Minimal Ubuntu images are not available in AWS Chinese Regions

[D Zhang]

Currently, Minimal Ubuntu images are not in Chinese regions:

~> aws --region cn-northwest-1 ec2 describe-images --owners 837727238323 --filters Name=root-device-type,Values=ebs Name=architecture,Values=x86_64 Name=name,Values='*ubuntu-min*' --query 'sort_by(Images, &Name)'
[]

Currently, there are no workarounds. The image in http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/minimal/releases/ cannot be loaded to AWS directly:

{
    "ImportImageTasks": [
        {
            "ImportTaskId": "import-ami-06cc0a790c0fb2d55",
            "SnapshotDetails": [
                {
                    "DiskImageSize": 2361393152.0,
                    "Format": "RAW",
                    "Status": "completed",
                    "UserBucket": {
                        "S3Bucket": "ifanr-ami",
                        "S3Key": "ubuntu-minimal/ubuntu-19.10-minimal-cloudimg-amd64-20191113.img"
                    }
                }
            ],
            "Status": "deleted",
            "StatusMessage": "ClientError: Multiple different grub/menu.lst files found."
        }
    ]
}

[Philip Roche (philroche)]

Thank you for filing this bug. We are aware of this issue and it is on our backlog to address it.

We will update this bug once complete.

One workaround is to copy the underlying snapshot from an aws partition AMI using https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/copy-snapshot.html and copy to s3 aws-cn and create new AMI from that snapshot.