AWSer

A nifty little CLI tool to SSH to EC2 instances using their names

Background

Have you ever done this?

1. Login to EC2 Console.
2. Search for an instance.
3. Copy its IP address.
4. Switch to a terminal.
5. Type ssh and paste in the IP.
6. Repeat 2-5 for other instances.

I've been in that situation more times than I care to admit. Enter AWSer: A simple Python script that will make your life 95% easier... at least when it comes to SSH'ing into EC2s!

Demo

Installation

1. Download the awser.py script and place it in a folder in your path.
2. [optional] Create a short symlink or alias such as a that points to the script.
3. Install boto3 if you don't already have it installed: pip3 install boto3 --user
4. Make sure you've configured your AWS credentials via aws configure.
5. Start using AWSer!

Usage

usage: awser.py [-h] [-r REGION] [-u USER] [-i IDENTITY]
                keywords [keywords ...]

Quickly SSH to EC2 instances by name

positional arguments:
  keywords              Keyword(s) to filter list of servers, i.e. 'core 21a'

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -r REGION, --region REGION
                        Overrides the default AWS region.
  -u USER, --user USER  Specifies a user for SSH.
  -i IDENTITY, --identity IDENTITY
                        Selects a file from which the identity (private key)
                        is read.
  -d, --public-dns      Use public DNS name instead of IP address to connect.

Bash Alternative

Don't want to use Python? Try this little Bash alternative (requires fzf and jq to be installed):

function awser() {
    if [[ ! $1 ]]; then
        echo "Must provide a search term, i.e. 'trading'."
        return 1
    fi
    local instances=$(aws ec2 describe-instances --filter Name=tag:Name,Values="*$1*" --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].{Name:Tags[?Key==`Name`].Value,IP:PrivateIpAddress}')
    local instance=$(echo "$instances" | jq '.[] | (.Name | .[]) + ": " + .IP' | sed 's/"//g' | fzf -1 -0 --header "Select an instance" | awk -F": " '{print $2}')
    if [[ $instance ]]; then
        ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o ConnectTimeout=10 $instance
    else
        echo "No match found! Please check the term you provided."
    fi
}