Generating Amazon Machine Images from Guix?

Generating Amazon Machine Images from Guix?

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi Guix,

I may need to provide Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) allowing the
execution of a Guix package on the Amazon compute services.

There only seems to be a very convoluted way to produce AMIs from raw
virtual machine images[1], so I wonder if we could generate AMIs
directly with Guix.

Has anyone of you played with this successfully?

[1]: https://www.wavether.com/2016/11/import-qcow2-images-into-aws

--
Ricardo

Re: Generating Amazon Machine Images from Guix?

[Thompson, David]

Hey Ricardo,

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 8:01 AM, Ricardo Wurmus
<ricardo.wurmus@mdc-berlin.de> wrote:
> Hi Guix,
>
> I may need to provide Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) allowing the
> execution of a Guix package on the Amazon compute services.
>
> There only seems to be a very convoluted way to produce AMIs from raw
> virtual machine images[1], so I wonder if we could generate AMIs
> directly with Guix.
>
> Has anyone of you played with this successfully?
>
> [1]: https://www.wavether.com/2016/11/import-qcow2-images-into-aws

I'm very interested in this, too, but haven't followed through with
writing a script to do it.  NixOps works on EC2 so I looked into how
they do it, only to find that the NixOS developers generate a public
base AMI whose id is stored in the NixOps code. Not the solution I was
expecting.  So I found the nixpkgs script that generates the base
NixOS AMIs. Maybe reading it will help you:

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/maintainers/scripts/ec2/create-amis.sh

- Dave

Re: Generating Amazon Machine Images from Guix?

[Chris Marusich]

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Ricardo Wurmus <ricardo.wurmus@mdc-berlin.de> writes:

> There only seems to be a very convoluted way to produce AMIs from raw
> virtual machine images[1], so I wonder if we could generate AMIs
> directly with Guix.

I think you probably remember, but just in case, here are some links (in
no particular order) to prior discussion related to this topic that you
might find helpful:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2017-04/msg00216.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2017-09/msg00196.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2017-04/msg00204.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2016-11/msg00073.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2017-03/msg00385.html

Essentially, for Amazon EC2, to programmatically import an image, you'll
need to write code that calls the EC2 service APIs related to VM image
importation (raw disk images are supported):

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/vm-import/
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vm-import/latest/userguide/vmimport-image-import.html#prerequisites-image

Those docs contain examples using the AWS CLI, but you can also call the
service's APIs directly.  For example, the description of the EC2's
ImportInstance API is here:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/APIReference/API_ImportInstance.html

However, I don't know of any existing Guile libraries that would make it
easy to call EC2 APIs (or any AWS APIs, for that matter).  Since calling
these APIs involves a rather complicated signing protocol (among other
details) creating such a library would probably be a significant project
in its own right.

In addition, apparently there is now also a service called "Server
Migration Service".  I've never heard of it before today, but it sounds
related, so maybe this service is worth checking out, too:

https://aws.amazon.com/server-migration-service

Finally, if you have trouble, you might also consider asking AWS Support
for help.  Sometimes the quickest solution is to ask via the official
support channels:

https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/

Good luck!

-- 
Chris

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