How to configure direct http access to EC2 instance?
This is a very basic Amazon EC2 question, but I'm stumped so here goes.
I want to launch an Amazon EC2 instance and allow access to HTTP on ports 80 and 8888 from anywhere. So far I can't even allow the instance to connect to on those ports using its own IP address (but it will connect to localhost).
I configured the "default" security group for HTTP using the standard HTTP option on the management console (and also SSH).
I launched my instance in the default security group.
I connected to the instance on SSH port 22 twice and in one window launch an HTTP server on port 80. In the other window I verify that I can connect to HTTP using the "localhost".
However when I try to access HTTP from the instance (or anywhere else) using either the public DNS or the Private IP address I het "connection refused".
What am I doing wrong, please?
Below is a console fragment showing the wget that succeeds and the two that fail run from the instance itself.
--2012-03-07 15:43:31-- http://localhost/
Resolving localhost... 127.0.0.1
Connecting to localhost|127.0.0.1|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Moved Temporarily
Location: /__whiff_directory_listing__ [following]
--2012-03-07 15:43:31-- http://localhost/__whiff_directory_listing__
Connecting to localhost|127.0.0.1|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text/html]
Saving to: “__whiff_directory_listing__”
[ <=>
] 7,512 --.-K/s in 0.03s
2012-03-07 15:43:31 (263 KB/s) - “__whiff_directory_listing__” saved [7512]
[ec2-user@ip-10-195-205-30 tmp]$ wget http://ec2-50-17-2-174.compute-1.amazonaws.com/
--2012-03-07 15:44:17-- http://ec2-50-17-2-174.compute-1.amazonaws.com/
Resolving ec2-50-17-2-174.compute-1.amazonaws.com... 10.195.205.30
Connecting to ec2-50-17-2-174.compute-1.amazonaws.com|10.195.205.30|:80... failed:
Connection refused.
[ec2-user@ip-10-195-205-30 tmp]$ wget http://10.195.205.30/
--2012-03-07 15:46:08-- http://10.195.205.30/
Connecting to 10.195.205.30:80... failed: Connection refused.
[ec2-user@ip-10-195-205-30 tmp]$
Answer
(0) It's silly but the first thing you need to do is to make sure that your web server is running.
(1) You need to edit your Security Group to let incoming HTTP packets access your website. If your website is listening on port 80, you need to edit the Security Group to open access to port 80 as mentioned above. If your website is listening on some other port, then you need to edit the Security Group to access that other port.
(2) If you are running a Linux instance, the iptables firewall may be running by default. You can check that this firewall is active by running
sudo service iptables status
on the command line. If you get output, then the iptables firewall is running. If you get a message "Firewall not running", that's pretty self-explanatory. In general, the iptables firewall is running by default.
You have two options: knock out the firewall or edit the firewall's configuration to let HTTP traffic through. I opted to knock out the firewall as the simpler option (for me).
sudo service iptables stop
There is no real security risk in shutting down iptables because iptables, if active, merely duplicates the functionality of Amazon's firewall, which is using the Security Group to generate its configuration file. We are assuming here that Amazon AWS doesn't misconfigure its firewalls - a very safe assumption.
(3) Now, you can access the URL from your browser.
(4) The Microsoft Windows Servers also run their personal firewalls by default and you'll need to fix the Windows Server's personal firewall, too.
Correction: by AWS default, AWS does not fire up server firewalls such iptables (Centos) or UAF (Ubuntu) when you are ordering the creation of new EC2 instances - That's why EC2 instances that are in the same VPC can ssh into each other and you can "see" the web server that you fired up from another EC2 instance in the same VPC.
Just make sure that your RESTful API is listening on all interfaces i.e. 0.0.0.0:portID