Image Description for Amazon EC2

A virtual disk image that is able to boot in the Amazon EC2 cloud framework has to comply with the following constraints:

  • Xen tools and libraries must be installed.

  • The cloud-init package must be installed.

  • A cloud-init configuration for Amazon must be provided.

  • Grub bootloader modules for Xen must be installed.

  • AWS tools must be installed.

  • The disk size must be set to 10G.

  • Kernel parameters must allow for a Xen console.

To meet these requirements, add or update the KIWI NG image description as follows:

  1. Software packages

    Make sure to add the following packages to the package list:

    Note

    Package names used in the following list match the package names of the SUSE distribution and might be different on other distributions.

    <package name="aws-cli"/>
<package name="grub2-x86_64-xen"/>
<package name="xen-libs"/>
<package name="xen-tools-domU"/>
<package name="cloud-init"/>

  2. Image Type definition

    Update the oem image type setup as follows:

    <type image="oem"
      filesystem="ext4"
      kernelcmdline="console=xvc0 multipath=off net.ifnames=0"
      devicepersistency="by-label"
      firmware="ec2">
  <bootloader name="grub2" timeout="1"/>
  <size unit="M">10240</size>
  <machine xen_loader="hvmloader"/>
  <oemconfig>
      <oem-resize>false</oem-resize>
  </oemconfig>
</type>

  3. Cloud-Init setup

    Cloud-init is a service that runs at boot time and allows you to customize the system by activating one or more cloud-init modules. For Amazon EC2, the following configuration file, /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg, needs to be provided as part of the overlay files in your KIWI NG image description:

    users:
  - default

disable_root: true
preserve_hostname: false
syslog_fix_perms: root:root

datasource_list: [ NoCloud, Ec2, None ]

cloud_init_modules:
  - migrator
  - bootcmd
  - write-files
  - growpart
  - resizefs
  - set_hostname
  - update_hostname
  - update_etc_hosts
  - ca-certs
  - rsyslog
  - users-groups
  - ssh

cloud_config_modules:
  - mounts
  - ssh-import-id
  - locale
  - set-passwords
  - package-update-upgrade-install
  - timezone

cloud_final_modules:
  - scripts-per-once
  - scripts-per-boot
  - scripts-per-instance
  - scripts-user
  - ssh-authkey-fingerprints
  - keys-to-console
  - phone-home
  - final-message
  - power-state-change

system_info:
  default_user:
    name: ec2-user
    gecos: "cloud-init created default user"
    lock_passwd: True
    sudo: ["ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL"]
    shell: /bin/bash
  paths:
    cloud_dir: /var/lib/cloud/
    templates_dir: /etc/cloud/templates/
  ssh_svcname: sshd

An image built with the above setup can be uploaded into the Amazon EC2 cloud and registered as an image. For further information on how to upload to EC2, see: ec2uploadimg.