Public bug reported: I'm using the latest lp:vmbuilder source to build EBS boot AMIs for EC2. I noticed that there is an awful lot of image file copying being done which seems unnecessary when using vmbuilder for this purpose.
1. vmbuilder installs the image files into a temporary "root" subdirectory 2. The "root" subdirectory is copied with rsync into the "target" directory, which is a loopback filesystem on a huge "root.img" temporary file. 3. The big "root.img" file is copied with "cp" from the temporary directory to a destination directory. 4. I then have to mount this image file and copy the files a fourth time onto the EBS volume in order to create an EBS boot AMI. Ideally, three of these steps could be eliminated so that the image files are installed directly onto the EBS volume, with the path provided through an option. Though this does not affect the functionality in a major way, the current four copies take up a good chunk of time, IO, and disk space when building AMIs on EC2. Parts of the vmbuilder log file for reference: 2010-01-03 00:34:01,285 DEBUG : ['/usr/bin/kvm-img', 'create', '-f', 'raw', '/mnt/vmbuilderw8mCwo/root.img', '10240M'] 2010-01-03 00:34:09,061 DEBUG : ['mount', '-o', 'loop', '/mnt/vmbuilderw8mCwo/root.img', '/mnt/vmbuilderw8mCwo/target/'] [...] 2010-01-03 00:40:13,684 DEBUG : ['rsync', '-aHA', '/mnt/vmbuilderw8mCwo/root/', '/mnt/vmbuilderw8mCwo/target'] [...] 2010-01-03 00:40:32,288 DEBUG : ['cp', '--sparse=always', '/mnt/vmbuilderw8mCwo/root.img', '/mnt/dest-karmic-20100103-0033/root.img'] ProblemType: Bug Architecture: i386 Date: Sun Jan 3 00:47:11 2010 DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10 Ec2AMI: ami-1515f67c Ec2AMIManifest: ubuntu-images-us/ubuntu-karmic-9.10-i386-server-20091027.1.manifest.xml Ec2AvailabilityZone: us-east-1a Ec2InstanceType: c1.medium Ec2Kernel: aki-5f15f636 Ec2Ramdisk: ari-0915f660 Package: ubuntu-vm-builder (not installed) ProcEnviron: LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash ProcVersionSignature: User Name 2.6.31-302.7-ec2 SourcePackage: vm-builder Tags: ec2-images Uname: Linux 2.6.31-302-ec2 i686 ** Affects: vm-builder (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Tags: apport-bug ec2-images i386 -- Too much image copying when using vmbuilder for EC2 https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/502495 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs