To implement some functionalities that Amazons EC2 Cloud provides, you have to interface with their command-line API tools. Likely, the product is too young to have the equivalent functionality built-in to their GUI management console yet. For now, we do it this way, and its a little complex.

I setup the environment below on a mac. The setup steps are slightly different on a mac, than from what is explained on the amazon docs, which is angled for straight linux/unix. Mostly the difference is in how macs do environment variables and paths. Please adjust accordingly.

• set JAVA_HOME

  • nano ~/.bash_profile
    
    export JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home
    

• restart the shell now - close it and log back in
• Verify it works

  • $JAVA_HOME/bin/java -version
    
    java version "1.6.0_17"
    Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_17-b04-248-10M3025)
    Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 14.3-b01-101, mixed mode)
    

You can use existing ones on the existing amazon account (if you have the private key from whoever originally made it), OR You can create your own new ones. Here I made new ones, according to the guide linked above.

• AWS UI Sign in > Accounts > Security credentials > X.509 tab > Create New
• Saved file pk-KFGXD35XEHEO5OUO3IE2OETS5UMPA3JA.pem and cert-KFGXD35XEHEO5OUO3IE2OETS5UMPA3JA.pem
• Put files in appropriate locations

  • mkdir ~/.ec2
    mv ~/Downloads/pk-KFGXD35XEHEO5OUO3IE2OETS5UMPA3JA.pem ~/.ec2/
    mv ~/Downloads/cert-KFGXD35XEHEO5OUO3IE2OETS5UMPA3JA.pem ~/.ec2/
    

These are used to run the command line calls that we will use later.

• Find at EC2 API Tools
• Download and unzip as per docs; I unzipped to ~/ec2-api-tools-1.3-46266
• Tell the tools where they live

  • nano ~/.bash_profile
    
    export EC2_HOME=~/ec2-api-tools-1.3-46266
    export PATH=$PATH:$EC2_HOME/bin
    export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=~/.ec2/pk-KFGXD35XEHEO5OUO3IE2OETS5UMPA3JA.pem
    export EC2_CERT=~/.ec2/cert-KFGXD35XEHEO5OUO3IE2OETS5UMPA3JA.pem
    

• restart the shell now - close it and log back in

• # check to see that variables are there
  env
  
  # check to see that command and connection to AWS is working
  ec2-describe-regions
  
  # test create and stop an instance
  ec2-run-instances ami-b232d0db --key awsnickkey
  ec2-describe-instances i-dd2142b6
  ec2-stop-instances i-dd2142b6
  ec2-terminate-instances i-dd2142b6