Run UBOS on an Amazon Web Services EC2 virtual server

/docs/linux/installation/x86_ec2/

To run UBOS on EC2 in the green (“production”) Release Channel, click on the icon below and follow the Amazon wizard. This will UBOS on an Amazon Web Services EC2 x86_64 virtual server.

Warning

Do NOT use a t2 (old-generation) instance type; this image does not have XEN support and won’t boot on t2 instances.

Warning

Running on EC2 ARM servers is currently not supported.

Here are some recommended values for the parameters that Amazon wants you to specify. However, UBOS is not very picky, so many different values should work as well.

  • Choose an instance type based on your budget and requirements. To try out UBOS and for personal sites, a “Free Tier” server should be sufficient.

  • Keep the root disk at 16GB.

  • Name it whatever you like.

  • You need to open the SSH, HTTP and HTTPS ports, otherwise you won’t be able to log into your server or access web Apps it runs. Create a security rule that reflects that.

  • Create a new key pair unless you have a suitable one already. Name it “UBOS shepherd” if you like. Download the private key and save it on your local machine in a secure place. If you are on a Mac or a Linux box,

    % chmod 400 <your-key-file>
    

    is a good idea.

Once your server has booted:

  1. Determine its public IP address from the AWS site. Then ssh into it as user shepherd:

    % ssh -i <your-key-file> -l shepherd <ip>
    
  2. Now: wait. UBOS needs to generate a few cryptographic keys before it is ready to use and initialize a few other things on the first boot. That might take a few minutes. To determine whether UBOS ready, execute:

    % systemctl is-system-running
    
  3. Update UBOS to the latest and greatest:

    % sudo ubos-admin update
    
  4. You are now ready for Setting up your first Site and App.

Other release channels

To run UBOS on EC2 in the yellow (“beta”) Release Channel, click on the icon below and follow the Amazon wizard.

Warning

Do NOT use a t2 (old-generation) instance type; this image does not have XEN support and won’t boot on t2 instances.