Troubleshoot your Amazon EC2 instance using the EC2 Serial Console - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
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Troubleshoot your Amazon EC2 instance using the EC2 Serial Console

By using EC2 Serial Console, you can troubleshoot boot, network configuration, and other issues by connecting to your instance's serial port.

Use the instructions for your instance's operating system and for the tool you've configured on your instance.

Note

Before commencing, make sure you have completed the prerequisites, including configuring your chosen troubleshooting tool.

GNU GRUB (short for GNU GRand Unified Bootloader, commonly referred to as GRUB) is the default boot loader for most Linux operating systems. From the GRUB menu, you can select which kernel to boot into, or modify menu entries to change how the kernel will boot. This can be useful when troubleshooting a failing instance.

The GRUB menu is displayed during the boot process. The menu is not accessible via normal SSH, but you can access it via the EC2 Serial Console.

You can boot into single user mode or emergency mode. Single user mode will boot the kernel at a lower runlevel. For example, it might mount the filesystem but not activate the network, giving you the opportunity to perform the maintenance necessary to fix the instance. Emergency mode is similar to single user mode except that the kernel runs at the lowest runlevel possible.

To boot into single user mode

  1. Connect to the instance's serial console.

  2. Reboot the instance using the following command.

    [ec2-user ~]$ sudo reboot

  3. During reboot, when the GRUB menu appears, press any key to stop the boot process.

  4. In the GRUB menu, use the arrow keys to select the kernel to boot into, and press e on your keyboard.

  5. Use the arrow keys to locate your cursor on the line containing the kernel. The line begins with either linux or linux16 depending on the AMI that was used to launch the instance. For Ubuntu, two lines begin with linux, which must both be modified in the next step.

  6. At the end of the line, add the word single.

    The following is an example for Amazon Linux 2.

    linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.14.193-149.317.amzn2.aarch64 root=UUID=d33f9c9a-\
dadd-4499-938d-ebbf42c3e499 ro  console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200n8 net.ifname\
s=0 biosdevname=0 nvme_core.io_timeout=4294967295 rd.emergency=poweroff rd.she\
ll=0 single

  7. Press Ctrl+X to boot into single user mode.

  8. At the login prompt, enter the user name of the password-based user that you set up previously, and then press Enter.

  9. At the Password prompt, enter the password, and then press Enter.

 

To boot into emergency mode

Follow the the same steps as single user mode, but at step 6, add the word emergency instead of single.

The System Request (SysRq) key, which is sometimes referred to as "magic SysRq", can be used to directly send the kernel a command, outside of a shell, and the kernel will respond, regardless of what the kernel is doing. For example, if the instance has stopped responding, you can use the SysRq key to tell the kernel to crash or reboot. For more information, see Magic SysRq key in Wikipedia.

You can use SysRq commands in the EC2 Serial Console browser-based client or in an SSH client. The command to send a break request is different for each client.

To use SysRq, choose one of the following procedures based on the client that you are using.

Browser-based client
To use SysRq in the serial console browser-based client

  1. Connect to the instance's serial console.

  2. To send a break request, press CTRL+0 (zero). If your keyboard supports it, you can also send a break request using the Pause or Break key.

    [ec2-user ~]$ CTRL+0

  3. To issue a SysRq command, press the key on your keyboard that corresponds to the required command. For example, to display a list of SysRq commands, press h.

    [ec2-user ~]$ h

    The h command outputs something similar to the following.

    [ 1169.389495] sysrq: HELP : loglevel(0-9) reboot(b) crash(c) terminate-all-tasks(e) memory-full-oom-kill(f) kill-all-tasks(i) thaw-filesystems
(j) sak(k) show-backtrace-all-active-cpus(l) show-memory-usage(m) nice-all-RT-tasks(n) poweroff(o) show-registers(p) show-all-timers(q) unraw(r
) sync(s) show-task-states(t) unmount(u) show-blocked-tasks(w) dump-ftrace-buffer(z)
SSH client
To use SysRq in an SSH client

  1. Connect to the instance's serial console.

  2. To send a break request, press ~B (tilde, followed by uppercase B).

    [ec2-user ~]$ ~B

  3. To issue a SysRq command, press the key on your keyboard that corresponds to the required command. For example, to display a list of SysRq commands, press h.

    [ec2-user ~]$ h

    The h command outputs something similar to the following.

    [ 1169.389495] sysrq: HELP : loglevel(0-9) reboot(b) crash(c) terminate-all-tasks(e) memory-full-oom-kill(f) kill-all-tasks(i) thaw-filesystems
(j) sak(k) show-backtrace-all-active-cpus(l) show-memory-usage(m) nice-all-RT-tasks(n) poweroff(o) show-registers(p) show-all-timers(q) unraw(r
) sync(s) show-task-states(t) unmount(u) show-blocked-tasks(w) dump-ftrace-buffer(z)
    Note

    The command that you use for sending a break request might be different depending on the SSH client that you're using.

The Special Admin Console (SAC) capability of Windows provides a way to troubleshoot a Windows instance. By connecting to the instance's serial console and using SAC, you can interrupt the boot process and boot Windows in safe mode.

Note

If you enable SAC on an instance, the EC2 services that rely on password retrieval will not work from the Amazon EC2 console. Windows on Amazon EC2 launch agents (EC2Config, EC2Launch v1, and EC2Launch v2) rely on the serial console to execute various tasks. These tasks do not perform successfully when you enable SAC on an instance. For more information about Windows on Amazon EC2 launch agents, see Configure your Windows instance. If you enable SAC, you can disable it later. For more information, see Disable SAC and the boot menu.

Use SAC

To use SAC

  1. Connect to the serial console.

    If SAC is enabled on the instance, the serial console displays the SAC> prompt.

    SAC prompt displayed in the serial console.

  2. To display the SAC commands, enter ?, and then press Enter.

    Expected output

    Enter a question mark to display the SAC commands.

  3. To create a command prompt channel (such as cmd0001 or cmd0002), enter cmd, and then press Enter.

  4. To view the command prompt channel, press ESC, and then press TAB.

    Expected output

    The command prompt channel.

  5. To switch channels, press ESC+TAB+channel number together. For example, to switch to the cmd0002 channel (if it has been created), press ESC+TAB+2.

  6. Enter the credentials required by the command prompt channel.

    The command prompt requiring credentials.

    The command prompt is the same full-featured command shell that you get on a desktop, but with the exception that it does not allow the reading of characters that were already output.

    A full-featured command shell.

PowerShell can also be used from the command prompt.

Note that you might need to set the progress preference to silent mode.

PowerShell within the command prompt.

Use the boot menu

If the instance has the boot menu enabled and is restarted after connecting via SSH, you should see the boot menu, as follows.

Boot menu in the command prompt.

Boot menu commands

ENTER

Starts the selected entry of the operating system.

TAB

Switches to the Tools menu.

ESC

Cancels and restarts the instance.

ESC followed by 8

Equivalent to pressing F8. Shows advanced options for the selected item.

ESC key + left arrow

Goes back to the initial boot menu.

Note

The ESC key alone does not take you back to the main menu because Windows is waiting to see if an escape sequence is in progress.

Advanced boot options.

Disable SAC and the boot menu

If you enable SAC and the boot menu, you can disable these features later.

Use one of the following methods to disable SAC and the boot menu on an instance.

PowerShell
To disable SAC and the boot menu on a Windows instance

  1. Connect to your instance and perform the following steps from an elevated PowerShell command line.

  2. First disable the boot menu by changing the value to no.

    bcdedit /set '{bootmgr}' displaybootmenu no

  3. Then disable SAC by changing the value to off.

    bcdedit /ems '{current}' off

  4. Apply the updated configuration by rebooting the instance.

    shutdown -r -t 0
Command prompt
To disable SAC and the boot menu on a Windows instance

  1. Connect to your instance and perform the following steps from the command prompt.

  2. First disable the boot menu by changing the value to no.

    bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu no

  3. Then disable SAC by changing the value to off.

    bcdedit /ems {current} off

  4. Apply the updated configuration by rebooting the instance.

    shutdown -r -t 0