Docker-CE: Creating a small Linux as base OS for running a Docker cluster

After some first steps with docker i wanted to run more than one docker node. The problem is, that i have very limited resources on my laptop.

• CoreOS (see here)
  consumes about 600MB diskspace
• UbuntuCore (see here)
  consumes about 1.9GB diskspace

To setup CoreOS you have to learn ignition - otherwise every change is lost after a reboot. For UbuntuCore you have to use an UbuntuOne account to get it running.

I heard, that Alpine Linux is an OS with a very small footprint, so i downloaded the "virtual" image and

 

mounted it in my virtualbox:

After a short startup i got the following:

This is completely different to all other installation procedures i know. No configuration dialog just a

localhost login:

You have to enter "root" and without a password you get a banner with one important information:

You can setup the system with the command: setup-alpine

This will guide you through a 11 step setup (read the manual). To get a installation with persistent homes, etc. you have to choose the "sys" mode.

And then after a reboot, i have a Linux VM with 170MB.
For my next steps (installing docker, cloning some nodes) this should be the right choice.

[Installing docker is quite easy: remove the # before "edge/community" in /etc/apk/repositories and the run "apk update" and "apk add docker".]



Related posts:

• Docker on Ubuntu 
• Running through a tutorial / investigating the processes
• Creating a small linux for my docker cluster (Alpine Linux) 
• How to build a docker swarm 
• Creating a minimal webserver container and deploying it to docker swarm
• Setting up a tomcat with docker  
• Running a swarm with multiple managers 
• Mysql inside a docker container - persistency with docker volumes 
• How to change the configuration of a standard docker container(e.g. changing tomcats memory settings)