"What would you say ya *do* here?"

[Mike McGrath]

On Wed, 20 Jan 2010, David Huff wrote:

> On 01/20/2010 08:50 AM, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
> > LET'S CREATE FEDORA EC2 IMAGES THAT DON'T SUCK.
> >
> > :)
> >
> > Right now we face a dilemma:
> >
> >     * The latest Fedora kernel available on Amazon EC2 is Fedora 8;
> >     * Various people are creating "Fedora images" based on that AKI;
> >     * Confusion results, e.g.:
> > http://stackoverflow.com/questions/448794/how-does-an-amazon-ec2-instance-select-its-kernel
> >     * Which (a) doesn't work and (b) gives Fedora a bad name in the process.
> >
> > We have an opportunity to fix this.  Justin Forbes has been working with
> > some folks at Amazon to make this better, and it looks like we'll have an
> > "official" account that will allow us to do something clever, like put a
> > Gold Star next to "official" Fedora EC2 images.
> >
> > Once we actually get them up and running, of course.  Which, painted in
> > broad strokes, maybe looks something like this:
> >
> > 1. Getting a basic image uploaded and working for anybody (Justin is on
> > this, but maybe could use some help?);
>
> So there are really several parts here....
>
> a. create ami: Amazon Machine Image -> pre installed fedora image.  This
> is the easy part.  There are several tools for building pre-installed
> images form a ks file.  I have been working with the SPIN sig to define
> a minimal ks file (AOS) that describes minimal Fedora Image with dhcp,
> yum, selinux, that would work here.  We are also currently working to
> include a fedora-mini.ks file that can me extended for other "SPINS".
>
> b. create aki, Amazon Machine Image, In the past I have just copied the
> vmlinuz file form a running image.  Is there a better more reliable way
> to do this?
>
> c. create ari, Amazon Ramdisk Image. this needs a custom fstab per
> machine type, m1.small(32bit) vs. m1.large (64bit) etc, and needs the
> xen modules preloaded. Is there a good way to automate this?
>
> d. edit image attributes of all of the above to 1)link ramdisk and
> kernel to ami, and 2)share with the world
>
> I would be willing to help out here a much as possible however we need
> suggestions of good ways of automating the above.
>
> > 2. Getting a basic image uploaded and working for everybody (which means
> > coordinating a testing account for Fedora people to use free-of-charge,
> > which we have funding for, and then finding actual people to test);
>
> I can help test if needed
>
> >
> > 3. Getting that basic image created as part of the Fedora release process
> > (which was discussed at FUDCon, but I don't know if any of those
> > conversations continued);
>
> This is just a matter of getting the stuff I described above into the
> Fedora release process which I am not real familiar with.  I have some
> suggestions here, related to how we build the ovirt node, but will wait
> to see if others have better ideas first.
>

Lets start with the first thing that's blocked.  How far can we get with
the above list today before the first "I don't know how to.." gets hit?

	-Mike