two files. First, edit the simple hostname file: #+begin_src sh doas nano /etc/hostname #+end_src #+begin_src sh #+end_src Next, edit the =hosts= file: #+begin_src sh doas nano /etc/hosts #+end_src #+begin_src sh 127.0.0.1 .local localhost.local localhost ::1 .local #+end_src * Nginx Web Server To set up my web server, I simply created the =www= user and created the necessary files. #+begin_src sh doas adduser -D -g 'www' www mkdir /www doas mkdir /www doas chown -R www:www /var/lib/nginx/ doas chown -R www:www /www #+end_src If you're running a simple webroot, you can alter the main =nginx.conf= file. Otherwise, you can drop configuration files in the following directory. You don't need to enable or symlink the configuration file like you do in other systems. #+begin_src sh doas nano /etc/nginx/http.d/example_website.conf #+end_src Once the configuration is set and pointed at the =/www= directory to serve files, enable the Nginx service: #+begin_src sh # Note that 'default' must be included or Nginx will not start on boot doas rc-update add nginx default #+end_src * Docker Containers Docker works exactly the same as other systems. Either execute a =docker run= command or create a =docker-compose.yml= file and do =docker-compose up -d=. * Git Server I went in-depth on how to self-host a git server in another post: [[../git-server/][Self-Hosting a Personal Git Server]]. However, there are a few differences with Alpine. First note that in order to change the =git= user's shell, you must do a few things a little different: #+begin_src sh doas apk add libuser doas touch /etc/login.defs doas mkdir /etc/default doas touch /etc/default/useradd doas lchsh git #+end_src * Thoughts on Alpine So far, I love Alpine Linux. I have no complaints about anything at this point, but I'm not completely finished with the migration yet. Once I'm able to upgrade my hardware to a rack-mounted server, I will migrate Plex and Syncthing over to Alpine as well - possibly putting Plex into a container or VM. The performance is stellar, the =apk= package manager is seamless, and system administration tasks are effortless. My only regret is that I didn't install Alpine sooner.