Environment Variables in newest AWS EC2 instance - amazon-web-services

Question

I am trying to get ENVIRONMENT Variables into the EC2 instance (trying to run a django app on Amazon Linux AMI 2018.03.0 (HVM), SSD Volume Type ami-0ff8a91507f77f867 ). How do you get them in the newest version of amazon's linux, or get the logging so it can be traced.
user-data text (modified from here):
#!/bin/bash
#trying to get a file made
touch /tmp/testfile.txt
cat 'This and that' > /tmp/testfile.txt
#trying to log
echo 'Woot!' > /home/ec2-user/user-script-output.txt
#Trying to get the output logged to see what is going wrong
exec > >(tee /var/log/user-data.log|logger -t user-data ) 2>&1
#trying to log
echo "XXXXXXXXXX STARTING USER DATA SCRIPT XXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
#trying to store the ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
PARAMETER_PATH='/'
REGION='us-east-1'
# Functions
AWS="/usr/local/bin/aws"
get_parameter_store_tags() {
echo $($AWS ssm get-parameters-by-path --with-decryption --path ${PARAMETER_PATH} --region ${REGION})
}
params_to_env () {
params=$1
# If .Ta1gs does not exist we assume ssm Parameteres object.
SELECTOR="Name"
for key in $(echo $params | /usr/bin/jq -r ".[][].${SELECTOR}"); do
value=$(echo $params | /usr/bin/jq -r ".[][] | select(.${SELECTOR}==\"$key\") | .Value")
key=$(echo "${key##*/}" | /usr/bin/tr ':' '_' | /usr/bin/tr '-' '_' | /usr/bin/tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]')
export $key="$value"
echo "$key=$value"
done
}
# Get TAGS
if [ -z "$PARAMETER_PATH" ]
then
echo "Please provide a parameter store path. -p option"
exit 1
fi
TAGS=$(get_parameter_store_tags ${PARAMETER_PATH} ${REGION})
echo "Tags fetched via ssm from ${PARAMETER_PATH} ${REGION}"
echo "Adding new variables..."
params_to_env "$TAGS"
Notes -
What i think i know but am unsure
the user-data script is only loaded when it is created, not when I stop and then start mentioned here (although it also says [i think outdated] that the output is logged to /var/log/cloud-init-output.log )
I may not be starting the instance correctly
I don't know where to store the bash script so that it can be executed
What I have verified
the user-data text is on the instance by ssh-ing in and curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/user-data shows the current text (#!/bin/bash …)
What Ive tried
editing rc.local directly to export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID='JEFEJEFEJEFEJEFE' … and the like
putting them in the AWS Parameter Store (and can see them via the correct call, I just can't trace getting them into the EC2 instance without logs or confirming if the user-data is getting run)
putting ENV variables in Tags and importing them as mentioned here:
tried outputting the logs to other files as suggested here (Not seeing any log files in the ssh instance or on the system log)
viewing the System Log on the aws webpage to see any errors/logs via selecting the instance -> 'Actions' -> 'Instance Settings' -> 'Get System Log' (not seeing any commands run or log statements [only 1 unrelated word of user])