SSM send command to EC2 instance Failed

Question

I'm trying to use boto3 to run ssh commands on EC2 instances. I read this guide: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/troubleshooting-remote-commands.html and I did everything of what they wrote there but I keep get error message:

>>>import boto3
>>> ec2 = boto3.client('ssm')
>>> a = ec2.send_command(InstanceIds=['i-0d5e16f6'], DocumentName='AWS-RunShellScript', Comment='abcdabcd', Parameters={"commands":["ifconfig"]})

output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/botocore/client.py", line 253, in _api_call
  return self._make_api_call(operation_name, kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/botocore/client.py", line 543, in _make_api_call
  raise error_class(parsed_response, operation_name)
  botocore.errorfactory.InvalidInstanceId: An error occurred (InvalidInstanceId) when calling the SendCommand operation: 

if I'm trying to send command with awscli I get the same problem:

aws ssm send-command --instance-ids "i-0d5e16f6" --document-name "AWS-RunShellScript" --comment "IP config" --parameters commands=ifconfig --output text

An error occurred (InvalidInstanceId) when calling the SendCommand operation:

some one know how to solve it?

Answer 1

This can happen when you don't have SSM agent installed on the instance you're trying to access. For a list of instances where you can run SSM commands, run:

aws ssm describe-instance-information --output text

From there, you can grab an instance ID and then run the send_command command with that instance.