Official Debian Amazon Machine Images (AMIs)

For discussion about Debian on various cloud providers, please visit Debian-Cloud mailing list.

Please report bugs to the cloud.debian.org pseudo-package, when they are related to the choices made when building the image (which packages to include, which customisation was made, etc.). Advanced users can add the usertags to triage the report more precisely.

See also our EC2 FAQ.

AMI build script

Anders Ingemann has created a build script for bootstrapping instances like the above. The script runs fully automatic and needs no user interaction, custom scripts can be attached to the process as well. You can download or clone the script on github. Any bugs or suggestions should be reported via the github issue tracker.

Individual Developer/User Contributed AMIs

Security of user-contributed AMIs

Please consider the security of user-contributed AMIs as having been potentially untested and un-vetted by the Debian Project. Always check the AMI ID matches what you were looking for, and verify the AMI Source to confirm the AMI you are launch is being updated and controlled from an account ID that you trust.

Questions about the images published by tom@punch.net, visit the ec2debian google group. For more information on images published by RightScale, see the RightScale OSS support page.

Debian installer

See Cloud/AmazonEC2DebianInstaller.

Warning about AWS Marketplace AMIs

Some fixes for serious EC2 instance problems require you to stop the instance, detach the root EBS volume, attach it to a "repair instance", mount the device, and work on it using a chroot, etc. This is not possible with an instance created from a Marketplace AMI, because the root volumes for such instances can only be attached as the primary volume for an instance.

The reason for this is that there are "Product codes" associated with the volume that were placed there when the instance was created using the Marketplace, which tie it to a certain product and prevent actions like running multiple instances arising from one paid subscription. These codes cannot be removed by a user.

There is a way around this, but it requires you to:

  1. Snapshot the root volume

  2. Share the snapshot with AWS support

  3. Ask them (using a support subscription or the forums) to create a new snapshot with no Product codes

    • You can do this even with no-charge Basic Support Plan, by creating an "Account and Billing Support" case and specifying "Marketplace" as the service
  4. Create a volume from their new snapshot
  5. Attach the new volume to a repair instance
  6. Fix the problem
  7. Follow the usual steps to replace the problem instance's root volume with the new one
  8. Destroy the old volume if necessary
  9. Destroy the snapshots if you don't need them