How to respond to AWS notification of new AMI

Rocky Linux General
1

I run a Rocky Linux system on an AWS EC2 instance. It’s been running fine. I do a dnf update at least weekly, from the root user.

Today, I got an automated “product update” notification with the subject line as follows: Product Update: Upgrade to Rocky Linux 8 (Official) new version. It’s body is:

Greetings from AWS Marketplace,

Thank you for subscribing to Rocky Linux 8 (Official).

We are writing to inform you that Rocky Linux has added a new version to Rocky Linux 8 (Official) on AWS Marketplace. As an existing customer, your subscription to the product, any running instances and access to previous versions are unaffected. However, Rocky Linux does recommend you to update to the latest version, Rocky Linux 8 (Official)/resf-rl8-20211114 by visiting https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B099NRB6ZB.

For additional questions or upgrade information, please contact Rocky Linux directly. Visit the seller's profile page on AWS Marketplace.

Release notes for Rocky Linux 8 (Official)/resf-rl8-20211114:

https://docs.rockylinux.org/release_notes/8.5

Thank you,

The AWS Marketplace Team

Visit AWS Marketplace.

Amazon Web Services, Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com is a registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. This message was produced and distributed by Amazon Web Services Inc., 410 Terry Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98109-5210

I think I understand how to manage system updates using tools like dnf, snap, and others. I do NOT have any understanding about how to gracefully migrate an existing EC2 instance from one version of a VMI to another.

When I need to spawn more instances in the future, should be build them from this new VMI (from scratch)? I would rather snapshot the EC2 instance that I know works and then build a new EC2 instance from that snapshot.

Do I need to do anything in response to this email?

2

That’s just an announcement telling you a new AMI is available. Large shops have automated processes that use Packer to build custom AMIs. It lets us know that a new base AMI is avaialble so we can start with that instead of an older AMI to base from.

If you are doing regular dnf updates, you are getting the same patches.

3

Thanks. I wonder if there’s a mechanism for providing that information either on the AWS page or someplace here.

Also, for what it’s worth, I had to add an extra incantation to the dnf command line today in order for it to successfully complete:

# dnf update --allowerasing

I also experienced what appeared to be some contention for mirror access while attempting the upgrade. It all did finish eventually.