How to get the instance id from within an ec2 inst

Question

How can I find out the instance id of an ec2 instance from within the ec2 instance?

Answer 1

In the question you have mentioned the user as root, one thing I should mention is that the instance ID is not dependent on the user.

For Node developers,

var meta  = new AWS.MetadataService();

meta.request("/latest/meta-data/instance-id", function(err, data){
    console.log(data);
});

Answer 2

On Ubuntu you can:

sudo apt-get install cloud-utils

And then you can:

EC2_INSTANCE_ID=$(ec2metadata --instance-id)

You can get most of the metadata associated with the instance this way:

ec2metadata --help
Syntax: /usr/bin/ec2metadata [options]

Query and display EC2 metadata.

If no options are provided, all options will be displayed

Options:
    -h --help               show this help

    --kernel-id             display the kernel id
    --ramdisk-id            display the ramdisk id
    --reservation-id        display the reservation id

    --ami-id                display the ami id
    --ami-launch-index      display the ami launch index
    --ami-manifest-path     display the ami manifest path
    --ancestor-ami-ids      display the ami ancestor id
    --product-codes         display the ami associated product codes
    --availability-zone     display the ami placement zone

    --instance-id           display the instance id
    --instance-type         display the instance type

    --local-hostname        display the local hostname
    --public-hostname       display the public hostname

    --local-ipv4            display the local ipv4 ip address
    --public-ipv4           display the public ipv4 ip address

    --block-device-mapping  display the block device id
    --security-groups       display the security groups

    --mac                   display the instance mac address
    --profile               display the instance profile
    --instance-action       display the instance-action

    --public-keys           display the openssh public keys
    --user-data             display the user data (not actually metadata)

Answer 3

For all ec2 machines, the instance-id can be found in file:

    /var/lib/cloud/data/instance-id

You can also get instance id by running the following command:

    ec2metadata --instance-id

Answer 4

The latest Java SDK has EC2MetadataUtils:

In Java:

import com.amazonaws.util.EC2MetadataUtils;
String myId = EC2MetadataUtils.getInstanceId();

In Scala:

import com.amazonaws.util.EC2MetadataUtils
val myid = EC2MetadataUtils.getInstanceId

Answer 5

Alternative approach for PHP:

$instance = json_decode(file_get_contents('http://169.254.169.254/latest/dynamic/instance-identity/document'),true);
$id = $instance['instanceId'];
print_r($instance);

That will provide a lot of data about the instance, all nicely packed in an array, no external dependencies. As it's a request that never failed or delayed for me it should be safe to do it that way, otherwise I'd go for curl()

Answer 6

Use the /dynamic/instance-identity/document URL if you also need to query more than just your instance ID.

wget -q -O - http://169.254.169.254/latest/dynamic/instance-identity/document

This will get you JSON data such as this - with only a single request.

{
    "devpayProductCodes" : null,
    "privateIp" : "10.1.2.3",
    "region" : "us-east-1",
    "kernelId" : "aki-12345678",
    "ramdiskId" : null,
    "availabilityZone" : "us-east-1a",
    "accountId" : "123456789abc",
    "version" : "2010-08-31",
    "instanceId" : "i-12345678",
    "billingProducts" : null,
    "architecture" : "x86_64",
    "imageId" : "ami-12345678",
    "pendingTime" : "2014-01-23T45:01:23Z",
    "instanceType" : "m1.small"
}