Create an instance store-backed AMI

To prepare to use the AMI tools (HVM instances only)

1. The AMI tools require GRUB Legacy to boot properly. Use the following command to install GRUB:

   [ec2-user ~]$ sudo yum install -y grub

2. Install the partition management packages with the following command:

   [ec2-user ~]$ sudo yum install -y gdisk kpartx parted

To create an AMI from an instance store-backed Amazon Linux instance

This procedure assumes that you have satisfied the prerequisites in Prerequisites.

In the following commands, replace each user input placeholder with your own information.

1. Upload your credentials to your instance. We use these credentials to ensure that only you and Amazon EC2 can access your AMI.

   1. Create a temporary directory on your instance for your credentials as follows:

      [ec2-user ~]$ mkdir /tmp/cert

      This enables you to exclude your credentials from the created image.

   2. Copy your X.509 certificate and corresponding private key from your computer to the /tmp/cert directory on your instance using a secure copy tool such as scp. The -i my-private-key.pem option in the following scp command is the private key you use to connect to your instance with SSH, not the X.509 private key. For example:

      you@your_computer:~ $ scp -i my-private-key.pem /path/to/pk-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBEXAMPLE.pem /path/to/cert-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBEXAMPLE.pem ec2-user@ec2-203-0-113-25.compute-1.amazonaws.com:/tmp/cert/
      pk-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBEXAMPLE.pem  100%  717     0.7KB/s   00:00
      cert-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBEXAMPLE.pem  100%  685     0.7KB/s   00:00

   Alternatively, because these are plain text files, you can open the certificate and key in a text editor and copy their contents into new files in /tmp/cert.

2. Prepare the bundle to upload to Amazon S3 by running the ec2-bundle-vol command from inside your instance. Be sure to specify the -e option to exclude the directory where your credentials are stored. By default, the bundle process excludes files that might contain sensitive information. These files include *.sw, *.swo, *.swp, *.pem, *.priv, *id_rsa*, *id_dsa* *.gpg, *.jks, */.ssh/authorized_keys, and */.bash_history. To include all of these files, use the --no-filter option. To include some of these files, use the --include option.

   Important

   By default, the AMI bundling process creates a compressed, encrypted collection of files in the /tmp directory that represents your root volume. If you do not have enough free disk space in /tmp to store the bundle, you need to specify a different location for the bundle to be stored with the -d /path/to/bundle/storage option. Some instances have ephemeral storage mounted at /mnt or /media/ephemeral0 that you can use, or you can also create, attach, and mount a new Amazon EBS) volume to store the bundle. For more information, see Create an Amazon EBS volume in the Amazon EBS User Guide.

   1. You must run the ec2-bundle-vol command as root. For most commands, you can use sudo to gain elevated permissions, but in this case, you should run sudo -E su to keep your environment variables.

      [ec2-user ~]$ sudo -E su

      Note that bash prompt now identifies you as the root user, and that the dollar sign has been replaced by a hash tag, signalling that you are in a root shell:

      [root ec2-user]#

   2. To create the AMI bundle, run the ec2-bundle-vol command as follows:

      [root ec2-user]# ec2-bundle-vol -k /tmp/cert/pk-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBEXAMPLE.pem -c /tmp/cert/cert-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBEXAMPLE.pem -u 123456789012 -r x86_64 -e /tmp/cert --partition gpt

      Note

      For the China (Beijing) and AWS GovCloud (US-West) Regions, use the --ec2cert parameter and specify the certificates as per the prerequisites.

      It can take a few minutes to create the image. When this command completes, your /tmp (or non-default) directory contains the bundle (image.manifest.xml, plus multiple image.part.xx files).

   3. Exit from the root shell.

      [root ec2-user]# exit

3. (Optional) To add more instance store volumes, edit the block device mappings in the image.manifest.xml file for your AMI. For more information, see Block device mappings for volumes on Amazon EC2 instances.

   1. Create a backup of your image.manifest.xml file.

      [ec2-user ~]$ sudo cp /tmp/image.manifest.xml /tmp/image.manifest.xml.bak

   2. Reformat the image.manifest.xml file so that it is easier to read and edit.

      [ec2-user ~]$ sudo xmllint --format /tmp/image.manifest.xml.bak > /tmp/image.manifest.xml

   3. Edit the block device mappings in image.manifest.xml with a text editor. The example below shows a new entry for the ephemeral1 instance store volume.

      Note

      For a list of excluded files, see ec2-bundle-vol.

          <block_device_mapping>
            <mapping>
              <virtual>ami</virtual>
              <device>sda</device>
            </mapping>
            <mapping>
              <virtual>ephemeral0</virtual>
              <device>sdb</device>
            </mapping>
            <mapping>
              <virtual>ephemeral1</virtual>
              <device>sdc</device>
            </mapping>
            <mapping>
              <virtual>root</virtual>
              <device>/dev/sda1</device>
            </mapping>
          </block_device_mapping>

   4. Save the image.manifest.xml file and exit your text editor.

4. To upload your bundle to Amazon S3, run the ec2-upload-bundle command as follows.

   [ec2-user ~]$ ec2-upload-bundle -b amzn-s3-demo-bucket/bundle_folder/bundle_name -m /tmp/image.manifest.xml -a your_access_key_id -s your_secret_access_key

   Important

   To register your AMI in a Region other than US East (N. Virginia), you must specify both the target Region with the --region option and a bucket path that already exists in the target Region or a unique bucket path that can be created in the target Region.

5. (Optional) After the bundle is uploaded to Amazon S3, you can remove the bundle from the /tmp directory on the instance using the following rm command:

   [ec2-user ~]$ sudo rm /tmp/image.manifest.xml /tmp/image.part.* /tmp/image

   Important

   If you specified a path with the -d /path/to/bundle/storage option in Step 2, use that path instead of /tmp.

6. To register your AMI, run the register-image command as follows.

   [ec2-user ~]$ aws ec2 register-image --image-location amzn-s3-demo-bucket/bundle_folder/bundle_name/image.manifest.xml --name AMI_name --virtualization-type hvm

   Important

   If you previously specified a Region for the ec2-upload-bundle command, specify that Region again for this command.