Re: Last-minute Google Compute Engine image tweaks

A few updates:

* The pre-release images got removed yesterday and the debian-cloud project currently contains squeeze and wheezy images which can be relied upon to stick around for a while (i.e. they are production). The squeeze image was built from the code in our PR #67 (but then we updated image name and description as below), and the wheezy image from the code in our PR #68.

* The new image naming scheme I described, and a slightly changed version of the image description scheme, got merged into Anders' codebase (PR #68) and is used for those images. The code also has fully working --gcs-dest and --gce-project options and a new --gce-kernel option, all documented. Since the script runs via sudo or as root for the gce target (loopback mounting and chroots are used), be aware that $PATH within the sudo/root environment need to include gcutil/gsutil for those options to work, and whatever $HOME is used inside sudo/root will be where the tools look for authentication info (.boto for gsutil, .gcutil_auth for gcutil).

* More publicity via Google channels is quite immiment and I'll share it on this list soon.

- Jimmy

On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 7:27 PM, Jimmy Kaplowitz <jkaplowitz@google.com> wrote:

Hi,

Google is getting ready to publicize our Debian images more widely next week - we'll of course point this list to that once it's published. As part of getting ready, we've noticed and fixed a few small things that are worth changing.

* Image names can't contain underscores either. So now we're using debian-N-CODENAME-vYYYYMMDD as the format, and various tools and internal test suites will expect that. We are putting a more complete version in the image description, as you can see from my reply to Charles a few moments ago. For that description we're using "Debian X.Y.Z codename, built on YYYY-MM-DD". I'm currently using debian-X_Y_Z-codename-vYYYYMMDD.tar.gz in as the destination filename for my tarball uploads, but nothing depends on that.

* I realize the changes from the previous point should be rolled into the tools. This hasn't happened yet, but it's on my to-do list. Feel free to beat us to it if you want.
* Please don't rely on any of the current images except debian-6-squeeze-v20130502. The rest will be removed on Monday most likely, and a post-release wheezy image will be added, probably named debian-7-wheezy-v20130506. The current images will remain available between now and Monday.

I think that's all I need to mention here. Besides that, thanks for your encouragement and we always welcome your involvement!

- Jimmy