Creating Custom Amazon Machine Images

You can create your custom image on the basis of the SmartBear LoadUI agent image. This image is available in all regions. After you start a new instance from the image, you can modify it according to your needs. After that, follow the instructions below to remove private information and save the instance as your custom image.

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To create your own custom image, follow the instructions below. In this guide, we assume that you are creating a Linux instance. To create a Windows instance, use the Windows interface to perform similar actions.

In this example, we will use the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS operating system.

LoadUI agent 3.5.0 and later does not support Ubuntu 18.04 and earlier.

Launch an Amazon instance

Configure the Amazon instance

Install the LoadUI agent

Configure the LoadUI agent settings

Set up the LoadUI agent to run as a service

Now that you can run the LoadUI agent, set it up to run as a service.

For Ubuntu 20.04

1. First, create a systemd service file:

   sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/loaduiagent.service

2. Paste the following definition to the created file:

   [Unit]
   Description=LoadUI Agent
   
   [Service]
   ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/SmartBear/LoadUIAgent-x.y.z/bin/loaduiagent.sh
   Restart=always
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
   

3. Enable the service file to start the service on boot:

   sudo systemctl enable loaduiagent.service

4. Now, you can start the LoadUI agent as a service:

   sudo systemctl start loaduiagent.service

5. You can check if the LoadUI service is running in the following way:

   sudo systemctl status loaduiagent.service

For Ubuntu 14.04

LoadUI agent 3.5.0 and later does not support Ubuntu 18.04 and earlier. Use this instruction only if you run an older version of the LoadUI agent.

Create an upstart script to be run every time you start the instance.

• First, create the script file:

  sudo nano /etc/init/loadui.conf

• Then, paste the following code to the created file:

  description "LoadUI agent"
  author "[email protected]"
  start on runlevel [234] stop on runlevel [0156]
  respawn
  exec /home/ubuntu/SmartBear/LoadUIAgent-3.52.0/bin/loaduiagent.sh

• Now, you can start the LoadUI agent as a service:

  sudo service loadui start

• You can check if the LoadUI service is running in the following way:

  sudo service loadui status

Before creating an image, make sure you remove the ssh keys, bash history and other private information, especially if you intend to provide other users with access to your image. This is necessary regardless of how you created your instance.

Amazon provides a detailed instruction on removing private data from your image. You can follow it or use our guidelines.

Complete the following steps to remove all private information from your image:

1. Connect to the instance by using a secure channel.

2. In the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file, set the following values:

   • Set PermitRootLogin to the without-password value.

   • Set PasswordAuthentication to the no value.

   • Set ChallengeResponseAuthentication to the no value.

3. Disable root access:

   sudo passwd -l root

4. Remove SSH host key pairs:

   sudo shred -u /etc/ssh/*_key /etc/ssh/*_key.pub

5. Add the script below to the /etc/rc.local file to inject public key credentials at launch time:

   if [ ! -d /root/.ssh ] ; then
           mkdir -p /root/.ssh
           chmod 700 /root/.ssh
   fi
   # Fetch public key using HTTP
   curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-keys/0/openssh-key > /tmp/my-key
   if [ $" width=" -eq 0 ] ; then
           cat /tmp/my-key >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
           chmod 700 /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
           rm /tmp/my-key
   fi

6. Delete the authorized_keys file:

   sudo find / -name authorized_keys -exec rm -r {} ;

7. Delete the shell history:

   sudo shred -u ~/.*history

After making sure you have removed all private data, move to the next step.

Open the Instances page in the AWS Management Console. Right-click your instance, select Image > Create Image and follow the instructions in the wizard.

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After creating the image, add the following tags to it:

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