When a Debian cloud VM boots, it typically runs cloud-init at various points in the boot process. Each invocation can perform certain operations based on the host’s static configuration passed by the user, typically either through a well known link-local network service or an attached iso9660 drive image. Some of the cloud-init steps execute before the network comes up, and others at a couple of different points after the network is up.

Did you know that the cloud team generates daily images for buster, bullseye, and sid? They’re available for download from cdimage.debian.org and are published to Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure. This is done both to exercise our image generation infrastructure, and also to facilitate testing of the actual images and distribution in general. I’ve often found it convenient to have easy access to a clean, up-to-date, disposable virtual machine, and you might too.

When buster was first released back in early July of last year, the cloud team was in the process of setting up some new accounts with AWS to be used for AMI publication. For various reasons, the accounts we used for pre-buster releases were considered unsuitable for use long term, and the buster release was considered to be a good logical point to make the switch. Unfortunately, issues within the bureaucracy of both SPI/Debian and AWS delayed the complete switch to the new accounts.

Following up on a previous post announcing the availability of a first round of AWS AMIs for stretch, I’m happy to announce the availability of a second round of images. These images address all the feedback we’ve received about the first round. The notable changes include: Don’t install a local MTA. Don’t install busybox. Ensure that /etc/machine-id is recreated at launch. Fix the security.debian.org sources.list entry. Enable Enhanced Networking and ENA support.

At this past November’s Debian cloud sprint, we classified our image users into three broad buckets in order to help guide our discussions and ensure that we were covering the common use cases. Our users fit generally into one of the following groups: People who directly launch our image and treat it like a classic VPS. These users most likely will be logging into their instances via ssh and configuring it interactively, though they may also install and use a configuration management system at some point.

Following up on Steve McIntyre’s writeup of the Debian Cloud Sprint that took place in Seattle this past November, I’m pleased to announce the availability of preliminary Debian stretch AMIs for Amazon EC2. Pre-generated images are available in all public AWS regions, or you can use FAI with the fai-cloud-images configuration tree to generate your own images. The pre-generated AMIs were created on 25 January, shortly after Linux 4.9 entered stretch, and their details follow: