[Bug 434693] Re: [MIR] ec2-init

[Martin Pitt]

Soren Hansen [2009-09-24 13:44 -0000]:
> I think you really are missing what Scott is saying.

Right, it seems we don't understand each other and talk past each
other. That's why I'm trying to understand and untangle this package. :-)

> We provide an image for EC2. People will be booting the exact image
> we're providing. Sure, we can avoid touching the SSH host keys. I'm just
> not sure I would personally be very happy knowing that the private keys
> used by my ssh server were well-known.

That's not what I was saying. Of course you should create the host
keys of an EC2 image on the fly, by the user. However, if I install
ec2-init in my own Karmic desktop system or server, it must not ever
change my existing ssh host keys. The init script does not seem to be
robust against this case, and I asked whether it has any precautions
against this to happen.

> >> ec2-init is a packaged intended to run only inside of ec2 or an
> >> ec2-compatible "cloud".
> > Couldn't the package be by and large turned upside down, and instead
> > of playing evil tricks to change the system that it gets installed on,
> > rather wrap vmware-builder and change the system that it is building?
> 
> Err... I don't think I even understand what you mean? ec2-init doesn't..
> I mean..  No, wait, what do /you/ mean?

So, to me it looks like ec2-init takes a stock Ubuntu and installs
some standard stuff into it when you boot it first.

But a package installing more packages, and even fetching them
unauthenticated from the web, and doing all this in an init script,
is just wrong.

I was asking why we can't rather produce a stock ubuntu-ec2 image in
vmbuilder which has all those gems and packages set up already?

> Because we're building just one image, and people use this same image as
> the base for all kinds of different things on EC2. We don't want to
> force a web-, database-, or anyting else-server down everone's throats,

That's not at all what ec2-init is doing, though, and thus doesn't
answer my question at all.  The init script I was talking about
doesn't deal with databases and that stuff, it does some static
general things like installing binutils, ruby packages with apt-get,
installing ruby gems, symlinking stuff around, etc.  All those seem
to be part of every EC2 image, so I asked why this setup can't happen
when you build the "one" image, instead of running at first boot in a
very questionable way?

-- 
Martin Pitt                        | http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)

-- 
[MIR] ec2-init
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/434693
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