In Linux and UNIX, there are two common ways to prepare an AMI that offer a mix of ease of use and detailed customization levels.

The easiest method involves starting from an existing public AMI and modifying it according to your requirements. This is applicable for both Amazon EBS-backed and Amazon S3-backed AMIs, and is described in Starting with an Existing AMI.

Another approach is to build a fresh installation either on a stand-alone machine or on an empty file system mounted by loopback. This is only applicable for AMIs backed by Amazon S3 and entails building an operating system installation from scratch. For more information, see Preparing an AMI through a Loopback File.

After the installation package has been built to your satisfaction, you must create and register it as described in Creating an AMI.

Note

Preparing an AMI backed by Amazon S3 requires you to download and install the AMI tools in addition to the API tools. The AMI tools are not required for AMIs that use Amazon EBS volumes as their root devices. For more information on AMI tools, refer to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide. This section provides detailed instructions on preparing an AMI. For information on quickly launching an existing AMI, go to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide.