AFEWMORE(1) BSD General Commands Manual AFEWMORE(1)

NAME afewmore -- duplicate EC2 instances with their data directory

SYNOPSIS afewmore [-hv] [-d dir] [-n num] instance

DESCRIPTION The afewmore tool can be used to duplicate a given EC2 instance. When doing so, it creates multiple new instances and populates their data directory by copying the data from the original.

OPTIONS The source instance is specified via the mandatory argument to afewmore. In addition, the following command-line options are supported:

 -d dir   Copy the contents of this data directory from the orignal source
      instance to all the new instances.  If not specified, defaults
      to /data.

 -h       Print a usage statement and exit.

 -n num   Create this many new instances.  If not specified, defaults to
      10.

 -v       Be verbose.

DETAILS Frequently, it is necessary to duplicate a given server's configuration or setup. While configuration management and service orchestration sys- tems may be able to perform this task, the afewmore tool allows for a trivial initial bootstrapping that only concerns itself with data dupli- cation, not host configuration.

 Upon invocation, afewmore will identify the type of EC2 instance in ques-
 tion and launch the requested number of duplicates.  It will then copy
 the contents of the given directory from the source instance to all of
 the newly created instances.

OUTPUT By default, afewmore prints the instance IDs of the newly created EC2 instances as the only output. Unless an error occurs, no other output is generated.

 If the -v flag is given, afewmore may print meaningful diagnostic mes-
 sages as it progresses to stdout.

 Any errors encountered cause a meaningful error message to be printed to
 STDERR.

ENVIRONMENT The afewmore tool is suitable to be used by any user and does not have any user-specific settings or credentials hard coded.

 afewmore assumes that the user has set up their environment for general
 use with the EC2 tools.  That is, it will not set or modify any environ-
 ment variables.

 afewmore also assumes that the user has set up their ~/.ssh/config file
 to access instances in EC2 via ssh(1) without any additional settings.

EXIT STATUS The afewmore will exit with a return status of 0 under normal circum- stances. If an error occurred, afewmore will exit with a value >0.

EXAMPLES The following examples illustrate common usage of this tool.

 To create ten more instances of the EC2 instance i-0a1b2c3d4f and copy
 the contents of the '/data' directory from that instance:

   $ afewmore i-0a1b2c3d4f
   i-0a1b2c3d4f
   i-1a1b2c3d4f
   i-2a1b2c3d4f
   i-3a1b2c3d4f
   i-4a1b2c3d4f
   i-5a1b2c3d4f
   i-6a1b2c3d4f
   i-7a1b2c3d4f
   i-8a1b2c3d4f
   i-9a1b2c3d4f
   $ echo $?
   0
   $

 To create just one more instance and copy the contents of the directory
 '/usr/local/share':

   $ afewmore -n 1 i-0a1b2c3d4f
   i-1a1b2c3d4f
   $

SEE ALSO aws help, ssh(1), tar(1), rsync(1)

HISTORY afewmore was originally assigned by Jan Schaumann jschauma@cs.stevens.edu as a homework assignment for the class "Aspects of System Administration" at Stevens Institute of Technology in the Spring of 2017.

BSD March 27, 2017 BSD