[ec2] Cannot reboot instances

[ehammond at thinksome.com]

Darren:

When you reboot an EC2 instance externally (EC2 API or EC2 console) the
status does not change from "running", so what you have described is
normal behavior.

Have you looked on the instance itself to see if it rebooted (e.g.,
check the output of the "uptime" command)?

If you're still having a problem, please report the AMI id you are
running so others can try to reproduce.

You can also reboot an instance from inside the instance itself using a
command like:

  sudo reboot

This is a big gentler than the external reboot, as the external reboot
request will first try a soft reboot and then will do a hard reboot if
the system does not respond to the reboot request in time.

While I'm rambling, I should also mention that Amazon has the ability to
do an even harder reboot and it is sometimes necessary to ask them to
perform this (though it can take a while for them to get around to your
message on the EC2 forum).

Basically, my recommended escalation is:

1. Use "sudo reboot" on the instance itself
2. Reboot using the API or Console or command line tools
3. Ask Amazon to hard reboot on http://ec2forum.notlong.com

-- 
Eric Hammond
ehammond at thinksome.com



Darren Govoni wrote:
> Hi,
>   I'm having trouble getting my instances to reboot either from the EC2
> service call or from Amazon Management Console. The service call returns
> successfully and the console indicates reboot, but when I refresh the
> server list, its back to running. It never reboots.
> 
> Is this a function of the Ubuntu image or perhaps something wrong
> elsewhere in EC2?
> 
> thanks,
> Darren
> 
>