~ubuntu-on-ec2/vmbuilder/automated-ec2-builds

This compressed tar archive contains files relevant to this machine image.

Each filename is prefixed by a constant string denoting release and

architecture information.  The prefix, for example, may be

'maverick-server-cloudimg-amd64', in which case files will be named like

  maverick-server-cloudimg-amd64.img

  maverick-server-cloudimg-amd64-vmlinuz-virtual

All or some of the following files may be present in the archive:

- <prefix>.img

  This file is an partition image.  It can be bundled, uploaded and

  registered to EC2, Eucalyptus or OpenStack as a Amazon Machine Image

  (ami/emi).

- <prefix>-disk1.img

  This is a qcow2 compressed disk image.  It can be uploaded to OpenStack

  or booted directly via kvm.  You should probably uncompress the image

  (qemu-img convert) before use in non-testing environment.

- <prefix>-uefi1.img

  This is a qcow2 compressed disk image that has GPT partitioning and a UEFI

  bootloader. It is bootable via UEFI, BIOS/GPT and PVGRUB (with support

  for GPT partition tables. It is bootable in OpenStack or directly via kvm.

  You should probably uncompress the images (qemu-img convert) before using

  it in a non-testing environment.

- <prefix>-root.tar.gz

  This is a compressed tar file containing the contents of the root

  filesystem.  Essentially, 'tar cpzf - /'.

- <prefix>-vmlinuz-virtual

  This is a Linux kernel.  It can be bundled, uploaded, and registered

  UEC as an Amazon Kernel Image (aki/eki).  The '-virtual' string

  represents the Ubuntu Linux package that this kernel came from.  It

  could potentially be '-server' or another string.

- <prefix>-initrd-virtual

  This is a Linux initrd.  It can be bundled, uploaded, and registered

  UEC as an Amazon Ramdisk Image (ari/eri). Not all images require an

  initrd, and thus this file may not be present.  If it is not present,

  then the image should be registered without a ramdisk.

- <prefix>-loader

  This file is a multiboot compliant image capable of loading the

  guest image. On UEC installs where the host operating system is 10.10 or

  later (LP: #611144), this can registered as a kernel (eki).

  It provides function similar to the Amazon released feature

  "Enabling User Provided Kernels".  When the loader is used to boot an

  instance, a kernel upgrade performed inside the instance will take

  affect on subsequent boots.

- <prefix>-floppy

  This file is a floppy disk image.  It is not useful or relevant to

  running inside of EC2 or UEC.

  The purpose of this file is to allow booting the <prefix>.img outside a cloud.

  To boot outside of a cloud environment (where a metadata service is not

  present), the following kvm command line can be used:

     kvm -boot a -fda <prefix>-floppy -drive file=<prefix>.img,if=virtio

  This is not necessary, and generally obsolete, if <prefix>-disk1.img is

  available.

Other notes:

- This tar file is constructed such that it can be easily

  bundled uploaded and registered using 'cloud-publish-tarball' as an admin

  by invoking

    cloud-publish-tarball tarfile.tar.gz my-bucket i386

  or, to use the loader file as

    cloud-publish-tarball --use-loader tarfile.tar.gz my-bucket i386

- The image file (.img) can be resized before uploading by using

  'cloud-resize-image', as:

    cloud-resize-image <prefix>.img 5G

  or, resized before uploading with cloud-publish-tarball by:

    cloud-publish-tarball --resize 5G tarfile.tar.gz my-bucket i386

   *Note*: in 11.10 and beyond, 'uec' as a prefix to the commands below is

      replaced with 'cloud'. So, 'cloud-publish-tarball' may be 'uec-publish-tarball'

      in your cloud-utils package. Just substitite accordingly.