[ec2-beta] some feedback on the i386 image

[Alex Polvi]

Hello!

Hope this email finds you well. Just got a chance to play with the
beta (ami-814aaee8), and wanted to provide some feedback. While I've
launched hundreds of instances, they have only been with the alestic
ubuntu images ... so some of the stuff I think is weird might be
because of my narrow view on AMIs. My interest in the "official"
ubuntu images is because I trust Canonical. I would prefer to get an
image from Canonical, than I would from a random provider (i.e.
alestic)

1) The initial login experience is odd. I'm after root on the box, not
to be forced to login with the ubuntu user.
2) I would much prefer a bare-bones, ec2 tailored image, instead of an
install dialog.
3) The first apt-get update threw warnings:

root at ubuntu:~# apt-get update
...
Fetched 506kB in 2s (252kB/s)
Reading package lists... Done
W: Duplicate sources.list entry http://archive.ubuntu.com
intrepid-updates/main Packages
(/var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_intrepid-updates_main_binary-i386_Packages)
W: Duplicate sources.list entry http://archive.ubuntu.com
intrepid-updates/restricted Packages
(/var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_intrepid-updates_restricted_binary-i386_Packages)
W: Duplicate sources.list entry http://archive.ubuntu.com
intrepid-updates/universe Packages
(/var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_intrepid-updates_universe_binary-i386_Packages)
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

The culprit seems to be the bundled sources.list:

root at ubuntu:~# uniq -c /etc/apt/sources.list
      1 deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu intrepid main restricted universe
-->  2 deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu intrepid-updates main
restricted universe
      1 deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu intrepid-security main
restricted universe
      1 deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-ec2/ubuntu intrepid main
restricted universe

Also, would be great if you could provide an EC2 local mirror in the
default sources.list (bandwidth is free within EC2). I would be happy
to help with this!

4) I've found the included ec2-bundling tools on the alestic images
very helpful (ec2-bundle-vol, ec2-upload-bundle, etc), although I have
yet to miss them on this beta image.
5) In fact, it would be really awesome if the
ec2-api-tools/ec2-bundle-tools were apt-get'able -
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=351

One last thing, why are the host keys regenerated in firstboot.sh? The
ec2-get-console-output command was created just so we could check the
host keys before logging in:
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/DeveloperGuide/index.html?CLTRG-get-console-output.html
-- I probably overlooked something silly, but I wanted to point it out
just in-case.

Hope this helps! Thanks again for making an awesome product.

Regards,

-Alex