[ec2-beta] ec2-attach-volume?

[Michael Greenly]

+1 vote for not installed by default but available as an easy package
installation.  I agree with what Eric's saying here.  It's added size and
slower starts to provide a tool that will quite often not be used.


On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Eric Hammond <ehammond at thinksome.com>wrote:

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