This post is an amalgamation of Vladimir Vuksan’s Provision to cloud in 5 minutes using fog (EC2-specific) and Jeff Gran’s Bootstrapping an Ubuntu Server on Rackspace Using Cloud-Init and Fog – I contributed little more than (inexpertly) gluing them together.

Assuming you already have the Fog gem installed:

First, as a prerequisite and as Jeff Gran notes, you’ll need to create a Rackspace image with the cloud-init package installed.

Next, similar to what Vladimir Vuksan describes, create a config.rb file, and populate the following values as appropriate for your environment:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

@flavor_id = 3
@image_id = 1234567

@rackspace_username =  'example'
@rackspace_api_key = '1234....'

@private_key_path = './ssh/id_rsa'
@public_key_path = './ssh/id_rsa.pub'

The flavor_id values and image_id specify the instance size and the image you built with cloud-init installed (see the “fog” executable’s “Compute[:rackspace].flavors” and “Compute[:rackspace].images”, respectively); the Rackspace username and api_key can be retrieved from within the console under “Your Account: API Access.” The SSH key pair will be what you use to access the new instance as root.
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