Debian Wheezy (7.x) on AWS

List of point releases published to the AWS EC2 and Marketplace:

• 7.3 (December 2013)

• 7.2 (November 2013)

• 7.1a (July 2013)

• 7.0.0 (May 2013)

You may wish to use the CloudFormation template and launch your instance with some smart UserData scripts. For some releases you are free to choose the AWS Marketplace AMI, or the AMI that exists in the Debian AMI Account (account number 379101102735). All AMIs shared from the Debian AWS Account and their corresponding EBS snapshots are marked as public so can be inspected by any other AWS user.

Please note that a Marketplace image volume cannot be attached to another running instance (For example, to repair a broken /etc/fstab, or /etc/network/interfaces). This is a limitation of all Marketplace images, as described here: Official AWS documentation

7.3

The full list of AMIs worldwide in the Debian AMI account are:

The 7.3 release of Debian was built with the Python version of build-debian-cloud, and contains the CloudInit package installed from backports.

7.2

The full list of AMIs worldwide in the Debian AMI account are:

The 7.2 release of Debian was built with the Python version of build-debian-cloud, and contains the CloudInit package installed from backports.

7.1a

   1 rm /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key && ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key -t ecdsa -C 'host' -N ''

The full list of AMIs worldwide in the Debian AMI account are:

These images were generated with the following script:

   1 #!/bin/sh
   2 apt-get update; apt-get install -y git curl; cd ~root; git clone https://github.com/andsens/build-debian-cloud.git; logger "Cloned"; cd ~root/build-debian-cloud; curl https://github.com/andsens/build-debian-cloud/pull/79.patch | git am; export EC2_ACCESS_KEY='XXXX'; export EC2_SECRET_KEY='XXXX'; ./build-debian-cloud ec2 --volume-size 8 --filesystem ext4 --plugin plugins/admin-user --description 'Debian 7.1 (Wheezy) Base' --plugin plugins/publish-ami --plugin plugins/publish-snapshot --codename wheezy; logger "Starting i386 build"; ./build-debian-cloud ec2 --volume-size 8 --filesystem ext4 --plugin plugins/admin-user --description 'Debian 7.1 (Wheezy) Base' --arch i386 --plugin plugins/publish-ami --plugin plugins/publish-snapshot --codename wheezy; shutdown -h now

7.1

The original 7.1 AMIs have been deprecated; please use the latest point release.

7.0.0

Please note this release is deprecated and was scheduled for removal on 1/Aug/2013; please use the latest point release.

Upgrading from previous 6.x.y releases

As is standard with Debian, a simple apt-get update && apt-get upgrade should bring all packages up to date. There is no need to reinstall, but any ?CloudFormation templates and ?AutoScale Launch Configurations should be tested with and then updated to use the current AMI. It is recommended not to use older point releases.

CloudFormation Template

CloudFormation is a templating system for defining AWS resources - see http://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/

{
        "Parameters" : {
                "KeyName" : {
                        "Description" : "SSH Key Name",
                        "Type" : "String",
                        "Default" : "My-Key"
                },
                "MyInstanceSize": {
                        "Description": "Instance size (m1.small, etc.)",
                        "Type": "String",
                        "Default" : "t1.micro",
                        "AllowedValues": ["t1.micro", "m1.small", "m1.medium", "m1.large", "m1.xlarge", "m2.xlarge", "m2.2xlarge", "m2.4xlarge", "c1.xlarge", "cc1.4xlarge", "m3.xlarge", "m3.2xlarge"]
                },
                "MyInstanceName": {
                        "Description": "Instance name",
                        "Type": "String"
                },
                "InstanceBits": {
                        "Description": "32 or 64 bits",
                        "Type": "String",
                        "Default": "64",
                        "AllowedValues": [ "32", "64" ]
                },
                "RootVolType": {
                        "Description": "Root volume type (EBS or Instance)",
                        "Type": "String",
                        "Default": "EBS",
                        "AllowedValues": [ "EBS", "Instance" ]
                }
        },
        "Mappings" : {
            "Debian7.1a-EBS-PVM" : { 
                "us-east-1" :      { "32" : "ami-f494e99d", "64" : "ami-9e95e8f7"},
                "us-west-1" :      { "32" : "ami-b083aaf5", "64" : "ami-9283aad7"},
                "us-west-2" :      { "32" : "ami-a5831095", "64" : "ami-4d83107d"},
                "us-gov-west-1" :  { "32" : "ami-0992f62a", "64" : "ami-0f92f62c"},
                "eu-west-1" :      { "32" : "ami-c35f43b7", "64" : "ami-035f4377"},
                "ap-southeast-1" : { "32" : "ami-7a773e28", "64" : "ami-46773e14"},
                "ap-southeast-2" : { "32" : "ami-7705964d", "64" : "ami-7b059641"},
                "ap-northeast-1" : { "32" : "ami-dfde4ade", "64" : "ami-b3de4ab2"},
                "sa-east-1" :      { "32" : "ami-5e288d43", "64" : "ami-26288d3b"}
            },
            "release" : {
                "stable" : { "wheezy" : "Debian7.1a-EBS-PVM" }
            }
        },
        "Resources" : {
                "MyInstance" : {
                        "Type" : "AWS::EC2::Instance",
                        "Properties" : {
                                "SecurityGroups" : [ { "Ref" : "MySecurityGroup" } ],
                                "KeyName" : { "Ref": "KeyName" },
                                "Tags" : [{"Key": "Name", "Value": {"Ref" : "MyInstanceName"} } ],
                                "ImageId" : { "Fn::FindInMap" : [ "Debian7.1a-EBS-PVM",  { "Ref" : "AWS::Region" }, { "Ref" : "InstanceBits" }  ]},
                                "InstanceType" : { "Ref" : "MyInstanceSize" },
                                "UserData" : { "Fn::Base64" : "" }
                        }
                },
                "MySecurityGroup" : {
                        "Type" : "AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup",
                        "Properties" : {
                                "GroupDescription" : "Permit inbound SSH",
                                "SecurityGroupIngress" : [ 
                                    {
                                        "IpProtocol" : "tcp",
                                        "FromPort" : "22",
                                        "ToPort" : "22",
                                        "CidrIp" : "0.0.0.0/0"
                                    }
                                ]
                        }
                }
        }
}

Suggested UserData scripts

The image by default takes no actions upon boot, and does not auto-update. However, as the Debian image does honour executing UserData meta-data that looks like a script (started with #!/bin/sh), you may optionally chose to take some action. This action can be passed as a script in the AWS Console UserData input, or in the above CloudFormation template to an instance (see the UserData section in the example above). Note this is not cloud-init.

You can chose to enable auto update with the following UserData scripts:

   1 #!/bin/sh
   2 apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y && apt-get install -y unattended-upgrades

See also Cloud and Teams/Cloud.