Question

I want to reboot some instances using ec2.reboot_instances([instanceId]) and
that works fine but:

1. how to verify a reboot occurs? I thought launch_time will be changed but looks like all parameters remains the same.. I’d prefer to do this check without ssh or ping – is it possible? May be it’s possible to use instance.get_console_output() somehow?

2. it’s not clear from the docs if I should add some instance status check before trying to reboot. If instance is terminated request will be ignored, that’s clear – but if is’s stopped or pending – should I use something else instead (start)?

Answer 1

This shell command will give you how long the system has been booted:

ssh hostname uptime

To automate it you will want to add you ssh public key to the .ssh/authorized_keys file on the host.

With boto it would probably be something like this (although I’ve not used boto):

s = boto.manage.cmdshell.SSHClient(hostname, uname='root')
s.run('uptime')

See the reference on the boto manage module