Minimal footprint ubuntu for ec2 micro instance?

Question

I want to run a minimal footprint ubuntu on the new amazon ec2 micro instance.

Is there a pre-built minimum ebs image available somewhere? I'm guessing the official ubuntu ec2 images are not minimal and are probably loaded with everything?

Answer 1

I have been looking for information on this as well. The best I've found so far is a post from smoser saying that for the most part the standard small AMI work fine with the exception of a bug that will cause the instance to halt on reboot.

The bug has apparently been fixed for 10.10 already, but the fix is not in 10.04 yet. The listed fix is to run the following after the instance is running the first time:

arch=$(uname -m)
[ "$arch" = "x86_64" ] && ephd=/dev/sdb || ephd=/dev/sda2
sudo sed -i.dist "\,${ephd},s,^,#," /etc/fstab

(the problem is that micro instances are EBS only and the default Ubuntu AMI's currently assume that the ephemeral devices will exist and they do not)