Many of our Cloud Image users have inquired about the availability of updated Ubuntu Cloud Images in response to the Heartbleed OpenSSL Vulnerability [1]. Ubuntu released update Ubuntu packages for OpenSSL 08 April 2014 [2]. Due to the exceptional circumstances and severity of the Heartbleed OpenSSL bug, Canonical has released new 12.04.4 LTS, 12.10 and 13.10 Cloud Images at [3].

Canonical is working with Amazon to get the Quickstart and the AWS Marketplace links updated. In the meantime, you can find new AMI ID's at [3] and [4]. Also, the snapshot's for Amazon have the volume-create permission granted on the latest images.

Windows Azure [5], Joyent [6] and HP [7, 8, 9] all have updated Cloud Images in their respective galleries.

If you are running an affected version of OpenSSL on 12.04 LTS, 12.10 or 13.10, you are strongly encouraged to update. For new instances, it is recommended to either use an image with a serial newer than 20140408, or update your OpenSSL  package immediately upon launch. Finally, if you need documentation on enabling unattended upgrades, please see [10].


[1] https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140407.txt
[2] http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-2165-1/
[3] 12.04.4 LTS: http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/precise/release-20140408/
     12.10: http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/quantal/release-20140409/
     13.10: http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/saucy/release-20140409.1/
[4] http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/locator/ec2/
[5] Azure: Ubuntu-12_04_4-LTS-amd64-server-20140408-en-us-30GB
                 Ubuntu-12_10-amd64-server-20140409-en-us-30GB
                 Ubuntu-13_10-amd64-server-20140409.1-en-us-30GB
[6] Joyent Images:
        "ubuntu-certified-12.04", fe5aa6c0-0f09-4b1f-9bad-83e453bb74f3
        "ubuntu-certified-13.10", 049dfe64-6c37-4b88-8e89-4b8aa0f129f2
[7] HP US-West-1:
          12.04.4: 27be722e-d2d0-44f0-bebe-471c4af76039
          12.10: 065bb450-e5d0-4348-997d-e4d9e359b8fb
          13.10: 9d7d22d0-7d43-481f-a7eb-d93ea2791409
[8] HP US-East-1:
          12.04.4 8672f4c6-e33d-46f5-b6d8-ebbeba12fa02
          12.10: cbb44038-2602-48d5-b609-e05f4b61be9a
          13.10: 00398423-7429-4064-b781-fa0af00449c8
[9] Waiting on HP for replication to legacy regions az-{1,2,3}
[10] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticSecurityUpdates

Ubuntu Server 11.04 has proven to be a venerable server platform, it has nonetheless, reached its end of life on October 28, 2012. Whether or not you are blissfully unaware, end-of-life means that updates and security patches have been discontinued.

As part of the EOL'ing of a release, the mirrors are retired over time. Last week the mirrors for 11.04 were retired from archive.ubuntu.com, which in turn propagated through to the S3 EC2 mirrors. Any person using Ubuntu 11.04 and the S3 mirrors or archive.ubuntu.com will be unable to install software.

Over the last week, the Cloud Image team has fielded several questions from distraught users caused by the continued use of 11.04. We strongly suggest that those running Ubuntu Server 11.04 and the recently expired 11.10 and 8.04 LTS upgrade to a supported release to prevent any disruptions to their infrastructure. The current supported LTS is 12.04 with 13.04 being the latest stable release. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is supported until April of 2015.

Those who continue to run expired Ubuntu releases may experience issues and may be required to mitigate the movement of mirrors from the S3 and main archive servers to old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu [2]. While Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and 11.10 are currently available at the main archive and S3 locations, they will be removed anytime, per policy [3]

The Symptom

Err http://security.ubuntu.com natty-security/main Sources
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.201 80]
Err http://security.ubuntu.com natty-security/universe Sources
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.201 80]
Err http://security.ubuntu.com natty-security/main amd64 Packages
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.201 80]
Err http://security.ubuntu.com natty-security/universe amd64 Packages
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.201 80]
Ign http://security.ubuntu.com natty-security/main Translation-en_US

Err http://us-east-1.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-updates/main libapr1 amd64 1.4.2-7ubuntu2.1
  403  Forbidden
Err http://us-east-1.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main libaprutil1 amd64 1.3.9+dfsg-5ubuntu3
  403  Forbidden

Fix Option 1:

sudo apt-get -y update

dpkg-divert --local --rename --add /etc/cloud/templates/sources.list.tmpl

sed -i  's,http://.*ubuntu.com,http://old-releases.ubuntu.com,g' \

     /etc/cloud/templates/sources.list.tmpl.distrib \

    | sudo tee /etc/cloud/templates/sources.list.tmpl

#cloud-config

bootcmd: 

- sed -i 's,\$mirror,http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu,g' -e 's,http://security.ubuntu.com.,http://old-releases.ubuntu.com,g' /etc/cloud/templates/sources.list.tmpl.distrib > /etc/cloud/templates/sources.list.tmpl

Over the course of working with Microsoft on Windows Azure, we have had the goal of bringing the same experience on Azure as our users have on EC2. As part of our QA process, we publish daily images (http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com) for EC2 and OpenStack users.

Today, I am pleased to announce that Windows Azure Cloud Image dailies are now being published for Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS, 12.10, 13.04 and the current development version 13.10. Due to the way that Windows Azure image publication works, these images will appear with in a three or four hours of the EC2 images and will be published to all Windows Azure regions.

However, the daily images will not be available in the Windows Azure Gallery; these images are published to API users. In the coming weeks, we'll throw up some pages to help our API users find the current images, but for now, you can use the API Query tools to find the images.

The initial daily images are:

• Ubuntu_DAILY_BUILD-precise-12_04_2-LTS-amd64-server-20130502-en-us-30GB
• Ubuntu_DAILY_BUILD-raring-13_04-amd64-server-20130501-en-us-30GB
• Ubuntu_DAILY_BUILD-saucy-13_10-amd64-server-20130502-en-us-30GB  

We are pleased to announce that Canonical has stood up official mirrors in HP Cloud's AZ-1, 2, and 3 regions.

If you are using Ubuntu Server 12.10 Cloud Images, there is no action to take; 12.10 images are by default configured to use the new mirror address.

For Ubuntu 12.04 instances, the default Ubuntu image does not automatically use the in-HP Cloud mirrors. We are currently working with HP to publish a new image that defaults to the local mirrors. If you would like to switch to the new in-HP mirrors, simply run:
          
    $ sudo sed -i -e \
            's,^archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu,nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu,g'  \
             /etc/apt/sources.list 

    $ sudo apt-get -y update

Note: *.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com is configured using split-horizon DNS. This means that the DNS answer to queries is based on the askering IP address; only queries originating within HP Cloud are answered with the HP Cloud mirror addresses. If your DNS resolver[s] is not based in HP Cloud, then you will be unable to benefit from these new mirrors. 
 

Shortly after introducing the Vagrant images, a number of users provided very valuable feedback. The general gist was "sure this is a nice, but useless." For Cloud Images, we definitely take our user feedback to heart. 

Earlier we announced[1] that Canonical had worked this cycle to enable more frequent releases to the Ubuntu Cloud Images stable and long term releases. As of today, we are pleased to announce that Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS, 11.10, 12.04 LTS and 12.10 are now fully enabled to follow the kernel SRU schedule with automated update releases. This means that within 24 hours of most SRU kernel releases, a new Ubuntu Cloud Image will be published.

Please note: with this change, the release notes have been moved the http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases website. You can find them under <SUITE>/release/unpacked/release-notes.txt. Effective today, all emails announcing these new updates are discontinued. 

However, at this time, 12.04 LTS and 12.10 Cloud Images are not yet being promoted automatically to Windows Azure. We expect that as Windows Azure moves closer to General Availability (i.e. moves out of preview status) that automatic promotion will be enabled.

Please use either Cloud-Images[2], the AMI Finder[3], the RSS feed[4], or "ubuntu-cloudimg-query" from the Cloud-Utils packages to find the latest released images.

[1] http://blog.utlemming.org/2013/01/ubuntu-cloud-images-automated-release.html
     https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-cloud-announce/2013-January/000045.html
     https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-cloud/2013-January/000879.html
     https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ec2ubuntu/Mg-qpfguE10
[2] http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases
[3] http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/locator/ec2/
[4] http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/rss/

Traditionally, updates for the stable release and long term stable release Cloud Images have been on an ad-hoc basis; reasons for releasing new images were generally restricted to security, critical bugs, and stale images. This ad-hoc update cycle meant that updated images were only released every three months or so, and for older releases, as often as six months.

While quality has always been a concern and top priority, during this cycle, Canonical has worked to vastly improve the QA infrastructure to support our Cloud Images. For example, when a new kernel is released, the daily build for that image is now put through the complete QA process. This change in process has allowed us to identify and automatically evaluate whether or not an image is a good candidate for update release.


As such, we are pleased to announce in the next few weeks, we will be turning on automated updates for Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS, 11.10, 12.04 LTS, and 12.10. This means that approximately every three to four weeks, a new, freshened image will be released. The release cadence will follow the kernel SRU process.

The first updated image to be released under this process was 10.04 LTS[1].

There are a variety of ways to find the released Cloud Images. The two easiest ways are to go the AMI Finder[2] or use http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/<SUITE>/release. For example, http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/lucid/release would bring you to the last AMI's for Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS.

Due to this change, we will discontinuing the email notifications of updated images to the various email lists for updated images. At UDS-R in Copenhagen[3], we discussed email notifications and the decision was reached to discontinue them. Replacing email notification is the RSS feed[4] and release notes (example from 10.04 LTS)[5].

As Cloud Image suites are migrated to automated releases, we will follow up on this announcement.

Finally, for 12.04 LTS and later, this change will introduce lock-step update releases with Windows Azure. As Windows Azure moves towards GA, we have been working to have the same releases for the Ubuntu Server Cloud Images on both EC2 and Windows Azure.

As always, your feedback is most appreciated. Please feel free to follow on either this post or to email concerns direct to me.

[1] http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/lucid/release-20130124/
[2] http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/locator/ec2/
[3] http://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/servercloud-r-cloudtesting
[4] http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/rss/
[5] http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/lucid/release-20130124/unpacked/release_notes.txt

We are pleased to announce the availability of beta Vagrant Cloud Images. These images have been customized to work with the Vagrant development environment, and are based on the Ubuntu Cloud Images. As such, these are vanilla images. They do, however, have the Virtualboxguest additions found in the Universe archive (required for Vagrant integration). 

For those who use Vagrant, your feedback is essential. Please feel free to send feedback via the ubuntu-cloud@lists.ubuntu.com mailing list.

The images are approximately 256M in size, and are configured for 512MB of RAM. They use a custom cloud-init user-data to drive the first boot. And of course, they have the vagrant user with vagrant insecure SSH key pre-installed. During the beta period, we will not be promoting any of the Vagrant boxes with the regular releases of the Ubuntu Cloud Images and will only publish the daily image builds; after the beta period these images will be promoted with the releases.

To kick the tires on the Vagrant images, take a look at http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/vagrant. I will be working with the fine folks at Vagrant to get the official Ubuntu Vagrant images listed at  http://www.vagrantbox.es/

If you are interested in learning about the Vagrant development environment, head on over to Vagrant for more information.

For sometime people have been asking me "when will Cloud Images sport a Twitter account?" Well, wait no longer, because the Ubuntu Cloud Image Builder now has a Twitter Account.

The Cloud Image process will now Tweet when a new image is build and published -- dailies, new release updates and new versions being releases. For right we're only Tweeting EC2 information, but once Windows Azure goes GA, we'll start Tweeting that too.

So in the meantime, you can follow our faithful Cloud Builder as it tweets merrily its build progress at @UbuCloudImages. But I'll have to warn you, the Cloud Builder won't response to tweets, so we're not snubbing you if there is no response.

If Twitter isn't your cup of tea, or coffee, or <insert liquid refreshment here>, how about RSS. A while back in November, we introduced RSS feeds for the Ubuntu Cloud Images.

There is a feed for both released images and dailies. The feeds are really simple: they show all the builds that are available. This is a great way to track new releases of the Ubuntu Cloud Images if you don't want want to follow Twitter, hate checking your email or you don't care much for reading our announcement emails.

Anyway, enjoy the RSS.

• 12.04.1: http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/azure/precise/20121218/
• 12.10: http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/azure/quantal/20121218/

• hv-kvp-daemon-init: handles hypervisor communication with Ubuntu
• walinuxagent: Windows Azure Linux provisioning agent and Azure fabric registration agent
• A kernel based on 3.7 or backports of the HV stack Ubuntu 13.04 kernels support the HV stack normally.
• Install the linux-tools-common package.
• 12.04 and 12.10 Ubuntu kernels will need the linux-backports-hv-{precise,quantal}-virtual package installed. This package is a complete backport of the _entire_ HV stack from Ubuntu 13.04.
• Set /etc/apt/sources.list to use the hosted-in-Azure Ubuntu mirrors (http://azure.archive.ubuntu.com), which will use the speedy mirrors local to your Azure virtual machine. WARNING: these mirrors are dreadfully slow outside Azure.

Special thanks