Add /home/ubuntu/README.txt to EC2 images

[Eric Hammond]

Given that the Ubuntu images for EC2 published by Canonical differ from other EC2 images and from other Ubuntu images, there is a bit of a learning bump folks have to overcome to successfully log in and accomplish things as root.

In particular, users must ssh to the "ubuntu" user rather than the "root" user. We already have a message output directing folks to "ubuntu" if they try "root" and the Canonical documentation for EC2 talks about this. I don't think there is much else to do for this.

Once a user is logged in as "ubuntu" they may not realize that they can "sudo" without a password as this is not a common practice in other environments. Though there is an motd login message indicating this, it might be a good idea to put some further documentation in a README.txt in the home directory where the user initially logs in.

  /home/ubuntu/README.txt

The name could be more descriptive like README-EC2.txt or whetever you think would get somebody's attention after they run "ls".

In addition to explaining how to use "sudo" on the EC2 instances, this document could provide pointers to other documentation including, perhaps, how to find the latest AMI id.

[Chuck Short (zulcss)]

I rather see this in the wiki. Soren comments?

Regards
chuck

[Eric Hammond (esh)]

The point of this request is because people may not start with the wiki or even know that the wiki exists. A README file in the directory where folks log in can actually point users to the wiki for more information. I'm not adamant about adding this, but just thought it might be a good idea as I've found I'm not the only person who doesn't read the motd but does do an "ls" on first login. Providing more pointers to information in places where folks look doesn't have a down side to me.