How can I test my Amazon AMI image on my local machine?

I was uploading my Amazon image for the 3rd time. First time it didn't boot, second attempt I couldn't log in via ssh, third attempt , success! Admittedly the bundling didn't take too long for a 10GB file, and even the upload on our work network  (this was an S3 image) wasn't that long but 'm sure I wasted a good few hours. I did my obligatory google and came across a few ideas. First install Xen, hmm that conflicted with my vmware install. Next try eucalyptus, seems like a big hammer for a small nail, tried on another machine and the eucalyptus kernel failed to boot and I had to uninstall to get my machine back. Next I found a few great resources about building your image and some conversion techniques including how to download an AMI image. By building on these articles I was able to get my AMI image to load in a lightweight emulator qemu/kvm that was a simple package install on my fedora 11 machine. I've added this script, ec2localboot.sh to the home page of our new amazon cost monitor and calculator. I have a few things to add (it relies on an up-rev copy of qemu so I haven't got to backport it to older OS's yet) but I hope its simple enough to use as is. Feel free to modify for your own use.  

Date: August, 24 2010
Url: http://www.java.net/blog/calvinaustin/archive/2010/08/24/how-can-i-test-my-amazon-ami-image-my-local-machine

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