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. > 4. Providing proper tools for people to create their own images, since > creation of a custom "spin" is basically an essential activity in the > cloud. Im not going to touch this yet however I have some good ideas here as well. > It may be that some of this activity is going on already, and that's a > large part of what this SIG is about: to find those people and get them > talking in one place, away from the clutter of fedora-devel and other > lists. So if you're working on tools that will help with this goal, by > all means, speak up. > > And now, a couple of questions. > > * For Justin. How's your current image looking? Does it work well enough > for other folks to try it out? If not, what's the issue, and can anyone > help? > > * For everyone. Have you played with EC2 yet? If not, do you have a > side project that could benefit from its use, that furthers the goals of > Fedora / free software / etc., and are willing to test our images? If so, > let us know -- we've got an account for this purpose, and can send you the > info needed to get started. Even if we don't have the latest Fedora up > yet, there are plenty of images that you can play with to get a sense of > how EC2 works. Yes, and I would like to see the AOS/thincrust project be the base of these images. > * For everyone. Would an IRC meeting to talk through some of this stuff > be useful -- sort of a kickoff where everyone takes an hour out of their > life to think about all this -- or should we stick to the mailing list for > now? I could go either way here -D
