iSH Alpine Release Issues

iSH Alpine Release Issues

Here I try to gather iSH status for the various Alpine releases, this is not intended to cover every Alpine packet, only core components and commonly(?) used tools.

Alpine 3.20

• End of Support 2026-04-01
• Official Alpine release

Issues

• coreutils should not be installed, various things fail, for example, all /dev files are messed up
• rust fails since 3.17
• In addition those listed for 3.19

- vim

Intermittent Crashes:

• While editing text: displays "RT32", aborts, returns execution to iSH command line without clearing screen.
• When loading a file: displays "RT32", file doesn't load, returns execution to iSH command line.

Same crashes happened in Alpine 3.19 and 3.18

Alpine 3.19

• End of Support 2025-11-01
• TestFlight (as of 2024-08-29)

Issues

• rust fails since 3.17

- sudo

Causes insta-crach, even doing sudo ls as root triggers this.

Workaround

Manually install sudo from 3.18 - this can be done even if sudo has already been installed.

apk add sudo=1.9.13_p3-r2 \
    --repository=https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.18/community

By specifying the intended version during apk add, if the repository URL is wrong, or if the package was in main instead of community etc, apk won't default to install the Alpine 3.19 sudo it is aware of. Instead, it fails with ERROR: unable to select packages: This also has the benefit of version locking sudo, to prevent any new 3.19 sudo version from replacing it as result of a future apk upgrade

- procps

causes Alpines uptime to segfault, otherwise, I have not found any issues.

I (discord jaclu) have written a replacement uptime that can be used in combination with procps.

- nodejs

Causes Illegal instruction

Workaround

Install older 3.18 nodejs and since it can't use the current icu libs also some additional dependencies before installing nodejs.

Since icu packages are in main and nodejs is in community, we need to refer to both extra repos

apk add icu-libs=73.2-r2 icu-data-en=73.2-r2 nodejs-current=20.8.1-r0 \
    --repository=https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.18/community \
    --repository=https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.18/main

Potential Issues

Problems that can't be verified by an obvious test procedure

- sqlite

sqlite seems to have some stability issues, it doesn't fail directly, but when using sqlite in batch jobs with long-term constant adding or querying of records I (jaclu) noticed that iSH had a much higher risk of random death than previously. Sqlite from Alpine 3.18 seemed to solve that issue for me.

apk add sqlite=3.41.2-r3 sqlite-libs=3.41.2-r3 \
    --repository=https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.18/main

Alpine 3.18

• End of Support 2025-05-01

No issues with core functionalities, recommended for general usage

Issues

• Neovim:

On running built-in commands like Lexplore,checkhealth ish completely without any messages in screen freezes requiring restarting the app

• rust (?)
• go (?)

Alpine 3.14

• End of Support 2023-05-01
• AppStore v1.3.2

Issues

• Has passed its End Of Life (EOL) thus security updates can not be expected