Chapter 18. Preparing and uploading custom GCE images to Google Cloud

Procedure

1. Use a text editor to create a gcp-config.toml configuration file with the following content:

   provider = "gcp"
   [settings]
   bucket = "<gcp_bucket>"
   region = "<gcp_storage_region>"
   object = "<object_key>"
   credentials = "<gcp_credentials>"

   • <gcp_bucket> points to an existing bucket. This field stores the intermediate storage object of the image to be uploaded.
   • <gcp_storage_region> is both a regular Google storage region and a dual or multi-region.
   • <object_key> is the name of an intermediate storage object. It must not exist before the upload, and when the upload process finishes, it is deleted . If the object name does not end with .tar.gz, the object name automatically adds the extension.

   • <gcp_credentials> is a Base64-encoded scheme of the credentials JSON file downloaded from Google Cloud. The credentials determine which project the Google Cloud uploads the image to.

     Note

     Specifying <gcp_credentials> in the gcp-config.toml file is optional if you use a different mechanism to authenticate with Google Cloud. For other authentication methods, see Authenticating with Google Cloud.

2. Retrieve the <gcp_credentials> from the JSON file downloaded from Google Cloud.

   $ sudo base64 -w 0 cee-gcp-nasa-476a1fa485b7.json

3. Create a compose with an additional image name and cloud provider profile:

   $ sudo image-builder build gce --blueprint <blueprint_name> <image_key> gcp-config.toml

   The image build, upload, and cloud registration processes can take up to ten minutes to complete.

1. Credentials specified with the image-builder command in the configuration file.

2. Application Default Credentials from the Google Cloud SDK library, which tries to automatically find a way to authenticate by using the following options:

   1. If you set the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable, Application Default Credentials tries to load and use credentials from the file that the variable points to.

   2. Application Default Credentials tries to authenticate by using the service account attached to the resource that is running the code. For example, Google Compute Engine VM.

      Note

      You must use the Google Cloud credentials to determine which Google Cloud project to upload the images to. To upload to different projects, specify the credentials in gcp-config.toml with the image-builder command.