How to send parameters to EC2 instance aws - amazon-web-services

I am fairly new to AWS and would like your suggestions. The problem I would like to solve is that I want to automate the process. I have this ec2 image running ubuntu and I want to call this executable "executable_hello_world_repeat" inside the image which prints "Hello World" every second. and when calling the executable I want to add input parameters such as "executable_hello_world_repeat -n10" this would print "hello world" 10 times.
Manually I can do the following:
go to AWS management console and choose the ec2 image to start
check if the instance is running successfully
from the terminal call "executable_hello_world_repeat -n10"
it prints the "Hello World"
I want to write a program to do them all programatically. Eventually I will have a web page in React/JS and automate this process.
Thanks for reading.

When an Amazon EC2 instance is first launched, a User Data script can be provided, which is automatically executed as the root user towards the end of the boot process. You can use this script to install software, configure settings, start process, etc.
Please note that this script only runs on the first boot, because the software does not need to be installed on subsequent boots.
If you want a script to run on every boot, put it in the /var/lib/cloud/scripts/per-boot/ directory.
If you later want to trigger a script to run, then you will need some mechanism that receives this request and runs the script. A few ways you could do this are:
Run a web server on the instance and the request comes via an HTTP / REST request, or
Trigger the AWS Systems Manager Run Command that will cause a script to be run on the instance, or even multiple instances, or
Have a program or script running on the instance that is continuously polling an Amazon SQS queue. When a message is received from the queue, trigger a program/script to process the message. This is known as a "Worker" that pulls from the Queue
The EC2 instance is basically just a normal Linux instance, so you'll need to somehow get something to trigger on the instance when desired.

Related

AWS BeanStalk: Often restarts the service automatically

I have a super small C# .NET Framework web application that I run on AWS Beanstalk. It works fine, except for one peculiar thing:
AWS seems to restart the service with unregular interval. I can see this as I can see log prints that only happens on startup.
In this case I am using ServiceStack AppHostBase, which has a Configure method that should be executed only once, on startup. In this method, a log print is done, and this gets executed between every 15 min to 2 hours approximately, indicating that the service is restarted at those times:
No update of the build has been done at those times seen above.
The Beanstalk configuration looks like this:
I would like to know why it restarts and what I can do to stop it.

GoCD Custom Command

I am trying to run a very simple custom command "echo helloworld" in GoCD as per the Getting Started Guide Part 2 however, the job does not finish with the Console saying Waiting for console logs and raw output saying Console log for this job is unavailable as it may have been purged by Go or deleted externally.
My job looks like the following which was taken from typing "echo" in the Lookup Command (which is different to the Getting Started example which I tried first with the same result)
Judging from the screenshot, the problem seems to be that no agent is assigned to the task. For an agent to be assigned, it must satisfy all of these conditions:
An agent must be running, and connected to the server
The agent must be enabled on the "Agents" page
If you use environments, the job and the agent need to be in the same environment
The agent needs to have all of the resources assigned that are configured in the job
Found the issue.
The Pipelines have to be in the same Environment to work.

Amazon EC2 custom AMI not running bootstrap (user-data)

I have encountered an issue when creating custom AMIs (images) on EC2 instances. If I start up a Windows default 2012 server instance with a custom bootstrap/user-data script such as;
<powershell>
PowerShell "(New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/2/2/3224B87F-CFA0-4E70-BDA3-3DE650EFEBA5/vcredist_x64.exe','C:\vcredist_x64.exe')"
</powershell>
It will work as intended and go to the URL and download the file, and store it on the C: Drive.
But if I setup a Windows Server Instance, then create a image from it, and store it as a Custom AMI, then deploy it with the exact same custom user-data script it will not work. But if I go to the instance url (http://169.254.169.254/latest/user-data) it will show the script has imported successfully but has not been executed.
After checking the error logs I have noticed this on a regular occasion:
Failed to fetch instance metadata http://169.254.169.254/latest/user-data with exception The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found.
Update 4/15/2017: For EC2Launch and Windows Server 2016 AMIs
Per AWS documentation for EC2Launch, Windows Server 2016 users can continue using the persist tags introduced in EC2Config 2.1.10:
For EC2Config version 2.1.10 and later, or for EC2Launch, you can use
true in the user data to enable the plug-in after
user data execution.
User data example:
<powershell>
insert script here
</powershell>
<persist>true</persist>
For subsequent boots:
Windows Server 2016 users must additionally enable configure and enable EC2Launch instead of EC2Config. EC2Config was deprecated on Windows Server 2016 AMIs in favor of EC2Launch.
Run the following powershell to schedule a Windows Task that will run the user data on next boot:
C:\ProgramData\Amazon\EC2-Windows\Launch\Scripts\InitializeInstance.ps1 –Schedule
By design, this task is disabled after it is run for the first time. However, using the persist tag causes Invoke-UserData to schedule a separate task via Register-FunctionScheduler, to persist your user data on subsequent boots. You can see this for yourself at C:\ProgramData\Amazon\EC2-Windows\Launch\Module\Scripts\Invoke-Userdata.ps1.
Further troubleshooting:
If you're having additional issues with your user data scripts, you can find the user data execution logs at C:\ProgramData\Amazon\EC2-Windows\Launch\Log\UserdataExecution.log for instances sourced from the WS 2016 base AMI.
Original Answer: For EC2Config and older versions of Windows Server
User data execution is automatically disabled after the initial boot. When you created your image, it is probable that execution had already been disabled. This is configurable manually within C:\Program Files\Amazon\Ec2ConfigService\Settings\Config.xml.
The documentation for "Configuring a Windows Instance Using the EC2Config Service" suggests several options:
Programmatically create a scheduled task to run at system start using schtasks.exe /Create, and point the scheduled task to the user data script (or another script) at C:\Program Files\Amazon\Ec2ConfigServer\Scripts\UserScript.ps1.
Programmatically enable the user data plug-in in Config.xml.
Example, from the documentation:
<powershell>
$EC2SettingsFile="C:\Program Files\Amazon\Ec2ConfigService\Settings\Config.xml"
$xml = [xml](get-content $EC2SettingsFile)
$xmlElement = $xml.get_DocumentElement()
$xmlElementToModify = $xmlElement.Plugins
foreach ($element in $xmlElementToModify.Plugin)
{
if ($element.name -eq "Ec2SetPassword")
{
$element.State="Enabled"
}
elseif ($element.name -eq "Ec2HandleUserData")
{
$element.State="Enabled"
}
}
$xml.Save($EC2SettingsFile)
</powershell>
Starting with EC2Config version 2.1.10, you can use <persist>true</persist> to enable the plug-in after user data execution.
Example, from the documentation:
<powershell>
insert script here
</powershell>
<persist>true</persist>
Another solution that worked for me is to run Sysprep with EC2Launch.
The issue is that AWS doesn't reestablish the route to the profile service (169.254.169.254) in your custom AMI. See response by SanjitPatel in this post. So when I tried to use my custom AMI to create spot requests, my new instances were failing to find user data.
Shutting down with Sysprep, essentially forces AWS re-do all setup work on the instance, as if it were run for the first time. So when you create your instance, shut it down with Sysprep and then create your custom AMI, AWS will setup the profile service route correctly for the new instances and execute your user data. This also avoids manually changing Windows Tasks and executing user data on subsequent boots, as persist tag does.
Here is a quick step-by-step:
Create an instance using one of the AWS Windows AMIs (Windows Server 2016 Nano Server doesn't support Sysprep) and passing your desired user data (this may be optional, but good to make sure AWS wires setup scripts correctly to handle user data).
Customize your instance as needed.
Shut down your instance with Sysprep. Just open EC2LaunchSettings application and click "Shutdown with Sysprep". Full instructions here.
Create your custom AMI from the instance you just shut down.
Use your custom AMI to create other instances, passing user data on instance creation. User data will be executed on instance launch. In my case, I used Spot Request screen, which had a User Data text box.
Hope this helps!
At the end of initial bootstrap (UserData) script, just append persist tag as shown below.
Works perfectly.
<powershell>
insert script here
</powershell>
<persist>true</persist>
For those people that got here from Google and are running a Server 2016 instance, it seems that this is no longer possible.
Server2016 doesn't have ec2config service and so you can't use the persist flag.
<persist>true</persist>
Described in Anthony Neace's post.
Server 2016 uses EC2Launch and I haven't yet seen how it's possible to run a script at every boot. You can run a script on the first boot, but subsequent boots will not run it.
I added below powershell script to run during the AMI bake process which helped me fix this issue. This was Windows server 2019.
$EC2LaunchInitInstance = "C:\ProgramData\Amazon\EC2-Windows\Launch\Scripts\InitializeInstance.ps1"
$EC2LaunchSysprep = "C:\ProgramData\Amazon\EC2-Windows\Launch\Scripts\SysprepInstance.ps1"
Invoke-Expression -Command "$EC2LaunchInitInstance -Schedule"
Invoke-Expression -Command "$EC2LaunchSysprep -NoShutdown"

Hello World PipeLine with ShelCommandlActivity

I'm trying to create a simple dataFlow pipeline with a single Activity of ShellCommandActivity type. I've attached the configuration of the activity and ec2 resource.
When I execute this the Ec2Resource sits in the WAITING_ON_DEPENDENCIES state then after sometime changes to TIMEDOUT. The ShellCommandActivity is always in the CANCELED state. I see the instance launch and very quicky changes to the terminated stated.
I've specified a s3 log file url, but that never gets updated.
Can anyone give me any pointers? Also is there any guidance out there on debugging this?
Thanks!!
You are currently forcing your instance to shut down after 1 minute which gives the TIMEOUT status if it can't execute in that time. Try increasing it to 50 minutes.
Also make sure you are using an AMI that runs Amazon Linux and that you are using full absolute paths in your scripts.
S3 log files are written as:
s3://bucket/folder/

AWS AutoScaling, downscale - wait for processes termination

I want to use AWS AutoScaling to scaledown a group of instances when SQS queue is short.
These instances do some heavy work that sometimes requires 5-10 minutes to complete. And I want this work to be completed before the instance termination.
I know a lot of people should have faced the same problem. Is it possible on EC2 to handle the AWS termination request and complete all my running processes before the instance is actually terminated? What is the best approach to this?
You could also use Lifecycle hooks. You would need a way to control a specific worker remotely, because AWS will select a particular instance to put in Terminating:Wait state and you need to manage that instance. You would want to take the following actions:
instruct the worker process running on the instance to not accept any more work.
wait for the worker to finish the work it already is handling
call the complete-lifecycle action.
AWS will take care of the rest for you.
ps. if you are using celery to power your workers then you can remotely ask a worker to shutdown gracefully. It won't shutdown unless it finishes with the tasks it had started executing.
Assuming you are using linux, you can create a pre-baked AMI that you use in your Launch Config attached to your Auto Scaling Group.
In the AMI you can put a script under /etc/init.d say /etc/init.d/servicesdown. This script would execute anything that you need to shutdown which would be scripts under /usr/share/services for example.
Here's kind like the gist:
servicesdown
It would always get executed when doing a graceful shutdown.
Then say on Ubuntu/Debian you would do something like this to add it to your shutdown sequence:
/usr/sbin/update-rc.d servicesdown stop 25 0 1 6 .
On CentOS/RedHat you can use the chkconfig command to add it to the right shutdown runlevel.
I stumbled onto this problem because I didn't want to terminate an instance that was doing work. Thought I'd share my findings here. There are two ways to look at this though :
I need to terminate a worker, but I only want to terminate one that's not working
I need to terminate a SPECIFIC worker and I want that specific worker to wait until it's done with the work.
If you're goal is #1, Amazon's new "Instance Protection" looks like it was designed to resolve this.
See the below link for an example, they give this code snippet as an example:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-instance-protection-for-auto-scaling/
while (true)
{
SetInstanceProtection(False);
Work = GetNextWorkUnit();
SetInstanceProtection(True);
ProcessWorkUnit(Work);
SetInstanceProtection(False);
}
I haven't tested this myself, but I see API calls related to setting the protection, so it appears that this could be integrated into the EC2 Worker App code-base and then when Scaling In, instances shouldn't be terminated if they are protected (currently working).
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaSDK/latest/javadoc/com/amazonaws/services/autoscaling/AmazonAutoScaling.html
As far as I know currently there is no option to terminate instance while gracefully shutdown and let process to complete work.
I suggest you to look at http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AutoScaling/latest/DeveloperGuide/as-configure-healthcheck.html.
We implemented it for resque workers while we are moving instance to unhealthy state and than downsizing AS. There is a script which checking constantly health state on each instance. Once instance moved to unhealthy state it stops all services gracefully and sending terminate signal to ec2.
Hope it helps you.