Re: Debian images for Google Compute Engine
On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Brian Gupta <brian.gupta@brandorr.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 9:01 PM, Jimmy Kaplowitz <jimmy@debian.org> wrote:
>> Hi Charles,
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 09:19:59AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
>>> Do you think you can summarise how to access the GCE images in a page on the Debian
>>> wiki, for instance http://wiki.debian.org/Cloud/GoogleComputeEngineImage ? You
>>> can see http://wiki.debian.org/Cloud/AmazonEC2Image and http://wiki.debian.org/Cloud/WindowsAzureImage
>>> for examples.
>>
>> Sure. Right now what we have published is not images themselves, but tools for
>> anyone to make their own. While we have of course built images internally and
>> done testing, we would love for Debian to be the provider of official Debian
>> images in Google Compute Engine. Publishing those images can be done by anyone
>> we add to the debian-cloud project and does not need to be done by Googlers.
>
> Thanks Jimmy!! Great work!.. One clarification for those trying to
> follow along. Unless I've missed something, there is one step that
> might be unclear: How to select one of the prebuilt kernel images that
> are available to use when building an image.. I've added instructions
> inline.
>
>>
>> A quick summary of usage for the very near term:
>>
>> 1) If you want to help and don't already have Google Compute Engine space in
>> which to work, email David and me saying how you want to help and giving the
>> name of your Google account (Google Apps and consumer accounts are both fine).
>> We'll add people to whichever projects are appropriate for how they're helping,
>> within the constraints in my previous email.
>>
>> 2) Use our github fork on any Linux machine to create the images. I'll submit a
>> pull request tomorrow so that Anders can merge it into his tree. Example
>> command line (root is needed for the loopback mounting process):
>>
>> # Either squeeze or wheezy should work.
>> sudo ./build-debian-cloud gce --codename squeeze --volume-size 10
>>
>> 3) The image will end up in the same directory. From there, follow the steps to
>> upload and use a custom image in Google Compute Engine, beginning with step 4
>> here: https://developers.google.com/compute/docs/images#installinganimage
>
> The above instructions tell you to run:
>
> gcutil --project=<project-id> addimage <image-name> <image-uri>
> --preferred_kernel=/projects/google/global/kernels/<kernel-name>
>
> without specifying how to find <kernel-name>
>
> You can use gce-v20130325 (Which is appears to be Google's latest
> build), however, if you want a list of available kernels you can run:
>
> gceutil listkernels --project=google (Rather than your own project)
Sorry that should read:
gcutil listkernels --project=google
> If someone hasn't beaten me to it, I'll try to get some of this into the wiki..
>
>>
>> Once official Debian images are published via the debian-cloud project, end
>> users will be able to use them simply by adding a suitable --image option when
>> creating their instance.
>>
>>> I have a question about SSH. I browsed a bit further the documentation in
>>> https://developers.google.com/compute/docs/instances#standardssh, where I could
>>> read: "username: [Required The username to log in that instance. Typically,
>>> this is the username of the local user running gcutil." Will this be the
>>> standard on Debian images as well ? Do you think that it is a practice to be
>>> recommended for our other images ? We chose "admin" as default account,
>>> following Ubuntu's practice to provide a default account, and adding the
>>> constraint that it must not be branded, but if there is an even better choice,
>>> we should consider it.
>>
>> That language applies to the Debian image as well. gcutil and the authorization
>> model of Google Compute Engine provide flexibility in this regard. For example,
>> by default, every team member of a Google Compute Engine project with "Can
>> edit" or "Is owner" has ssh rights to new instances. This is controllable even
>> at a per-instance level. This is managed by a cron job installed by one of our
>> debs, also called from our startup logic - feel free to look at how it works if
>> you're curious, it's all readable and Apache-license scripts.
>>
>>> Another question, for the mid-long term, do you think that it would be possible
>>> to use the Debian Installer directly ?
>>
>> We're already using debootstrap, as ec2debian-build-ami did. I'm curious how
>> you'd want debian-installer to work, but if it supports arbitrary image files
>> as target, someone might be able to do it.
>>
>> - Jimmy Kaplowitz
>> jimmy@debian.org
>>
>>
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