Re: Debian images for Google Compute Engine
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)
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
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-cloud-request@lists.debian.org
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
> Archive: [🔎] 20130418010142.GI2625@kaplowitz.org">http://lists.debian.org/[🔎] 20130418010142.GI2625@kaplowitz.org
>
Reply to: