Installing Nova Under Alpine on a PC

If you have a generic PC running Ubuntu or another heavyweight Linux distro, you may decide to just run with that as your base operating system. But if you have the ability to re-image your device and want a lightweight option, we would recommend using Alpine. This article describes how to take a PC and install first Alpine and then Nova.

Prerequisites

You will need the following:

• The latest Standard x86_64 Alpine iso file from the Alpine website.
• The latest Nova Installation Utility for the amd64 platform.
• The selected Nova Generic PC image from the Downloads page.
• A disk imaging tool such as Rufus.
• A terminal program capable of SSH and ideally SCP, such as SmarTTY.
• A USB memory stick of at least 1GB in size.
• Access to your PC via HDMI and a USB keyboard.
• An Ethernet connection that can reach the Internet.

Installing Alpine

To install Alpine on the PC:

• Using your disk imaging tool and the Alpine iso file, create a bootable Alpine image.
• Power on your PC and use the keyboard to enter the Bios setup mode.
• Configure the Bios to boot from USB, insert the USB memory stick, and reboot.
• Your screen will show a logon prompt: Logon as root with no password.
• Run setup-alpine and answer the prompts.
• You can use defaults for most options, but you should ideally create a non-root user.
• When configuring the disk, the easiest option is to use the PC’s primary disk in sys mode.
• When the Alpine setup has completed, remove the USB stick and power off.
• Power on your PC and use the keyboard to enter the Bios setup mode.
• Configure the Bios to disable booting from USB.
• Reboot the PC and allow Alpine to start.
• Note from the boot output the IP address allocated to the primary NIC.

Installing Nova

To install Nova on top of Alpine:

• For this example, we’ll assume your image file is for version R4-0048.
• Using your terminal program, SSH into the PC at the noted IP using your non-root account.
• Using an SCP client, copy the NovaInstall and nif files into your home directory.
• If you are using SmarTTY, the SCP menu can be used to access the built-in SCP client.
• From your SSH session, run chmod +x NovaInstall
• Run doas apk add libc6-compat libstdc++
• Run doas ./NovaInstall --kiosk RaspberryPi-R4-0048.nif
• Omit the --kiosk switch to skip running the Chromium browser on the device.
• The installation program will install Nova together with the necessary packages.
• When the program has completed, run doas reboot to restart your device.
• Open a web browser on another device and navigate to the noted IP.
• Be patient, as first time execution may take a few minutes!

Next Steps

Refer to the articles on:

• First Time Log On;
• Avoiding Certificate Errors; and
• Licensing Your Installation.