Describing E2C instance doesn't return anything

Question

I've started an EC2 instance and installed the ec2-api-tools. Environment variables (JAVA_HOME, EC2_PRIVATE_KEY, EC2_CERT) are set up.

Running ec2-describe-instances doesn't return anything. According to the EC2 command line reference information on all currently running (and terminated) instances should be returned. What's going wrong?

In general ec2-describe-images -o self -o amazon works, so the EC2 tools are working. Adding explicitly -K and -C parameters to ec2-describe-instances doesn't change the situation.

Answer 1

A little more detail:

You don't need to set the EC2_URL directly. You can use the more friendly command-line option:

--region eu-west-1 (substituting the name of the region you want to address).

This way you don't need to look up the region's URL endpoint.

Here are the EC2 Command Line API Tools general options where this is explained.