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itgorilla
Asked: 2011-03-04 08:52:30 +0800 CST

Copy Amazon EC2 image to a local Ubuntu machine?

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Is it possible to download a Amazon EC2 image and have it run on a local (Ubuntu powered) Eucalyptus? If that's possible how?

I will eventually build a local could based on Ubuntu 10.10 but until then I would like first to start the development on the Amazon EC2 and when I get my hardware to move that EC2 image to my local machine.

ubuntu amazon-ec2 ubuntu-enterprise-cloud ubuntu-10.10

1 Answers

  1. You should be able to do that. I haven't kept up with Eucalyptus so I don't know the exact steps but it would be something like this:

    1. Assuming you have used an EBS backed instance you would halt the instance when you are ready to copy it. Make sure you don't terminate it or you might have your EBS volume deleted. You could also take a snapshot of the volume instead.

    2. Boot another instance and attach the volume for the first instance to it.

    3. Copy the contents of the volume. Something like dd if=/dev/sdh of=ec2instance.img

    4. Use the Eucalyptus instructions for creating your own image. Skip the steps about creating the image and instead use the one from EC2.

    YMMV due to device mappings but it should be something you can fix by mounting the raw image via a loopback device and editing the contents of your /etc/fstab, etc.

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