amazon-web-servicesenvironment-variablescronec2-api-tools

EC2_HOME is not set. Run AWS Commands from Cron


Basicly I'm not sure how to get my aws commands to run in crontab. I know I need to give crontab some environmental variables so that it can run the aws commands but, I don't quite know how to do that. Has anyone been able to do this before?

PATH=/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/aws/bin:/home/ec2-user/bin:/opt/aws/bin
* * * * * export EC2_HOME=/opt/aws/apitools/ec2
* * * * * export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jre
0 8 * * 1-5 ec2-start-instances instance_id
0 7 * * 1-5 ec2-start-instances instance_id
0 7 * * 1-5 ec2-start-instances instance_id

I am on an EC2 Amazon machine and I'm able to run the aws commands in the EC2-user shell. I'm just having trouble getting the commands to run from crontab.

The mail sent to the ec2 user says "/opt/aws/bin/ec2-start-instances: line 9: EC2_HOME: EC2_HOME is not set"


Solution

  • This should work for you... Needed to setup a few systems with automated cron git pull scripts, which would then execute crontab/anacron run-parts bash scripts which called upon ec2 java tools. Normally in an amz-linux-ami (their RH clone) the creating of env vars goes as follows:

    (going to stick to relevant files)

    Do shell login --> source /etc/profile which will loop through /etc/profile.d and source *.{users shell extension} in this case aws-apitools-common.sh

    $cat aws-apitools-common.sh 
     export AWS_PATH=/opt/aws
     export PATH=$PATH:$AWS_PATH/bin
     #Prefer JDK if present (i pulled the condition to de-clutter this info)
     export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java
     export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jre
    

    Here is the relevant line:

    for aws_product in $(find /opt/aws/apitools /opt/aws/amitools -maxdepth 1 -type l 2>/dev/null); do
    [ -e $aws_product/environment.sh ] && source $aws_product/environment.sh; done
    

    So the script aws-apitools-common.sh searches for apitools and amitools, then sources those tools $aws_product/environment.sh. ex: source /opt/aws/apitools/ec2/environment.sh

    Now this is probably what you are looking for (/opt/aws/apitools/ec2/environment.sh):

    $cat environment.sh
    # Set EC2_HOME.  Called from /etc/profile.d/aws-product-common
    [ -z "$EC2_HOME" ] && EC2_HOME="/opt/aws/apitools/ec2"
    export EC2_HOME
    

    In short the environmental vars you want set/export in your crontab script, and or your anacron run-parted scripts would be (personally i load in key.conf files which are generated from a git repo, and having a git pull fire off every hour, so keys and the env cat be updated just like the scripts themselves. Then the job script sources the conf file):

    AWS_ACCESS_KEY="blah-blah-dingle-smith"
    AWS_SECRET_KEY="yankee-doodle-shit-no-stank"
    JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java"
    EC2_HOME="/opt/aws/apitools/ec2"
    EC2_URL="https://us-west-2.ec2.amazonaws.com/"
    PATH="$PATH:/opt/aws/bin"  # is dir contains a symlinks of tool binaries
    

    Cheers!