Canonical has released an updated series of Ubuntu AMIs for EC2. When starting new EC2 instances, you should use the latest AMI ids to pick up kernel security fixes. If you have Ubuntu 10.04 running on a t1.micro instance type, you should at least upgrade the software packages to get the patch for the rebooting issue:
sudo apt-get update &&
sudo apt-get upgrade
For your convenience, the table at the top of Alestic.com automatically displays the latest AMIs published by Canonical, as well as the AMIs that I published for older versions of Ubuntu.
What are the chances of getting a simple REST api or something similar for querying what the current AMI ids are? Just a thought.... I suppose I could always scrape em too.
By the way, thanks for all your work with Ubuntu on AWS. It really makes my life easier!
Hi Eric,
Do you recommend apt-get over something like aptitude?
Michael
justinpitts: You can find the latest AMI ids in a format suitable for querying here:
http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/query/
Michael: I doubt I know any better than you do in this area. I originally learned with apt-get, so I am most comfortable with it. I've heard that aptitude has some benefits, but I haven't run into any problems with apt-get that convinced me to switch over.