Elastic Beanstalk CLI Cheat Sheet

Elastic Beanstalk brings the benefits of PaaS (Platform as a service) providers such as Heroku to AWS infrastructure. This is a reference for the EB CLI, which is a commandline interface that is more user-friendly than standard AWS CLI commands.

Quick Start

Install / Update EB CLI

// Linux
$ pip install --upgrade --user awsebcli

// Mac
$ brew install awsebcli

Initialize eb cli in the working directory. You will need to choose Application->Environment.

$ eb init

This will create and deploy the new environment at the same time. Then open in your browser.

$ eb create
$ eb open

Subsequent deployments can be made through a simple deploy subcommand. Uncommitted staged files can also be added with the --staged flag.

$ eb deploy
$ eb deploy --staged

Basic Configuration

Edit document root

$ eb config

View and Set Environment variables

$ eb printenv
$ eb setenv ExampleVar=ExampleValue KEY1=VALUE1 ...

Common Tasks

List environments and show current

$ eb list

Change current environment

$ eb use [environment]

Browse log files

$ eb logs

List, get, save locally and update configuration.

$ eb config list
$ eb config get [config]
$ eb config save
$ eb config put [config]

Apply configuration on current environment.

$ eb config --cfg [config]

Deploy using saved configuration

$ eb create [environment] --cfg gateway

Deploy worker environment

$ eb create [environment] -t worker

Initialize with alternate AWS credentials from ~/.aws/credentials

$ eb init --profile user2

Common Errors

Failed to run npm install

EACCES: permission denied

# Force npm to run node-gyp also as root, preventing permission denied errors in AWS with npm@5
# Add this line to file named .npmrc in project root (may need to create)
unsafe-perm=true
# Add this line to file named .ebignore in project root (may need to create)
node_modules/

Cannot find Module

ENOENT: no such file or directory

# devdependencies not installed due to npm install run with --production by default
# force installation of devdependencies with the following command
eb setenv NPM_USE_PRODUCTION=false

Node

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/create_deploy_nodejs.container.html

All commands

abort       Cancels an environment update or deployment.
clone       Clones an environment.
config      Edits the environment configuration settings or manages saved configurations.
console     Opens the environment in the AWS Elastic Beanstalk Management Console.
create      Creates a new environment.
deploy      Deploys your source code to the environment.
events      Gets recent events.
health      Shows detailed environment health.
init        Initializes your directory with the EB CLI. Creates the application.
labs        Extra experimental commands.
list        Lists all environments.
local       Runs commands on your local machine.
logs        Gets recent logs.
open        Opens the application URL in a browser.
platform    Manages platforms.
printenv    Shows the environment variables.
scale       Changes the number of running instances.
setenv      Sets environment variables.
ssh         Opens the SSH client to connect to an instance.
status      Gets environment information and status.
swap        Swaps two environment CNAMEs with each other.
terminate   Terminates the environment.
upgrade     Updates the environment to the most recent platform version.
use         Sets default environment.

Advanced

Change to Root User

Sometimes you may need to change to the root user. Run:

sudo su -

This works because by default ec2-user is in the wheel group.

Change NodeJs Files Directly in Elastic Beanstalk for Testing

In the horrible event you decide to test something in production, simply make changes to your files and restart node.

Elastic Beanstalk will automatically restart your service by re-running your start command, specified in your Elastic Beanstalk config.

eb ssh

# go edit your files in 
cd /var/app/current

# like: vi dist/server.js

sudo pkill -f node

source

Run NPM or NODE

Need to install something for testing like npm install ssh2-sftp-client, or node -v ?

Simply put the node bin directory into your path. I change to root user first: sudo su - root

Then:

export PATH="$PATH:/opt/elasticbeanstalk/node-install/node-v10.20.1-linux-x64/bin"

You will see there are many versions to pick from in node-install. In our case, we chose v10.20.1

After running this command, you can do node -v and check that it is equal to the version you specified.

Give the Web User a Shell

ElasticBeanstalk gives you a nodejs user but may also give other users. A php app is run by the webapp user. To see your users, run:

cat /etc/passwd

As you can see, nodejs and webapp by default do not have a shell, meaning you cannot switch to them while ssh'd in.

For testing, it may also become neccesary to switch to your web user, but that user doesn't have a shell by default. So to give it a shell, run:

# first switch to root user
# then...
usermod -s /bin/sh nodejs

Once they have a shell, you can switch to them from the root user:

su - nodejs
# or
su - webapp