Installing the AWS CLI - Short Version

Once again, this is a very quick and dirty shortened version of their docs.  A lot of this is straight from AWS docs but I've cut out all the clutter and documented how to make the install go smoothly as there are some errors you'll probably most likely run into.

I'm using the AWS CLI for working with/communicating to the Amazon EC2 Container Service so that I can start to create docker images and containers in order to push to my EC2 Virtual Server.


Installing AWS CLI

Verify Python is installed

Type python --version at the command-line

if it's not installed I have homebrew  so I installed it with brew install python

Verify Pip is installed

Type pip --help at the command-line

you should see this:



if not, then install it with sudo easy install pip

Install the AWS CLI using Pip

Type sudo -H pip install awscli --ignore-installed six at the command-line

Notice 2 things:

• added the -H or else you'll get a permission error like this:         

• added --ignore-installed six at the end because there's a bug with the aws cli install in that aws tries to uninstall six (python) which is already installed in OS X EL Captain so when aws tries to uninstall it (in order to install it), it blows up due to permission errors to those files it's trying to uninstall six 

Verify AWS CLI Installed Properly

Type aws help.  

You should see this (type Q to get out):

Setting up Amazon EC2 Tools for Docker in OS X - Short Version

From Amazon Docs: Amazon EC2 Container Registry (ECR) is a fully-managed Docker container registry that makes it easy for developers to store, manage, and deploy Docker container images.

The EC2 Tools therefore allow you to interact with the EC2 API though your terminal through a special set of bash commands for EC2.  I'm then going to be deploying a new personal site to Amazon via Docker Container to my virtual AWS Ubuntu server via the Amazon EC2 Container Registry.

This is a very quick and dirty shortened version of their docs.  A lot of this is straight from AWS docs but I've cut out all the clutter and more importantly also added a little more about the IAM user creation where I include some screen shots because if you don't give the user permissions, you won't be able to authenticate when EC2 tries to make calls on behalf of your user's AWS Key & Secret.

Download the EC2 Tools

Run this in terminal:

curl -O http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-api-tools.zip

Extract the Tools

I extracted them here but you don't have to to it here necessarily:

sudo unzip ec2-api-tools.zip -d /usr/local/ec2

Install Java

First verify if you have Java Installed or not:

which java

If it's present you'll see:

/usr/bin/java

If not then install Java.

Set Environment Variables

$JAVA_HOME 

This will allow EC2 to find your java install location

First, manually set it

We will manually set it by running it explicitly in terminal.  But..after this it'll be in your bash profile so you no longer have to worry about manually setting it anymore:

export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home)

(when this environment variable is accessed, the /usr/libexec/java_home will return the filepath to the java install on the fly.  If you want, try it out yourself, jsut run /usr/libexec/java_home in terminal)

Set the environment variable in your bash_profile

Set it in your .bash_profile so that it sets it on startup every time.  

Open your bash profile in /users/[yourusername]/.bash_profile

Now paste that export JAVA_HOME line above in your bash_profile

Test the Environment Variable

Now close your terminal then re-open it and run this to verify that the environment variable is working:

$JAVA_HOME/bin/java -version

it should return its version info, example:

java version "1.7.0_55"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 2.4.7) (7u55-2.4.7-1ubuntu0.12.04.2)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.51-b03, mixed mode)

$EC2_HOME

This variable specifies where the installation of the CLI tools lie.

Manually Set it

To set it, put in the path to the folder where you extracted the tools tool earlier:

export EC2_HOME=/usr/local/ec2/ec2-api-tools-0.0.0.0 

(if you extracted it somewhere else, change the path above.  Replace the 0.0.0.0 with your version of the CLI tools)

Set the environment variable in your bash_profile

also, copy that line to your .bash_profile

Replace your $PATH variable in your .bash_profile with this line:

export PATH=$PATH:$EC2_HOME/bin

$AWS_ACCESS_KEY, $AWS_SECRET_KEY

We need to tell AWS how we're going to authenticate calls when we use EC2 tools.

Create a new IAM User

First, create a new IAM user account if you don't have one where you know the key and secret for it.

Click on your profile and select Security Credentials. 

Copy the Key and Secret and also download the file that contains that for future reference

Be sure that the user also has a policy set 
(note: you can also setup groups) 

Your users must have appropriate permissions in order to auth API wrapper calls you make from OS X terminal to the Amazon EC2 API or AWS API, ect.  

Click on users, and then click attach policy and then select the Administrator policy for your user:

Explicitly Set them

Now go back to your terminal to set the AWS_ACCESS_KEY and AWS_ACCESS_SECRET environment variables by running this in terminal:

use the access key and secret key from the user you created above below

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY=your-aws-access-key-id

export AWS_SECRET_KEY=your-aws-secret-key

Set the environment variables in your bash_profile

copy and paste those 2 lines into your bash_profile.

Verify the CLI Tools Work

verify it works by running a command, so run this:

ec2-describe-regions

you should then see this:

Here's what your .bash_profile should look like

example (I've x'd out my real key values for the sake of this blog post):

Resources
EC2 Product Details
EC2 Tools
Setting Up the Amazon EC2 Command Line Interface Tools on Linux/Unix and Mac OS X
Amazon EC2 Key Pairs