Ec2 calling CLI from user data - amazon-web-services

Question

When launching an ec2 instance, how does one go about using CLI commands from within a user data shell script?
When I SSH into the instance I can run CLI commands and everything works as expected.
I'm assuming the issue is that user data is executed as root. When I SSH into the instance and run the CLI commands I do so as ec2-user.
Considering I have to launch an instance every time I want to test my new user data script (this takes 3 minutes every try), I'd really appreciate not have to guess and check my way through this one.
any help is appriciate. Thank you

Answer 1

You newly launched instance needs to have access to the command that you're trying to use. I suggest you to add IAM role set up and added to the instance. This will save you the setup of credential etc... Example IAM policy:
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Action": [
"ec2:DescribeTags",
"ec2:CreateTags"
],
"Effect": "Allow",
"Resource": [
"*"
]
}
]
}
Ubuntu Example userdata
#!/bin/bash -x
apt-get update
apt-get install -y awscli # yum install awscli on CentOS based OS
REGION=$(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/placement/availability-zone | sed s/.$//g)
I_ID=$(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id)
aws_p="$(which aws) --region ${REGION} --output text"
$aws_p ec2 create-tags --resources $I_ID --tags Key=Name,Value=my-test-server --region $REGION
# ............ more stuff related to your deployment ..... #
This will install awscli on the system and will tag itself with test name.
See how to add proper IAM roles