[ec2] [ec2ubuntu] Re: Call for testing: Lucid EBS Root Images

[Scott Moser]

On Sat, 6 Mar 2010, Christopher Meiklejohn wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 05, 2010 at 08:37:39PM -0500, Scott Moser wrote:
> > On Fri, 5 Mar 2010, Scott Moser wrote:
> >
> > > us-east-1 i386  ami-8bec03e2
> > > us-east-1 amd64 ami-99ec03f0
> > > eu-west-1 i386  ami-85b49ff1
> > > eu-west-1 amd64 ami-87b49ff3
> > > us-west-1 i386  ami-0971204c
> > > us-west-1 amd64 ami-15712050
> > >
> > >    Thanks in advance for any testing you can offer.  I've not done much
> > > more than sniff initial boot, and rely on [4] for the general procedure.
> >
> > In haste, I failed to add "launch" access to all.  Thats been fixed, sorry
> > for any inconvenience.
>
> Hey Scott,
>
> I've been playing around with these images this morning, and it seems
> like user-data is being run at bootup, but I can't seem to figure out
> how this is being done.

'cloud-init' [1] has replaced 'ec2-init' in lucid.  The intent of rename
(and fairly substantial overhaul) was to
 a.) move towards being "cloud agnostic"
 b.) allow the user to do more and "hook in" earlier in the boot process.

There is some documentation on what all can be done with this in the 'doc'
directory of cloud-init source [2].

> There doesn't seem to be any of the usual tools like the karmic images
> have -- ec2-run-user-data, etc.

/usr/bin/cloud-init is now executed very early in boot via
/etc/init/cloud-init.conf . It is in charge of parsing user data, and
writing it to disk.

Subsequent programs are also run via upstart, see /etc/init/cloud-* .
Specifically, run-user-data is run by cloud-run-user-script.

> I'm going to keep digging, but maybe you could point me in the right
> direction.

Hopefully that will get you oriented.  I'm interested in feedback.

--
[1] https://launchpad.net/cloud-init
[2] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/%7Ecloud-init-dev/cloud-init/trunk/files/head%3A/doc/