aws ec2 describe-addresses won't show some instances - amazon-web-services

Question

I'm scripting some stuff with aws ec2 describe-addresses, but, for some reason, some instances won't be returned by it.
Example:
$ aws ec2 describe-addresses --filter=Name=instance-id,Values=i-xxxxx
{
"Addresses": []
}
The given instanceId is valid and has addresses, but it just won't be shown by aws cli.
However, for another instances it seems to work just fine:
$ aws ec2 describe-addresses --filter='Name=instance-id,Values=i-yyyyyy'
{
"Addresses": [
{
"PrivateIpAddress": "X.X.X.X",
"InstanceId": "i-yyyyyy",
"NetworkInterfaceOwnerId": "XXXXXXXXXX",
"Domain": "vpc",
"AllocationId": "eipalloc-xxxxxx",
"PublicIp": "Y.Y.Y.Y",
"NetworkInterfaceId": "eni-xxxxxx",
"AssociationId": "eipassoc-xxxxx"
}
]
}
The keys I'm using have EC2FullAccess policy, so, it doesn't seem to be related to security...
What am I doing wrong? Any tips? Is there any limitations of aws cli that I'm not aware of?

Answer 1

I think the reason is you are not listing the instances, actually listing the Elastic IP Addresses. Probably the missing ones are the ones without Elastic IPs.
So for example the command without the filter will list the EIP list
aws ec2 describe-addresses
Output:
{
"Addresses": [
{
"InstanceId": null,
"PublicIp": "198.51.100.0",
"Domain": "standard"
},
{
"PublicIp": "203.0.113.0",
"Domain": "vpc",
"AllocationId": "eipalloc-64d5890a"
}
]
}
Source: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/describe-addresses.html