How I Created an Amazon AMI for Faster Deployments
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Join For FreeThe content of this article was originally written by Reed Law on the Smashing Boxes blog.
Chef is a great tool for automating deployment. But the bootstrap process is hard to get right. Sometimes it can just be easier to start with a system that’s already configured close to your needs.
Setup
- 64-bit 2011.09 Amazon Linux with EBS boot
- Nginx latest stable
- Ruby 1.9.3
First launch an instance from the AWS Management Console. I am using amzn-ami-2011.09.2.x86_64-ebs (ami-1b814f72) as the image.
$ ssh ~/.ec2/yourkey ec2-user@ec2-12-34-56-78.compute-1.amazonaws.com $ sudo su $ yum update -y $ yum install -y openssl-devel zlib-devel gcc gcc-c++ make autoconf readline-devel curl-devel expat-devel gettext-devel pcre-devel $ wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.0.14.tar.gz $ tar xvzf nginx-1.0.14.tar.gz $ cd nginx-1.0.14 $ ./configure --sbin-path=/usr/local/sbin --with-http_ssl_module $ make $ make install
Now you will probably want an init script. This Slicehost article is a bit old but still works beautifully. Start at the “Init Script” section.
Now for ruby, install yaml for psych, and then compile ruby from source:
$ wget http://pyyaml.org/download/libyaml/yaml-0.1.4.tar.gz $ tar xzvf yaml-0.1.4.tar.gz $ cd yaml-0.1.4 $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local $ make && make install $ wget http://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.3-p125.tar.gz $ tar xvzf ruby-1.9.3-p125.tar.gz $ cd ruby-1.9.3-p125 $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --disable-install-doc --with-opt-dir=/usr/local/lib $ make && make install $ /usr/local/bin/gem install bundler
Now clean up:
$ rm -rf ruby* nginx* yaml* $ cd /var/log $ > cron $ > maillog $ > secure $ > spooler $ > yum.log $ rm ~/.bash_history $ exit
Now we’re ready to create the image. Right click on the EC2 instance in the AWS control panel and choose “Create Image (EBS AMI)”. Give it a name and description and then click “create”. Now choose the AMIs tab on the left. You should see the new AMI in the “pending” status.
Published at DZone with permission of Nick Jordan. See the original article here.
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