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Alpine Linux KVM Graphical Guest

Create guest in virt-manager. When the VM boots login as root (no password) Run setup-alpine and follow the prompts, the defaults are generally fine. Pick disk sda and sys as the install style. Once install is done, reboot (with reboot command). After rebooting log in as root with the password you set. Add a regular user:

adduser -g 'Wesley Moore' wmoore

Now you might like to ssh from the host as the newly user. ip addr will tell you the IP address of the VM:

ssh wmoore@192.168.122.157

Become root with su. Enable the community repo:

vi /etc/apk/repositories

Install X.org:

setup-xorg-base

Install window manager and terminal. Here I'll install Awesome, and xterm:

apk add awesome xterm

Log in as regular user (in the virt-manager guest view, not ssh) and create ~/.xinitrc:

xterm &
awesome

Start X

startx

And you should see the Awesome desktop.

Last modified: 08 September 2019