Our "cloud" is currently a single machine (cloud00) set-up using Eucalyptus 2.0 to allow up to 4 simultaneous VMs.

(1) Get an account
https://cloud00.grid.hep.ph.ic.ac.uk:8443

(2) Install euca2ools software
Note to self:
This all only works in bash.
I currently running Fedora 13, the instructions are for Fedora 12, linked from the page.

[root@deathstar yum.repos.d]# cat euca.repo
[euca2ools]
name=Euca2ools
baseurl=http://www.eucalyptussoftware.com/downloads/repo/euca2ools/1.3.1/yum/fedora/
enabled=1

yum install euca2ools.x86_64 --nogpgcheck


(3) Credentials
This follows the instructions here
As me on deathstar:
https://cloud00.grid.hep.ph.ic.ac.uk:8443/#credentials
"Download Credentials"
This makes euca2-dbauer-x509.zip (zip ???)
(what did I do then ???)
ark euca2-dbauer-x509.zip
After following these instructions to the letter I end up with some really safe files:
[dbauer@deathstar ~]$ ls
ls .euca/euca2-dbauer-x509/
ls: cannot access .euca/euca2-dbauer-x509/euca2-dbauer-89372ec0-cert.pem: Permission denied
ls: cannot access .euca/euca2-dbauer-x509/jssecacerts: Permission denied
ls: cannot access .euca/euca2-dbauer-x509/cloud-cert.pem: Permission denied
ls: cannot access .euca/euca2-dbauer-x509/eucarc: Permission denied
ls: cannot access .euca/euca2-dbauer-x509/euca2-dbauer-89372ec0-pk.pem: Permission denied
cloud-cert.pem euca2-dbauer-89372ec0-cert.pem euca2-dbauer-89372ec0-pk.pem eucarc jssecacerts

In fact these are now too safe:
[dbauer@deathstar ~]$ . ~/.euca/euca2-dbauer-x509/eucarc
bash: /home/dbauer/.euca/euca2-dbauer-x509/eucarc: Permission denied
I am not sure what these permissions should be set to. So I am going for:
chmod 0700 .euca
chmod 0700 .euca/euca2-dbauer-x509
chmod 0600 ~/.euca/euca2-dbauer-x509/*


(4) "Hello World", using a preloaded image
Setup the environment and check what's there:
. ~/.euca/euca2-dbauer-x509/eucarc
[dbauer@deathstar ~]$ euca-describe-images
IMAGE eri-25D9153A fedora/initramfs-2.6.35.11-83.fc14.x86_64.img.manifest.xml admin available private x86_64 ramdisk
instance-store IMAGE eki-62AD12CE centos53/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic.manifest.xml admin available private x86_64 kernel instance-store
IMAGE eri-9CC313BA centos53/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic.manifest.xml admin available private x86_64 ramdisk instance-store
IMAGE emi-0B701135 centos53/centos.5-3.x86-64.img.manifest.xml admin available private x86_64 machine eki-62AD12CEeri-9CC313BA instance-store
IMAGE eki-9C6B1313 fedora/vmlinuz-2.6.35.11-83.fc14.x86_64.manifest.xml admin available private x86_64 kernel instance-store

[dbauer@deathstar ~]$ euca-describe-instances
[nothing]
[dbauer@deathstar ~]$ euca-describe-availability-zones
AVAILABILITYZONE cloud00 cloud00.grid.hep.ph.ic.ac.uk

Get a keypair:
euca-add-keypair test3 | tee test3.private
chmod 0600 test3.private
[dbauer@deathstar ~]$ euca-describe-keypairs
KEYPAIR test3 e1:fe:3d:59:75:9b:98:d6:16:b1:fd:35:10:2e:0b:c0:46:26:b0:5f

Go for it:
euca-run-instances -k test3 -n 1 emi-0B701135
RESERVATION r-4B1709FF dbauer dbauer-default
INSTANCE i-54450A58 emi-0B701135 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 pending test3 0 m1.small 2011-03-28T10:37:07.92Z cloud00 eki-62AD12CE eri-9CC313BA
[dbauer@deathstar ~]$ euca-describe-instances
RESERVATION r-4B1709FF dbauer default
INSTANCE i-54450A58 emi-0B701135 146.179.247.25 146.179.247.25 pending test3 0 m1.small 2011-03-28T10:37:07.92Z cloud00 eki-62AD12CE eri-9CC313BA
and after a short while:
[dbauer@deathstar ~]$ euca-describe-instances
RESERVATION r-4B1709FF dbauer default
INSTANCE i-54450A58 emi-0B701135 146.179.247.25 146.179.247.25 running test3 0 m1.small 2011-03-28T10:37:07.92Z cloud00 eki-62AD12CE eri-9CC313BA
Now that it's up and running, log on to the machine:
ssh -i test3.private root@146.179.247.25
-bash-3.2#
-bash-3.2# pwd
/root
-bash-3.2# ls -a
. .. .ssh
And because some things just have to be done:
-bash-3.2# echo "Hello World"
Hello World

Clean-up
-bash-3.2# exit
logout
Connection to 146.179.247.25 closed.
[dbauer@deathstar ~]$ euca-terminate-instances i-54450A58
INSTANCE i-54450A58
[dbauer@deathstar ~]$ euca-describe-instances
RESERVATION r-4B1709FF dbauer default
INSTANCE i-54450A58 emi-0B701135 146.179.247.25 146.179.247.25 shutting-down test3 0 m1.small 2011-03-28T10:37:07.92Z cloud00 eki-62AD12CE eri-9CC313BA


Acronyms
EMI: Eucalyptus Machine Image
EKI: Eucalyptus Kernel Image
ERI: Eucalyptus Ramdisk Image
(Not sure where I found this definition:) A machine image, or more specifically, a Eucalyptus Machine Image (EMI) is a template, stored in Walrus, that can be used to create and run instances. A EMI is a combination of: a kernel image, a ramdisk image, and one or more virtual hard disk images. Each of the images EKI, ERI, and EMI have associated xml files containing meta-data about the corresponding images respectively.