Getting the Amazon SDK Running.

Hi folks we will talk about getting Amazon AWS command line tools

We assume you have signed up with Amazon and given them your credit card etc etc.

First thing to do is download the Windows installer from


http://aws.amazon.com/cli/


https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/AWSCLI64.msi


this is 5.7 mb currently .  So when you run that

So accept the license and click next next next 

So the next thing to do is to follow the rest of  http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-chap-getting-set-up.html

If we look at our PATH setting now by opening a command window we can see that AWSCLI has been added to the end of the variable, usually c:\program files\Amazon\AWSCLI

If we now try 

C:\Users\Chris>aws

usage: aws [options] [parameters]

aws: error: too few arguments

C:\Users\Chris>

it is evident we must do a lot of things to get it all configured to start talking to our instances. 

First thing to do is to look at getting the config file set up. 

This will need to be in a directory .aws, so usually %USERPROFILE%\.aws\config

C:\Users\Chris>mkdir .aws

C:\Users\Chris>cd .aws

C:\Users\Chris\.aws>dir

 Volume in drive C is OS

 Volume Serial Number is F619-A748

 Directory of C:\Users\Chris\.aws

23/10/2013  12:43    

         .

23/10/2013  12:43    

         ..

               0 File(s)              0 bytes

               2 Dir(s)  13,599,453,184 bytes free

So what will this config file contain ?  Well this is the important credential and region information. 

We see an example in the getting started 

[default]
aws_access_key_id = AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
aws_secret_access_key = wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY
region = us-west-2

OK so where do we get our values.

Region should be easy as it is where you will be doing most of your work for me that will be eu-west-1

yours will probably be different. 

OK that was easy.  For our access key and secret we got these when we signed up first for AW.  You can get them from https://portal.aws.amazon.com/gp/aws/securityCredentials

So edit the liitle config file with the relevant information in it 

 Directory of C:\Users\Chris\.aws

23/10/2013  12:56    
         .
23/10/2013  12:56    
         ..
23/10/2013  12:57               137 config
               1 File(s)            137 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  13,595,860,992 bytes free


C:\Users\Chris\.aws>


One point to note is that if you are using notepad to edit the config file it saves it as .txt which is wrong it needs to be just called config. 

OK so let's give it a try 

C:\Users\Chris\.aws>aws ec2 describe-regions|more

{
    "Regions": [
        {
            "Endpoint": "ec2.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com",
            "RegionName": "eu-west-1"
        },
        {
            "Endpoint": "ec2.sa-east-1.amazonaws.com",
            "RegionName": "sa-east-1"
        },
        {
            "Endpoint": "ec2.us-east-1.amazonaws.com",
            "RegionName": "us-east-1"
        },
        {
            "Endpoint": "ec2.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com",
            "RegionName": "ap-northeast-1"
        },
        {
            "Endpoint": "ec2.us-west-2.amazonaws.com",
            "RegionName": "us-west-2"
        },
        {
            "Endpoint": "ec2.us-west-1.amazonaws.com",
-- More  --



OK... all working

In the next post we will show how to grab some value out of this.