Packer

Packer is an automation tool that builds images. Written in go and able to create a wide variety of virtual images including AWS amis. Packer uses templates to build machine images.

• packer binaries

• install packer:

  curl -o packer.zip https://releases.hashicorp.com/packer/1.3.4/packer_1.3.4_linux_amd64.zip
  unzip packer.zip
  

• base your images on the latest AWS Amazon Linux 2 ami

• Amazon owner is

  aws ec2 describe-images --image-id `aws ec2 describe-images --owners amazon --filters 'Name=name,Values=amzn2-ami-hvm-2.0.????????-x86_64-gp2' 'Name=state,Values=available' --output json | jq -r '.Images | sort_by(.CreationDate) | last(.[]).ImageId'` | jq -r .Images[].OwnerId
  137112412989
  

  therefore to use the latest AWS Amazon Linux 2 ami, your packer template should have something that looks like:

    "source_ami_filter": {
      "filters": {
        "name": "amzn2-ami-hvm-2.0.????????-x86_64-gp2",
        "root-device-type": "ebs",
        "virtualization-type": "hvm"
      },
      "most_recent": true,
      "owners": [
        "137112412989"
      ]
    },