Use the AWS CloudFormation console to monitor the status of your AWS CloudFormation stack and detect if stack creation fails. The Esri CloudFormation templates also create logs to help you troubleshoot issues, but you need to disable rollbacks for AWS to preserve these log files.
CloudFormation console Events tab
Log in to the AWS CloudFormation console (which is part of the AWS Management Console) and open the Events tab to find information on stack creation, updates, and deletions. If the stack fails to create, information on the Events tab usually gives you a general idea what has gone wrong.
Configure your deployment to preserve log files
The Esri sample CloudFormation templates create log files on the virtual machines. To be sure the files are preserved even when deployment launch fails, sign into the AWS CloudFormation Console and disable Rollback on failure.
If your deployment fails when launching from an Esri template, make a remote desktop connection or SSH to the EC2 instance to view the logs. Log types and locations are listed in the following table:
| EC2 instance type | Log file and location on EC2 instance | Log file description |
|---|---|---|
Ubuntu | /var/log/cfn-init.log | Log file for the CloudFormation helper script used to retrieve and interpret the resource metadata, install packages, create files, and start services |
/var/log/chef-run.log | Chef configuration management tool log file | |
/var/lib/tomcat7/logs/catalina.out | Apache Tomcat application server log file | |
Windows | C:\cfn\log\cfn-init.log | Log file for the CloudFormation helper script used to retrieve and interpret the resource metadata, install packages, create files, and start services |
C:\chef\chef-run.log | Chef configuration management tool log file |
Note:
If CloudFormation stack creation succeeds, the stack output parameters provide a link to the log group in the AWS Management Console. If stack creation fails, go to the CloudFormation Resources list in the AWS Management Console to find the log group. Note that if stack creation fails before any instances are launched, a log group might not be created.
Error messages
The following provides tips to troubleshoot stack creation failure using some of the error messages you may see in the log files:
- If you see the message Error encountered during build of config: Failed to retrieve https:// .s3.amazonaws.com/ in cfn-init.log, ensure the deployment S3 bucket name is correct and that the S3 object key name of authorization files and SSL certificates are correct.
- If you see the message Unable to connect to WebAdaptor URL : https://agsportalssl.esri.com/server/webadaptor in the catalina.out log file on Ubuntu, ensure the SSL certificate in the deployment S3 bucket is valid and in PKCS 12 format. Also be sure the provided SSL certificate password is correct.
- If you see the message OpenSSL::PKCS12::PKCS12Error: PKCS12_parse: mac verify failure in chef-run.log on Windows, ensure the SSL certificate in the deployment S3 bucket is valid and in PKCS 12 format. Also be sure the provided SSL certificate password is correct.