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

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 10:45 AM, David Huff <dhuff at redhat.com> wrote:
> On 01/20/2010 08:50 AM, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
>> LET'S CREATE FEDORA EC2 IMAGES THAT DON'T SUCK.
[snip]
>> 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".

Yep, this is relatively straight-forward and we have all the tools
that are really needed to create the filesystem image that runs
between python-imgcreate/livecd-creator and the things built on top of
it.  (Note: I'd really like the whole AOS/JEOS nomenclature to go
away; it's an image just like any other image.  Maybe one of them is
minimal, maybe another is not.  There's nothing particularly
"appliance" about it)

> 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?

This is basically what I gather

> 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?

The ramdisk _should_ just be able to be a standard Fedora ramdisk.  If
not, we have a problem.  The whole custom fstab and module preloading
blah blah blah is a side-effect of the pretty poor way the stock
Amazon images are constructed without partitioning, etc.  All of our
standard system tools can bring up Xen guests and once it's booted, it
should look like a regular system.

> 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.

Once we're just using standard things built by our standard tools,
this is straight-forward enough to automate :-)

>> 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

I can also help testing and have real systems where I'm using the
ancient Fedora stuff in production on EC2 that I'd be happy to have
running on a newer Fedora :)


- Jeremy