Alpine Linux on proot-distro

Quick setup guide for running Alpine Linux inside proot (on Termux) with a regular sudo user.

1. Install proot-distro and Alpine

Run in your host shell (Termux):

apt update -y && apt upgrade -y
apt install proot-distro
proot-distro install alpine

2. Log in as root

proot-distro login alpine

3. Install sudo and bash

Alpine ships with ash by default, so install bash along with sudo:

apk update
apk add sudo bash

4. Create a user

Replace yourusername with your own name:

adduser -s /bin/bash yourusername

You will be prompted to set and confirm a password. Other fields can be skipped by pressing Enter.

5. Give the user sudo access

Add the user to the wheel group and enable sudo for that group:

addgroup yourusername wheel
echo '%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL' >> /etc/sudoers

6. Log in as your user

Exit the root session (exit), then from the host shell:

proot-distro login alpine --user yourusername

Test sudo:

sudo whoami   # should print: root

Notes

• Run sudo apk update && sudo apk upgrade occasionally to keep packages up to date.
• Alpine uses apk instead of apt/dnf/pacman, and musl instead of glibc, so some prebuilt binaries may not run.
• This is the user dir you can access from host shell (Termux): $PREFIX/var/lib/proot-distro/containers/alpine/rootfs/home/yourusername