Discovery API Icon
Discovery API
Security Advisory Icon
Security Advisory
Alpaquita Linux23Virtualization
Installing in Virtualized Environments
Download this page as PDF

Alpaquita Linux: Installing in virtualized environments

1. Overview

To install Alpaquita Linux in a virtualized environment you can just download the latest ISO and use it to install a new VM in your favorite virtualization product. The advantage of this approach is that you can customize the new VM to your needs. The disadvantage is that you have to actually click through the installation, and while we tried to make the installation experience as smooth as possible, it is still a bit of a chore.

If you just need to do a quick test, you can instead use a preinstalled Alpaquita Linux image that you can start in your virtualization software right away. BellSoft provides both OVA files and QCOW2 disk images.

2. Virtualization products

QEMU

QEMU takes tons of different command line options that you can read about in the manual and choose what you need. But the bare minimum that can get you started is to specify the disk image to use, request the KVM acceleration, and to specify the amount of RAM you want.

Download either the GLIBC Alpaquita QCOW2 file or the MUSL Alpaquita QCOW2 file and use the following command example to start Alpaquita Linux in QEMU.

qemu-system-x86_64 -machine accel=kvm -hda alpaquita-stream-latest-musl-x86_64.qcow2 -m 1024
Note:
 Unlike OVA files, the downloaded image is used as the disk image for your VM, not as a template. Therefore, you might want to keep a copy of the originally downloaded .xz compressed image in some other location.

VirtualBox

To create an Alpaquita Linux VM in VirtualBox, download either the GLIBC Alpaquita OVA file or the MUSL Alpaquita OVA file.

  1. Start the VirtualBox and click the Import button, or go to the File menu and select Import Appliance.

  2. In the Import Virtual Appliance wizard, click the folder icon and select the Alpaquita OVA file you have downloaded. Then click Next.

  3. On the Appliance settings page of the import wizard you can change the name of your new virtual machine.

    Scroll down the list of settings and assign more CPUs and RAM to your virtual machine if necessary. Keep the defaut values of other settings.

  4. Click Finish.

  5. Open the Settings dialog box for your new VM and go to the System tab (as a shortcut you can just click System in the VM pane).

  6. On the System tab select the Enable Hardware Clock in UTC Time option.

  7. Change the graphics controller type to VMSVGA to get rid of a warning icon at the bottom of the Settings dialog box.

    Note:
    		 This change is required only if you want to run KDE in this VM.

    You can make any additional changes to the VM configuration that you need, such as add more network adapters, set up port forwarding, or configure a serial port.

  8. Click OK to save the changes and close the Settings dialog box.

  9. Start your new VM by clicking the Start button.

Note:
 Use the small down arrow at the edge of the Start button to access additional start options. For example, if you choose the Detachable Start option, you can later close the VM window but leave the VM running in the background.

After a few seconds after clicking Start, you can log in to your new VM with the username alpaquita and password alpaquita, and do the necessary setup and configuration inside your new VM.

VMWare

Another virtualization solution you can use is one of the VMWare products. The walkthrough below uses VMware Workstation Player that is free for non-commercial use.

To create an Alpaquita Linux VM in the VMWare Workstation Player, download either the GLIBC Alpaquita OVA file or the MUSL Alpaquita OVA file.

  1. Start the VMware Workstation Player and click Open a Virtual Machine to import the OVA template.

    Note:
    		 The VMWare actually imports a new VM based on the OVA template, not opens the OVA in place.

  2. Select the OVA file, change the VM name if you want and click Import.

    You might see the following warning if the imported OVA only asks for one CPU. Click Retry to proceed with the import.

  3. Once the import is finished you can edit the new VM settings or just start it right away by clicking Power On.

After a few seconds you can log in to your new VM with the username alpaquita and password alpaquita, and do the necessary setup and configuration inside your VM.

ON THIS PAGE