Fetching Source RPMs

Amazon-hosted instances benefit from the availability supplemental tools provided by Amazon. Amazon does not generally make these tools directly availabile for download and porting. Instead, it is necessary to:

1. Instantiate an Amazon Linux AMI
2. Identify the AWS tools you wish to port
3. Use the get_reference_source Python script to pull copies of the SRPMs from the S3 hosted software repos
4. Copy the SRPMs to your target installation environment (e.g., "CentOS 6")
5. Use the rpmbuild utility (found in the "Development tools" Yum package-group) to create RPMs from the SRPMs.
6. Install the resultant RPMs to your instance.

As of the creation of this RPM, the following AWS-related packages were available for pull-down using the get_reference_source method:

• aws-amitools-ec2
• aws-apitools-as
• aws-apitools-cfn
• aws-apitools-common
• aws-apitools-ec2
• aws-apitools-elb
• aws-apitools-iam
• aws-apitools-mon
• aws-apitools-rds
• aws-cfn-bootstrap
• aws-cli-plugin-cloudwatch-logs
• awslogs
• aws-scripts-ses
• aws-vpc-nat

Update Scheduling

Most of the AWS packages change fairly infrequently. It's possible to subscribe to an SNS topic arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:137112412989:amazon-linux-ami-updates that will result in receiving notice any time Amazon releases an updated AMI. AMI updates typically include updates to one or more of the above existing RPMs or release of new RPMs.

Notes:

• The aws-cli RPM is not relevant to Red Hat or CentOS 6/7. It is recommended to get its functionality via the install-bundle ZIP.
• If building on CentOS 7, it is recommended to add %dist .el7 to ${HOME}/.rpmmacros. Otherwise, RPMs will have el7.centos within their Release-name field.
• Installation of these RPMs will pull in a number of dependences - mostly related to Java, Ruby and X11.
• When attempting to build or install the RPMs, ensure that the build/install host has appropriate yum repositories enabled to satisfy the pulled-in dependencies.

Build Aids:

To help ensure that RPMs are fairly easily created from the SRPMs, the following CloudFormation templates are provided

• srpmhost-amzn.tmpl.json: Launches an Amazon Linux instance. Uses the get_reference_source utility to download source-RPMs for all of the Amazon Linux utilities, then uploads them to S3. See the README_Template_Amzn.md for further information on using the template.
• devhost-el6.tmpl.json: Prepares an EL6-based instance's default user account's ${HOME}/.rpmmacros file and creates a ${HOME}/rpmbuild directory and installs the @development RPM group plus further, stand-alone RPMs required to successfully build the RPMs. Downloads source-RPMs from S3, creates el6-installable RPMs and loades them back to S3. See the README_Template_el6.md for further information on using the template.
• devhost-el7.tmpl.json: Prepares an EL7-based instance's default user account's ${HOME}/.rpmmacros file and creates a ${HOME}/rpmbuild directory and installs the @development RPM group plus further, stand-alone RPMs required to successfully build the RPMs. Downloads source-RPMs from S3, creates el7-installable RPMs and loades them back to S3. See the README_Template_el7.md for further information on using the template.