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Asked: 2026-05-31T15:46:14+00:00

We are starting instances, and accessing the user-data we place. But does anybody understand

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We are starting instances, and accessing the user-data we place. But does anybody understand the internals of this operation (from Amazon’s side)? When we pass in the user-data, at what point is that data transmitted to the VM (is this a Xen feature) and where is it stored?

I first thought, it was set as the USER_DATA env var, but we can also pass it as a file. Where is that file stored? Is it generic to all instances or varies depending on AMI?

This is not a problem per se, just wanted to know how Amazon does this.

User data screenshot: http://d.pr/GZlY

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The user-data is available to the instance with a simple HTTP request at this URL:

    http://169.254.169.254/latest/user-data

    Amazon EC2 does not put this user-data on the instance directly, though many AMIs have code that instructs the instance to download and process the user-data automatically.

    See also:

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