We’ve been providing Ubuntu images in the Brightbox image library since we first launched, but what you might not know is that we provide weekly builds of current Ubuntu images and daily builds of the Ubuntu testing image too!
Our “official” Ubuntu images (currently Lucid, Natty, Oneiric and
Precise) can be viewed with the brightbox-images tool:
$ brightbox-images list --type=official | grep Ubuntu
id owner type created_on status size name
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
img-wwgbb brightbox official 2012-05-01 public 769 Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 LTS server (i686)
img-alkg0 brightbox official 2012-05-01 public 769 Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 LTS server (x86_64)
img-ipb1z brightbox official 2012-05-01 public 769 Ubuntu Natty 11.04 server (i686)
img-bj33p brightbox official 2012-05-01 public 1025 Ubuntu Natty 11.04 server (x86_64)
img-57v0y brightbox official 2012-05-01 public 1025 Ubuntu Oneiric 11.10 server (i686)
img-hsxaq brightbox official 2012-05-01 public 1025 Ubuntu Oneiric 11.10 server (x86_64)
img-at0ha brightbox official 2012-04-26 public 1025 Ubuntu Precise 12.04 LTS server (i686)
img-9h5cv brightbox official 2012-04-26 public 1025 Ubuntu Precise 12.04 LTS server (x86_64)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Our weekly images are automatically registered by the build systems. They
are built directly from the upstream package repositories using
brightbox-builder - a derivative of the live-build system
on Ubuntu - which is published in our main package archive on
launchpad
They’re published to a separate account (acc-tqs4c) and whilst they
are publicly available, they’re not marked as official and so don’t
show up in the image list by default. To list them, use the --show-all
option with the account selector:
$ brightbox-images list --account=acc-tqs4c --show-all | grep Ubuntu
id owner type created_on status size name
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
img-iag8z acc-tqs4c upload 2012-05-29 public 184 Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 LTS server (i686)
img-236c6 acc-tqs4c upload 2012-05-29 public 187 Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 LTS server (x86_64)
img-461mo acc-tqs4c upload 2012-04-07 public 769 Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 server (i686)
img-tog3u acc-tqs4c upload 2012-04-07 public 1025 Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 server (x86_64)
img-zk9ns acc-tqs4c upload 2012-05-28 public 231 Ubuntu Natty 11.04 server (i686)
img-22inw acc-tqs4c upload 2012-05-28 public 236 Ubuntu Natty 11.04 server (x86_64)
img-ee176 acc-tqs4c upload 2012-05-30 public 248 Ubuntu Oneiric 11.10 server (i686)
img-pgbts acc-tqs4c upload 2012-05-30 public 269 Ubuntu Oneiric 11.10 server (x86_64)
img-iq544 acc-tqs4c upload 2012-05-30 public 252 Ubuntu Precise 12.04 LTS server (i686)
img-4crqv acc-tqs4c upload 2012-05-30 public 271 Ubuntu Precise 12.04 LTS server (x86_64)
img-qy6dp acc-tqs4c upload 2012-05-30 public 1281 Ubuntu Quantal 12.10 server (i686)
img-orqk4 acc-tqs4c upload 2012-05-30 public 1281 Ubuntu Quantal 12.10 server (x86_64)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The images are registered weekly and the previous week’s images are marked as deprecated (which means they don’t show up in the listings but are still available to build servers if you know the identifier). After three months, the deprecated images are deleted.
The latest testing release of Ubuntu (currently Quantal Quetzal 12.10) is built on a daily basis.
We update the “official” images occasionally - usually when new releases of Ubuntu come out. They are taken from the weekly image and get a bit of testing to make sure they boot properly etc before they are made “official”. Older versions are deprecated and generally kept around as long as the distribution is supported.
The idea is that the official images are stable and their identifiers can be relied on not to change regularly, but the pre-installed packages may be out of date (and may require security updates). Much like the installation CDs.
On the other hand the weekly images have up-to-date packages and include the latest testing releases as well as the current stable versions. But the identifiers change regularly and they aren’t guaranteed to work (though the supported releases are tested upstream by Ubuntu of course, so you shouldn’t expect problems!)
If you want to hard code an image identifier in your build scripts, then you’re probably best using the official images; you just need to remember to apply any important updates once it’s booted!
However, if you want to get started quickly with a more recent image then the weekly image archive is your friend.
We’re working on arranging something similar for RPM based distros like Fedora and Centos, which we hope to announce in the next week or two.