How to pass environment variables when programmatically starting a new Amazon EC2 from image?

Question

I am using AWS Java API RunInstance() to start a new EC2 instance from my custom AMI image. How do I pass environment variables to the new EC2 INSTANCE such as database url, AWS credentials etc. ?

Answer 1

you can try echoing the environment varibales into /etc/environment as shown below:

reservation = connection.run_instances(image_id = image_id,

  key_name = keypair,

  instance_type = 'm1.small',

  security_groups = ['default'],

  user_data = '''#!/bin/sh\necho export foozle=schmoozle >> /etc/environment\n''')

Then, once you have SSH'ed into your instance:

ubuntu@ip-10-190-81-29:~$ echo $foozle

schmoozle