The radicale documentation does cover the installation of itself really well, but Alpine Linux being quite a different OS, we have to make sure to take care of a few things.

I’m running the following configuration. - Alpine Linux v3.8 - Radicale v2.1.0 stable

So, let’s get started.

Step 1: Python installation

    apk update
    apk add python3

and that’s it. That should install python3 on your system.

Step 2: Installing Radicale

For this step, we just follow the instructions from the website and get it from pip.

    python3 -m pip install --upgrade radicale

For more information on getting the latest version, check https://radicale.org/download/ Now, I’m guessing you’re running this in a VM since you’re using Alpine Linux so there’s no point really to running this to check whether it runs under localhost. So let’s get it setup under an IP Address so we can access it remotely.

Step 3: Radicale Config File

Now, radicale allows us to set it up either by passing arguments in the command line or through a config file. Now, if you’re barbaric or using this only for the one time, I wouldn’t pass so many arguments.

If you wish to use a password, you will need htpasswd from apache-utils, use this line to install it.

    apk add apache2-utils

Now, I’m creating my users file in my root directory, I remember a few people saying this is a bad practice, but I ain’t got the time for users. So this will have to do.

    htpasswd -B -c /path/to/users user_name

this will create a new user, which we’ll use for radicale. Why do we use htpasswd? Well, it provides some management tools, and more importantly, encryption. Since we’ve used encryption, we need to teach radicale to read this gibberish, so install these dependencies.

    apk add build-base
    apk add python3-dev
    apk add libffi
    apk add libffi-dev
    python3 -m pip install --upgrade radicale[bcrypt]

Now, that we’re setup let us create the config file.

    [auth]
    type = htpasswd
    htpasswd_filename = /path/to/users
    #encryption method used in the htpasswd file
    htpasswd_encryption = bcrypt
    #Average delay after failed login attempts in seconds
    delay = 1

    [server]
    hosts = 0.0.0.0:5232
    max_connections = 20
    #100 Megabyte
    max_content_length = 100000000
    #30 seconds
    timeout = 30

    [storage]
    filesystem_folder = /path/to/storage

The authentication can be done with a plaintext file as well, you can refer the radicale tutorial on more information on how to do that, but I wouldn’t reccomend it. Now that we’ve created our config file, let us run radicale. I would reccomend backing up the config file for future use and ease of setup.

Step 4: Verify that Radicale is working

Run this command

    python3 -m radicale --config "/path/to/config/"

and use your browser to point to the address that you used. You should see a login page for radicale. If so, success, now let us set up the service to make sure it runs forever.

Step 5: Setup Radicale as a service

Since Alpine Linux does not ship with systemd, the method is different as from a regular linux distro. We have to use OpenRC. I used this blog to familiarise myself with the system

[https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-enable-and-start-services-on-alpine-linux/][OpenRC Services Guide - Cyberciti]

This is the service script. Put this into the /etc/init.d or whatever other folder you prefer.

    #!/sbin/openrc-run

    pidfile=/var/run/radicale.pid

    command=/usr/bin/radicale
    command_args="--config "/path/to/config""
    command_background=yes

    depend() {
        use net
        need localmount
    }

Then ensure that rights to run the program are given

    chmod +x /path/to/service/script

Now, add this script to the OpenRC Boot

    rc-update add /path/to/service/script default

Now, on a reboot of the system, the script should run by itself. You can also manually start/stop it by:

    rc-service /path/to/service/script start
    rc-service /path/to/service/script stop 

And you’re done. Enjoy your self-hosted contacts and calendar server. Email me at zuron7@rajamane.me if you spot any errors.

The End results was a server using 20 Megs of RAM at idle and around 250 MB of space. That’s one lightweight mountain.

TO DO

Some improvements that can be done that this tutorial does not cover as of yet.

1. Using TLS/SSL encryption with LetsEncrypt
2. Using the hook feature to write changes to a git repository
3. backups
4. user access rights

Lot of this stuff is covered on the official website, so look it up.

Thank you for reading! Keep Self-Hosting! Check out the self hosted community on reddit [https://reddit.com/r/selfhosted][Self Hosted Sub Reddit]

Updates:

1. I gave up on using radicale a couple months after this and moved over to a hosted instance of Nextcloud since I needed the file storage anyway, and the nice GUI doesn't hurt in terms of productivity.