pages tagged debianmiguel.cchttp://miguel.cc/tags/debian/miguel.ccikiwiki2010-07-20T03:37:34Zyour own kernel with amazon ec2http://miguel.cc/blog/entry/your_own_kernel_with_amazon_ec2/2010-07-20T03:37:34Z2010-07-20T03:37:34Z
<p>Recently,
<a href="http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/07/use-your-own-kernel-with-amazon-ec2.html">Amazon announced support</a>
for user provided Linux kernels in Amazon EC2.</p>
<p>Since they provided a list of supported distributions but Debian was not
included, I decided to give a try to this new feature to see if I could boot a
Linux kernel provided by Debian.</p>
<p>Following the instructions available in
<a href="http://ec2-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/user_specified_kernels.pdf">EC2 documentation</a>
and the recommendations for <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Xen">Xen usage</a> at Debian
wiki, I could boot an AMI using <code>linux-image-2.6.32-5-686-bigmem</code> kernel
included with upcoming Debian 6.0 (squeeze, right now at testing stage).</p>
<p>You just have to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Indicate in <code>/boot/grub/menu.lst</code> <code>root=/dev/xvda1</code> as root device.</li>
<li>Make sure <code>/etc/fstab</code> contains the correct device names.</li>
<li>Bundle your image with <code>linux-image-2.6.32-5-686-bigmem</code> and <code>grub-legacy</code> packages
installed.</li>
</ul>
<p>In the <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Xen">Xen entry</a> at Debian wiki is mentioned that
domU instances can boot with a Linux image Xen flavor, but I could not boot
<code>linux-image-2.6.32-5-xen-686</code> in Amazon EC2. I'll investigate why that's
happening.</p>