Installing and configuring Amazon EC2 command line

Now download the Amazon API CLI tools using following command and extract them at a proper place. For this example, we are using /opt directory.

# mkdir /opt/ec2
# wget http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-api-tools.zip
# unzip ec2-api-tools.zip -d /tmp
# mv /tmp/ec2-api-tools-* /opt/ec2/tools
Step 3- Download Private Key and Certificate Files

Now create and download X.509 certificate (private key file and certificate file) files from your account from Security Credentials page and copy to /opt/ec2/certs/ directory.

# ls -l /opt/ec2/certs/

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1281 May 15 12:57 my-ec2-cert.pem
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1704 May 15 12:56 my-ec2-pk.pem
Step 4- Configure Environment

Install JAVA
The Amazon EC2 command line tools required Java 1.6 or later version. Make sure you have proper java installed on your system. You can install JRE or JDK , both are ok to use.
# java -version
java version "1.8.0_05"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_05-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 25.5-b02, mixed mode)
If you don’t have Java installed your system, Use below links to install Java on your system first
Installing JAVA/JDK 8 on CentOS, RHEL and Fedora
Installing JAVA/JDK 8 on Ubuntu

Now edit ~/.bashrc file and add the following values at end of file

export EC2_BASE=/opt/ec2
export EC2_HOME=$EC2_BASE/tools
export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=$EC2_BASE/certs/my-ec2-pk.pem
export EC2_CERT=$EC2_BASE/certs/my-ec2-cert.pem
export EC2_URL=https://ec2.xxxxxxx.amazonaws.com
export AWS_ACCOUNT_NUMBER=
export PATH=$PATH:$EC2_HOME/bin
export JAVA_HOME=/opt/jdk1.8.0_05
Now execute the following command to set environment variables

$ source ~/.bashrc

After completing all configuration, let’s run following command to quickly verify setup.

# ec2-describe-regions

REGION eu-west-1 ec2.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com
REGION sa-east-1 ec2.sa-east-1.amazonaws.com
REGION us-east-1 ec2.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
REGION ap-northeast-1 ec2.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com
REGION us-west-2 ec2.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
REGION us-west-1 ec2.us-west-1.amazonaws.com
REGION ap-southeast-1 ec2.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com
REGION ap-southeast-2 ec2.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com