Why can't Terraform SSH into my EC2 instance? - amazon-web-services

Question

I am trying to ssh into a newly created EC2 instance with terraform. My host is Windows 10 and I have no problems SSHing into the instance using Bitvise SSH Client from my host but Terraform can't seem to SSH in to create a directory on the instance:
My main.tf:
provider "aws" {
region = "us-west-2"
}
resource "aws_security_group" "instance" {
name = "inlets-server-instance"
description = "Security group for the inlets server"
ingress {
from_port = 22
to_port = 22
protocol = "tcp"
cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
}
egress {
from_port = 0
to_port = 0
protocol = "-1"
cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
}
}
resource "aws_instance" "tunnel" {
ami = "ami-07b4f3c02c7f83d59"
instance_type = "t2.nano"
key_name = "${var.key_name}"
vpc_security_group_ids = [aws_security_group.instance.id]
tags = {
Name = "inlets-server"
}
provisioner "local-exec" {
command = "echo ${aws_instance.tunnel.public_ip} > ${var.public_ip_path}"
}
provisioner "remote-exec" {
inline = [
"mkdir /home/${var.ssh_user}/ansible",
]
connection {
type = "ssh"
host = "${file("${var.public_ip_path}")}"
user = "${var.ssh_user}"
private_key = "${file("${var.private_key_path}")}"
timeout = "1m"
agent = false
}
}
}
My variables.tf:
variable "key_name" {
description = "Name of the SSH key pair generated in Amazon EC2."
default = "aws_ssh_key"
}
variable "public_ip_path" {
description = "Path to the file that contains the instance's public IP address"
default = "ip_address.txt"
}
variable "private_key_path" {
description = "Path to the private SSH key, used to access the instance."
default = "aws_ssh_key.pem"
}
variable "ssh_user" {
description = "SSH user name to connect to your instance."
default = "ubuntu"
}
All I get are attempted connections:
aws_instance.tunnel (remote-exec): Connecting to remote host via SSH...
aws_instance.tunnel (remote-exec): Host: XX.XXX.XXX.XXX
aws_instance.tunnel (remote-exec): User: ubuntu
aws_instance.tunnel (remote-exec): Password: false
aws_instance.tunnel (remote-exec): Private key: true
aws_instance.tunnel (remote-exec): Certificate: false
aws_instance.tunnel (remote-exec): SSH Agent: false
aws_instance.tunnel (remote-exec): Checking Host Key: false
and it finally timeouts with:
Error: timeout - last error: dial tcp: lookup XX.XXX.XXX.XXX
: no such host
Any ideas?

Answer 1

You didn't talk about your network structure.
Is your win10 machine inside the VPC? If not, do you have internet gateway, routing table, NAT gateway properly set up?
It would be cleaner and safer to create an Elastic IP resource to access the IP address of your machine with terraform knowledge instead of trying to get it from the machine. Surely, the local exec will be quicker than the remote exec but you create an implicit dependency that might generate problems.