The Error Message
Second Sprint
We have reached the end of the second sprint, of two weeks, of the Cloud training at Techgrounds. Two weeks in which we had to complete 17 assignments. In my case in the field of AWS. Those went from Global Infrastructure, pricing, Core Services to ELB/Auto Scaling and Well Architected Framework. In between are a number of assignments which are meant for both the AWS and Azure students, including: Subnetting, IP addressing and Counting in Binary. At the end another knowledge check. And I passed.
In the soft skills area, we have been working on Rules, Values and Guiding Principles. In short, two tough weeks that passed very quickly.
The Error Message
During the first week of this sprint we (AWS) ran into a problem. It is not possible to create an EC2 instance. An EC2 instance is a virtual machine. At the ‘Launch’ step, a cryptic error message appears. So cryptic that I can’t make anything out of it (in Dutch we say: ik kan er geen chocolade van maken).
If that were possible, it would be dark chocolate of at least 85%. Anything below that I won’t call chocolate. Also no flavors like caramel/sea salt. After all, I don’t put sugar and milk in my coffee and drink my whiskey pure. There seem to be people who put a drop of water in it, and that drop is accompanied by a fantastic story about aroma and taste. Hmmm, if the drink is too strong for you, then just have a glass of lemonade! By the way, that caramel/sea salt, which you come across every now and then, is synonymous with moral decay as far as I’m concerned. Chocolate with a taste… But I digress.
One of the learning coaches has solved the problem. But it keeps nagging in my head. Little annoying Henkie is sitting there whining that I have to find the solution myself. Little annoying Henkie is the spoiled little man who is struggling on the floor in the supermarket, because he doesn’t get his way. Because I know the annoying little guy won’t leave until he has his way. So a compromise: I will start working on it in the weekend between the first and second week of this sprint. Headache Averted!
Talk Nerdy To Me
So I started working on it over the weekend. The image below shows the error message. This is done this way because there may be privacy-sensitive information in the report.
I searched for a possible solution via Google and the AWS website. Before that I installed and configured AWS CLI on the laptop, to see what is going on. I see a number of messages with ‘False’ but there is still little logic in them.
In AWS CLI I used the following command:
Which produces this:
Still that chocolate. Something starts nagging at the back of my mind. Would it be JSON? I copied and pasted the entire thing in Visual Studio Code. And damn:
That’s way better, but it still doen’t make much sense. It has to do with Policies and IAM. So I looked up how a policy is constructed.
Basically like this:
Which makes a lot more sense, were it not for the fact that the output I get is too complicated for me. This is where I’m giving up at the moment. Due to an appalling lack of knowledge.
The learning coach indicated how he solved it. And in the following way:
In short, it’s about StringNotEquals and StringNotLike, because you’re working with wildcards.
To achieve this, he has adjusted the policy:
After going through all the sources, I understand the above. Why it has to do with StringNotLike, I’m not sure yet. That’s the next challenge. So to be continued.
In the schedule I find that in week 5 IAM will be discussed. Perhaps with the newly acquired knowledge I can try again.
Most assignments are easy to do. It does take some time to go through the commands, read it all properly, run the command and make a report of it and publish it to the repository on Github. With a number of assignments I had help to determine the right direction. But that’s the beauty of peer-to-peer learning. You push each other towards knowledge enrichment. And if not, your learning coaches are still there.
Christmas break
What works well for me is walking for an hour at the end of the day. Together with Greetje. We go through the day while walking. I’ve noticed it clears my mind.
We have the Christmas break now. Two weeks. I wrote down some things that I want to explore further. But not too much. The phrase Christmas holiday contains the word holiday.
What I do plan to do is make a Haiga. A combination of a Haiku with an image. I also have some books that are waiting to be read.
And in the meantime I’m listening to the #Snob2000 on Pinguin Radio.
This is the third article in the series (Dutch language).
1. In de Wolken
2. De Inner Nerd Laten Shinen
About me
I’m Henk van der Duim, Data Engineer at Stichting amsterdam&partners.
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