[ec2] [launchpad-net] replace ec2-ami-tools with euca2ools in ec2 images?

Eric Hammond esh at ubuntu.com
Wed Sep 16 22:24:29 BST 2009


Scott Moser wrote:
> As far as I can tell, we have the following options:
> a.) drop ec2-ami-tools completely from the images
>   remember that a simple 'apt-get install ec2-ami-tools' will still get
>   them for you.

The Canonical Ubuntu AMIs are being published in an existing ecology of
images, tools, tutorials, users, startup scripts, companies, services,
and more.  Every change from what is normal in other images breaks the
experience of some percentage of users who switch to these AMIs.

For example, new users following one of the many tutorials on how to
bundle an instance will try ec2-bundle-vol and may not know what to do
when the command is not found.  Other folks may be using a software
infrastructure (RightScale?) which assumes that the AMI tools are
installed to complete a "rebundle" button push on a web interface.

The AMI tools are commonly used since rebundling is one of the primary
paths new users take when they set up an environment on EC2, so it's
convenient to have them installed.

A good number of the end users are new, not just to EC2, but also to
Ubuntu, and even to Linux.

> > b.) add euca2ools to the images.
> >   For those not aware, euca2ools provide an almost compatible
command line
> >   interface to that of the ec2-ami-tools and ec2-api-tools.

I have not used euca2ools so can't comment on how compatible they are.
I've defaulted to Amazon's official tools in part so that I can be more
sure that it's Amazon's fault if something is not working.

One of my wishes is to have AMI (and API) tools which are updated as
soon as possible after Amazon releases new features in EC2.  I don't
know how quickly euca2ools are updated (but then again the Amazon
packages aren't updated quickly in Ubuntu yet either).

Summary: I think AMI tools should be installed on the AMI.  I would lean
towards Amazon's tools, but if the "main" issue is important to Ubuntu,
it might be cool to help out an open source project by giving euca2ools
a lot more users who can test and report bugs.  It just increases risk a
bit in the short term.

If the euca2ools are installed, we should also install the (not yet
existing?) package which creates symlinks for the ec2-* command names
and we should make sure that an explicit install of the ec2-ami-tools
overrides these symlinks (removes that package?).

--
Eric Hammond



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