attribute publicip was not found for resource during aws cloudformation - amazon-web-services

Question

I'm very new to aws cloudformation, I try to launch a EC2 with Neo4j install in a private VPC, I have found someone who has already created a cloudformation template for instance with Neo4j, but that instance is for public VPC, so I have modified the template to suit my purpose, but I got this problem when I launch it: 'attribute publicip was not found for resource'
Here is some part of the script (without the neo4j bash script and EBS volume setup):
"Mappings" : {
"AWSRegionArch2AMI" : {
"eu-west-1" : { "64" : "ami-58d7e821" }
}
},
"Parameters": {
"InstanceType" : {
"Description" : "EC2 instance type",
"Type" : "String",
"Default" : "m5.large",
"ConstraintDescription" : "Must be a valid EC2 instance type."
},
"SSHKeyName": {
"Description": "Name of the SSH key that you will use to access the server (must be on AWS Availability Zone already)",
"Type": "String"
},
"NetworkWhitelist": {
"Description": " The IP address range that can be used to connect to the Neo4j server (by REST or SSH)",
"Type": "String",
"MinLength": "9",
"MaxLength": "18",
"Default": "",
"AllowedPattern": "(\\d{1,3})\\.(\\d{1,3})\\.(\\d{1,3})\\.(\\d{1,3})/(\\d{1,2})",
"ConstraintDescription": "must be a valid IP CIDR range of the form x.x.x.x/x."
},
"SubnetId" : {
"Type" : "AWS::EC2::Subnet::Id",
"Description" : "SubnetId of an existing subnet (for the primary network) in your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)"
},
"SecurityGroupIds": {
"Type": "AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup::Id",
"Description" : "Existing SecurityGroups ID"
},
"AvailabilityZone": {
"Type" : "AWS::EC2::AvailabilityZone::Name",
"Description" : "Select the Availability Zone"
}
},
"Resources": {
"Server": {
"Type": "AWS::EC2::Instance",
"Properties": {
"AvailabilityZone": {
"Ref": "AvailabilityZone"
},
"DisableApiTermination": "FALSE",
"ImageId": {
"Fn::FindInMap": [ "AWSRegionArch2AMI", {
"Ref": "AWS::Region"
}, "64"]
},
"InstanceType": {
"Ref": "InstanceType"
},
"KeyName": {"Ref": "SSHKeyName"},
"Monitoring": "false",
"NetworkInterfaces" : [
{
"AssociatePublicIpAddress": false,
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"DeviceIndex": "0",
"SubnetId": {"Ref": "SubnetId"},
"GroupSet": [ {"Ref": "SecurityGroupIds"} ]
}
],
Can't I lanuch an instance without public ip address just like in 'Configure Instance Details' in 'Launch instance wizard'?
thank you

Answer 1

Do you have the "Auto-assign Public IP" option enabled for the subnet you're trying to create the instance in? Because you're explicitly not associating a public IP address, it might be failing because the resource is expecting to have a public IP address assigned. A surefire way to test this would be to set the SubnetId parameter to the ID of a subnet that does not automatically assign public IP addresses when you deploy the stack.

Answer 2

Perhaps you are tying to do Fn::GetAtt on the Instance logical Id to get the PublicIp somewhere in your code and the Instance doesn't have PublicIp assigned to it.

Answer 3

I experienced this error just a couple of weeks ago, while getting my feet wet with CloudFormation. In my case, I'd dropped the public IP for the interface, in favor of only a private IP, but I still had an output configured in the CloudFormation template that referenced the now non-existent publicid attribute. Removing that output from the template fixed my issue.