[ec2-beta] Ubuntu Image Differences

[Chuck Short]

Hi,

We plan to have a Hardy LTS image soon for Amazon EC2. This is probably 
going to happen sometime after the next beta is released.

If you have any questions please let me know.

Thanks
chuck

Ramprasad Prabhakar wrote:
> Eric
>
> Thanks for the detailed explanation.
>
> As someone who might be interested in moving to EC2 on an enterprise  
> level, Fedora 8 did not gel well, considering the EOL.
>
> I was hoping that the official AMI would be the LTS version (so I dont  
> have to worry about support for my AWS instances for few years). In  
> such a scenario, what distribution (alestic vs official/LTS vs  
> Intrepid) would you suggest ?
>
> - Ram
> On Feb 6, 2009, at 9:50 PM, Eric Hammond wrote:
>
>   
>> Keith:
>>
>> I will eventually publish a list of all of the specific differences
>> between the AMIs on http://alestic.com and the official Ubuntu AMIs,  
>> but
>> the official beta is still in flux, in some ways moving closer to  
>> what I
>> publish and some ways taking a different approach.
>>
>> To me the biggest difference is that the official Ubuntu AMIs will  
>> have
>> the word "official" in front of them :)  I believe this is a good  
>> thing
>> which will increase the trust level and help promote the use of Ubuntu
>> on EC2.
>>
>> From a technical perspective, the most important improvement in the  
>> beta
>> is that it defaults to a more modern and appropriate kernel version
>> (which is part of this beta).  Before this, we were only able to run
>> against the kernels published by Amazon, but Canonical has worked  
>> out a
>> relationship which lets them build custom Ubuntu kernels for EC2 (and
>> has put in the hard work to build them).
>>
>> Insofar as I continue publishing community AMIs after the official
>> public release, I expect to use the new official kernels with the
>> unofficial AMIs.
>>
>> Other things you might want to know if you've been using the Ubuntu
>> images on http://alestic.com and want to test the official beta images
>> include:
>>
>> - beta1 does not have the EC2 AMI tools installed, but beta2 will.
>>
>> - beta1 has a manual tasksel prompt on first ssh, but beta2 will not.
>>
>> - beta1 lets you ssh in as root, but beta2 will restrict it to the
>> "ubuntu" user by default (with appropriate sudo privs) following the
>> Ubuntu security conventions.
>>
>> - The user-data startup script does not work in beta1 but will in  
>> beta2.
>>
>> - There are a few minor package differences between the AMIs on
>> http://alestic.com and the official beta AMIs, but these are again a  
>> bit
>> in flux and you can easily install any you find to be missing.
>>
>> - The beta only supports Intrepid server.
>>
>> I expect to eventually phase out support for many of the community  
>> AMIs
>> I build in favor of the official Ubuntu images, though this could  
>> take a
>> long time as I'm currently fond of Hardy LTS which is not in the
>> official beta.
>>
>> Please do try out the official beta images and provide feedback.
>> Canonical has generously included me in the early process and I feel
>> like I've been able to help a bit, but the more eyes, environments,  
>> and
>> uses the better.
>>
>> --
>> Eric Hammond
>> ehammond at thinksome.com
>>
>>
>>
>> Keith Cerny wrote:
>>     
>>> Forgive me if this question has already been asked as I am a new  
>>> member
>>> of the beta list.
>>>
>>> We currently use the Ubuntu images created by Eric Hammond
>>> (http://alestic.com) for our EC2 Ubuntu servers. How will the images
>>> provided through this beta program differ from those created by  
>>> Alestic?
>>> Are there any specific gotchas or shortcomings with using the  
>>> existing
>>> Alestic images that the beta program is looking to address?
>>>
>>> We will spin up a beta image and try our configuration on it and  
>>> let you
>>> know if it works well.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Keith
>>>
>>>       
>> -- 
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>> Ec2-beta at lists.ubuntu.com
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>>     
>
>
>