Creating an EBS Backed AMI in the Cloud

Posted on December 7, 2009 by Rosalyn Metz

I decided that I wanted to create an EBS backed AMI on Amazon’s Cloud Computing platform.  I thought this would be REALLY hard.  I was completely wrong.

The first thing I did was start with an already existing EBS AMI. Right now there aren’t too many available but they are growing.  I chose an Ubuntu 9.04 image since I’m going to install a stack on it, and I’ve already done *most* of it before on Ubuntu.

A quick note: it is possible to create an EBS AMI from an S3 AMI, but I wasn’t able to figure that out (quickly).  Although I did find a script that will do this for you: http://gist.github.com/249915.

Next, I wanted to get the Ubuntu server prepared.  I needed to:

  • install mysql — http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/install-mysql-server-5-on-ubuntu/
  • install ruby on rails — http://www.hackido.com/2009/04/install-ruby-rails-on-ubuntu-904-jaunty.html (up to and including step 6)
  • install zlib — http://www.techsww.com/tutorials/libraries/zlib/installation/installing_zlib_on_ubuntu_linux.php
  • install blacklight — http://projectblacklight.org (includes solr and a number of gem dependencies)

I did all of this.  One thing I noticed, Blacklight requires me to use non-standard ports (ie not 22 and 80).  While the server was running, I went into the AWS console and opened ports for its associated security group.  The changes took effect immediately.  I definitely liked that.

Finally, I went in to the AWS Management Console and chose “Create Image (EBS AMI)”.

Picture 1

Then I filled in the information including a description of my image:

EBS AMI Details

and voila! EBS backed AMI.  the one caveat is:

DON’T TERMINATE THE INSTANCE UNTIL THE NEW AMI HAS FINISHED BEING CREATED

because then you’ll loose all the work that you have just done.  doh!

Posted in Fun, Work | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Where Was Rosalyn?

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Rosalyn Metz

Sorry I’ve been so quiet recently. Its been a month and a half since I wrote a post. I’ll save the details, but basically I had an accident that left two of my fingers immobile. They are all there though, and just this week I started typing with all ten of them! Its the little things. Hopefully the hand therapy will make things move along even more.

So I’m still here thinking. I’ll probably be posting on cloud computing a bit more, since I will be presenting with Michael Klein from Oregon State University, on the topic.  So look forward to that (or don’t…).

Posted in Work | 1 Comment

Google Wave and WordPress

Posted on October 16, 2009 by Rosalyn Metz

Hello All!  This is just me testing out my new Google Wave WordPress plugin called wavr.  Below is a test wave I set up.



and if you don’t have a google wave account, here is what it looks like.  What’s nice about it is that you can customize the look with different backgroWave-Accessund and font colors.  Also pretty cool, I can edit the wave from within my blog post.  I have to be logged into my wave account (either in another browser window or the same browser window if i’m using tabs).

I can definitely see the usefulness of this.  I’ve seen some conferences try to figure out ways to aggregate information.  By adding the twitter bot and other bots, I may be able to use wave as a quick and easy way to aggregate information.

A few bummers:

  1. default colors are less than ideal, but luckily you can change that. so for example right now my code to embed the wave reads: wave id =”your-wave-id” bgcolor=”#FAEBD7″ (enclosed within brackets)
  2. people that don’t have a wave account can’t see the wave.  here is what they see:No-Wave-Access this is kind of a big let down.  it would be useful if they could at least view the wave…but unfortunately that’s not the case.
Posted in Work | Tagged , | 4 Comments