Introducing The Amazon Linux AMI

Yes, you read that right. We now have a Linux AMI tuned for AWS!

Many of our customers have asked us for a simple starting point for launching their Linux applications inside of Amazon EC2 that is easy to use, regularly maintained, and optimized for the Amazon EC2 environment. Starting today, customers can use Amazon Linux AMI to meet these needs.  This just adds to the great selection of AMI options in Amazon EC2 that range from free to paid, giving you access to the operating systems and environments you need.

Available in 32 and 64 bit form in all of the AWS Regions, Amazon Linux starts out as lean and mean as possible; no unnecessary applications or services are running. You can add more packages as needed, and you can do so very quickly and easily from a package repository that we host in Amazon S3.

The AWS command-line tools and libraries are pre-installed and ready to use. We've also integrated Ubuntu's CloudInit to simplify the process of customizing each instance after it boots up. You can use CloudInit to set a default locale, set the hostname, generate and set up SSH private keys, and to set up mount points. You can also run custom commands and scripts on initial startup or on each reboot, as desired.

The Amazon Linux AMI can be booted from the AWS Management Console's Request Instances page at the usual charge for Linux/UNIX instances. This is a supported AMI; customers who use AWS Premium Support will be able to ask for help with installation and usage problems. Of course, everyone can use the forums to ask for help or to report bugs.

We will provide patches and security updates as needed. We also update the Amazon Linux AMI on a regular basis, and we'll create a new set of AMIs each time we do so.

If you've used other Linux AMIs in the past, this one should hold few surprises. Nevertheless, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Log in as ec2-user rather than as root.
2. For S3-backed instances the first ephemeral volume is mounted at /media/ephemeral0.
3. Complete release notes are available in file /etc/image-release-notes.
4. The system is running kernel 2.6.34.

Read the Amazon Linux AMI User Guide [PDF] to learn more.

Update 1:

You can find the current AMI ID's for each region on the Amazon Linux page. Once you have the ID you can search for it using the Community AMIs tab in the AWS Management Console's EC2 Request Instances Wizard:

You can do the same search using the Images tab in Elastic Fox:

Update 2:

The source code is available for reference purposes. Open up the user guide and search for the section labeled Accessing Source Packages for Reference for full information on how to download it to your instance.

-- Jeff;

Comments

[as]

How do I start one of these as a 64 bit micro instance in asia pacific region using elasticfox?

I can't see the images there to do so.

Thanks

as

[as]

It would be nice if there was an Amazon Linux based on Debian and using apt rather than yum,

[ahmet alp balkan]

Is not is possible to download the bootable/installable image as ISO or IMG from somewhere? Is not it released under open source?

[MB]

Are these AMIs based on any particular distro?
+1 for Debian/Ubuntu/apt-based AMIs. We've had quite enough of RHEL/Centos' dismal config style, migrating away from it as fast as we can.

[Ethan Cane]

It would be nice if there was an Amazon Linux based on Debian and using apt rather than yum.

I agree!

Not everyone wants to use a Redhat based distro.

[Jesse sanford]

Aptitude based package management please!!

[Jay S]

Could you please explain what S3-backed instances are? Do they mount a virtual filesystem using S3?
Also, is Amazon Linux really Ubuntu under the hood?

[David Colebatch]

Are you all saying they took ubuntu's CloudInit and put on a RedHat based distro? Booo... I will wait for an apt/dpkg based version too...

[Jason S]

Another vote for Debian based...

[Ernest Mueller]

Yeah, I'd like to see a much clearer statement of what distro this is based on... Not being forthcoming about that degrades my confidence. After reading the whole PDF it looks like the answer's CentOS. Why you couldn't just have said "based on CentOS" in the main announcement is beyond me...

The biggest question to me is how much this will be kept up to date. A lot of the OSes on EC2 are sadly out of date; Ubuntu's really the only exception - Fedora is grotesquely out of date, no Win 2008 R2 yet, et cetera. This is up to date now, but can we expect it to be available in latest-greatest within, you know, years of new revs? We started with Fedora but have been moving to Ubuntu as the pain of less and less new stuff working on the old kernels has overcome us.

[Jan]

Yeah, please debian/ubuntu...

[Jason]

+1 for Debian based. Although, the AMI maintained by Canonical is already quite good.

[Auada]

For sure Debian !

[Fred]

Maybe this AMI is for the "enterprise" people, since us apt folk have the great Ubuntu AMIs...

We can only aspire to the greatness of enterprise. ;-)
http://github.com/tenderlove/enterprise

[Mxx]

Ernest Mueller, i doubt amazon is intentionally trying to hide what this distro is based on. This specific post is just an announcement, not a technical walkthrough..
Its strange that Amazon Linux running kernel 2.6.34..
Current RHEL5-based distros use 2.6.18
Fedora 13 is running 2.6.33, Fedora 14 will be 2.6.35

[Hancock]

Lots of debian fanboys here complaining.
A least amazon has taken on the challenge. If you don't like it roll your own AMI.

[Andreas]

Ubuntu does have official AMIs, they are just not shown in the frontpage of Amazon's Web Console for some (political?) reason.

Here they are, updated very often:
http://uec-images.ubuntu.com

(don't be mislead by the "uec" in the URL: there are AMIs and EMIs (for eucalyptus) there)

Just navigate to the desired release directory. For example, here are the ones for 10.04 LTS:

http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/10.04/release/

[aptiscack]

I for one am glad to see up to date AMI's that are NOT Ubuntu. Respect to AWS for making the effort. Reiterating Hancock's post: if you don't like it, roll your own AMI.
Reckon most people here making noise about "it's not Ubuntu" have probably never tried another distro.

[James]

+1 apt-get over yum (not necessarily ubuntu over centos!)

[Andy]

Wonder how I get notified once its left beta status.

[Jeff Laughlin]

This distro has been frustrating me for a couple of days now. It's obviously derived from centos 5 with packages just slightly different enough to break compatibility with EPEL. Plus it's missing some odd dependencies like libodbc such that even packages in the amazon repo won't install. To top it off they provide NO access to the repo via any means other than yum. I would really like to be able to mirror it to my own yum repo to provide finer grained control over the packages available to my VMs and I'd be happy to pay amazon for the resources to do that. I'd also like to use BCFG2 which likes to read in the yum repo data; good luck with that, amazon uses timed rotating mirror URLs so you HAVE to read the mirror list file. Even after you dig out that URL any attempt to browse it results in a bunch of crazy XML error documents; the HTTP spec has this thing called a 403 error. It's just rebranded centos! What's the big friggin secret they're trying hide?? This whole thing stinks of a potential GPL violation. My conclusion is that the distro is garbage and amazon must be run by arrogant jerks. Now to figure out how to roll my own AMI from a REAL centos system...