[ec2-beta] ec2-attach-volume?

[Eric Hammond]

There are also some good reasons *not* to install the ec2-api-tools by
default.

It looks to me like it will add over 150 MB to the disk footprint of the
AMI.  This will increase the load time of the image from S3, increasing
instance startup time on EC2.

In my experience and testing, the size of the image is the primary
factor in determining instance startup time (though Amazon's image
caching can also have an effect in some cases).

The API tools require Java, so that would need to be installed on the
image.  I'm not sure everybody will want the same version of Java
installed on their instances.

Based on the last time I tested them (months ago), the API tools require
Sun's version of Java.   In order for this to be installed, you must
accept Sun's license.  I was not comfortable doing that when building
public EC2 images as I would, in theory, be accepting the license for
every person who runs those images or be forced to have them accept the
license before running it.

Since we don't know many folks are going to want to use the API tools on
their EC2 instances (rare in my case), I think the above negatives
outweigh the benefits.

My belief is that the server image should be as minimal as possible, not
providing lots of extra tools just in case folks need them, especially
since many EC2 use cases require running lots of instances where startup
time matters.

I do vote for making it easy to install the API tools on an Ubuntu
instance for folks who want to do this.  It sounds like progress is
being made in that direction.

--
Eric Hammond
ehammond at thinksome.com



Chuck Short wrote:
> Yes there is a good case to install the ec2-api-tools by default. Amazon 
> has recently updated the license so we can distribute it the archive. I 
> have already packaged it for ubuntu and it will be included in the next 
> beta.
> 
> 
> chuck
> 
> Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
>> Eric Hammond wrote:
>>> The official Ubuntu beta2 images for EC2 have the EC2 AMI command line
>>> tools installed, but not the EC2 API command line tools.
>>>
>>> ec2-attach-volume is part of the API tools, so you would need to install
>>> them if you want to use this command on the EC2 instance.
>>>   
>> Is there a good case for having the API tools installed by default?
>>
>> Mark
> 
>