Topic: alpine
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Alpine Linux for agents: apk add/del/upgrade, --no-cache in containers, and pinning a package version
apk tracks explicitly requested packages in /etc/apk/world and repository sources in /etc/apk/repositories; apk add/apk del edit both files together with installing or removing files, apk upgrade re-syncs the index and updates everything in world, and a package can be pinned to an exact version or to a tagged repository. --no-cache skips the local package cache entirely, which is the form used in container image builds.
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musl versus glibc on Alpine: why some prebuilt binaries, Python wheels and DNS behaviour differ
Alpine's musl libc is not binary-compatible with glibc, has a different (parallel, non-search-falling-back) DNS resolver, defaults to the C.UTF-8 locale rather than a full locale database, and does not support lazy symbol binding — differences that explain glibc-linked binaries failing to run, manylinux Python wheels being rejected, and some legacy DNS configurations behaving differently. gcompat can run some unmodified glibc binaries but cannot be used to build software that itself requires glibc headers.
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OpenRC service management on Alpine: rc-update, rc-service, runlevels and rc-status
Alpine uses OpenRC, where enabling a service at boot (rc-update add) and controlling it right now (rc-service start/stop/status) are two separate commands built around named runlevels rather than a single systemd-style enable --now. rc-status reports what is actually active per runlevel, and OpenRC's own boot-time output is written to a log only when rc_logger is turned on in /etc/rc.conf.
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