[ec2-beta] the ubuntu users home directory

[Michael Greenly]

Deviations from almost all other AMIs on Amazon.

If you're going to do something different it should be because there's an
advantage.  Not just because it's different.  I don't care for the sudo
through ubuntu configuration but that's a different argument. Instead in
this thread I'm trying to make two suggestions that will make it easier to
live with.

Using a reserved UID for the ubuntu user and moving it's home directory to
/ubuntu.  Both have practical advantages.

The UID change will make it less likely that some one migrating an existing
application/server to the distribution will have a collision to deal with in
UID space and that any scripts or applications that make (stupid) default
assumptions about /home are not wrong.

> To which the answer seems to be "That means you're no longer using
> Ubuntu the way it was intended. So why use Ubuntu in the first place?"

Only Ubuntu's users and contributors can determine how it's intended to be
used and no one should be trying to make that judgement for some one else.
Least of all you for me!

Neither of these are an issue for me.  I've already worked around them.
But... that's my point though I had to work around problems.  I'm offering
solutions that would of allowed me to avoid those obstacles.  Honestly how
many instances are running these AMIs for production purposes?  I can't
imagine all that many?.  It takes time to migrate production servers and
these AMIs have not been out all that long.  I'd venture a guess that the
majority of the Ubuntu based instances out there are still running Eric's
excellent alestic AMIs.

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 2:55 AM, Jim Cheetham <jim at inode.co.nz> wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Michael Greenly <mgreenly at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > One of the obvious deviations in the Ubuntu EC2 beta AMIs is the use of
> sudo
> > and the 'ubuntu' user.
>
> Deviation from what? From Ubuntu itself? Obviously a post-installed
> machine image has to have _some_ preconfigured user; what's
> specifically wrong with making that 'ubuntu'? You can change it if you
> like, and then roll your own AMI.
>
> > Also because home is attached to the root file system by default, which
> is
> > limited to 10GB, it pretty much guarantees that any application with user
> > accounts will require /home to be moved to an EBS volume.  It's the
> nature
> > of EC2.  This becomes a tiny bit more complicated when the only login
> > account has it's home directory is inside /home.
>
> Well, the users don't have to have home directories in /home, you can
> put them anywhere you want. But if your EBS volumes fail to mount for
> some reason, you're going to need at least one account to connect to
> the machine with in order to investigate and fix, and that user better
> have its own home directory somewhere in the AMI volatile filesystems
> ...
>
> Of course you'll say "root! It has its home directory in /, why not use
> that!"
>
> To which the answer seems to be "That means you're no longer using
> Ubuntu the way it was intended. So why use Ubuntu in the first place?"
>
> -jim
>



-- 
Michael Greenly
http://blog.michaelgreenly.com
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