Hello,

I'm trying to install Alpine on a dual boot system, but getting stuck
targeting the partition instead of the whole disk.

I've created a FAT32 partition I want to use, which is at /dev/sda3. I
assume during the install process I'll format this to Ext4. I need to
keep /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 untouched.

I found this comment:

> Prepare partitions as you like, format them, mount rootfs somewhere,
> run setup-disk (instead of setup-alpine) with path of the rootfs mount
> point instead of dev.
https://superuser.com/questions/1322666/install-alpine-linux-in-a-specific-partition#comment1971732_1322666

When I attempt to mount with

    # mount -t rootfs /dev/sda3 /mnt

I get a "no such device" failure.

My guess is that I need to format the FAT32 partition as Ext4 before
mounting? Or format as rootfs? Would this be achieved with setup-
partition? Any guidance would be much appreciated.

(I did manage to just mount as FAT32 and run setup-disk, but the
installs had a *lot* of permission errors and I'm sure did not create a
usable install.)

n.b. I've found a guide to dual booting on the wiki:
     https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installing_Alpine_on_HDD_dualbooting
     ...but it says "The information on this page is outdated and does
     not work with the recent versions of Alpine Linux"

Thanks,
Paul

On Mon, 14 Oct 2019, at 1:01 AM, Paul W. Rankin wrote:
>
> I'm trying to install Alpine on a dual boot system, but getting stuck
> targeting the partition instead of the whole disk.
>
> I've created a FAT32 partition I want to use, which is at /dev/sda3. I
> assume during the install process I'll format this to Ext4. I need to
> keep /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 untouched.

I managed to bumble my way through to installing Alpine on /dev/sda3 by:

- running setup-alpine and entering "none" on the drive choice
- running apk add e2fsprogs
- running mkfs.ext4 on /dev/sda3
- mounting /dev/sda3 at /mnt
- running setup-disk /mnt

The only thing now is making this partition bootable (on a Mac system
with rEFInd)....