Alpine Linux intro

In my adventures in selfhosting, I've noticed I never install anything (save firewall and Docker) on the host OS and run everything inside containers. This may be out of paranoia - more packages/dependencies, more chance of system breaking / update failure.

I've run Debian as the server OS for the longest time (admittedly a popular, and "everything just works" OS).. But this reflection calls for a reconsideration of the host OS. Enter Alpine Linux; small, lean, minimal. Even boots in seconds (on a PI).

Although, the main factor behind this 'distrohop' is Podman. Looking to try out Podman (tempted by it's rootless feature), I was surprised how ancient the version in Debian is, missing important practical features.. Maybe Podman is not as widespread as I anticipated. Anyway..

One thing I'm fond of in the installer (which is a text based wizard like script), is it's simple sensible default partitioning option. No need to concern with part tools, complex layout selections if you don't want to.

A distinct feature (apart from it's apk package manager) is OpenRC inplace of systemd. Although the wiki is more extensive, look at the docs for our lean system maintenance.

This Youtube video has a quick walkthrough of it's important parts.

mDNS

One of the first things to do in a local selfhost server is to assign a .local hostname (so it could be easily accessed from within the network). Once you've made sure you've set a .local suffix'd hostname, see here:

# Install, enable and start avahi with:
doas apk add avahi
doas rc-update add avahi-daemon
doas rc-service avahi-daemon start