I have been building a bunch of Windows AMIs for EC2 recently. If the instance fails to build it can be a real bear to diagnose issues. You don't have access to the console to watch what's happening. It would be great if I could log to the EC2 Console (also called the System Log on the web site) so I knew what was happening. So I hacked the EC2Config Service to see how it was writing to the console.
The EC2 Console, it turns out, is listening to Serial Port COM1. So if want to write a message to the log, all you have to do is write to COM1. Of course the EC2 Config Service already has COM1 open, so we have to close it first. Here is a quick sample.
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Stop-Service Ec2Config
$Port = New-Object System.IO.Ports.SerialPort
$Port.PortName = "COM1"
$Port.BaudRate = 0x1c200
$Port.Parity = [System.IO.Ports.Parity]::None
$Port.DataBits = 8
$Port.StopBits = [System.IO.Ports.StopBits]::One
$Port.Open()
$Port.WriteLine("This was written directly to the serial port");
$Port.Close()
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You can also use a helper class that ships with EC2 Config Service called ConsoleLibrary. This implementation is thread-safe, adds the date and time, and takes care of all the serial port configuration details. Of course you still need to close the EC2 Config Service before running this code.
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#Stop the EC2 Config Service
Stop-Service Ec2Config
#Ensure the log file exists or you will get an error
New-Item -ItemType File -Force -Path 'C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Logs\Ec2ConfigLog.txt'
#Load the Ec2Config Library
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFrom("C:\Program Files\Amazon\Ec2ConfigService\Ec2ConfigLibrary.dll")
#Write to the Console
[ConsoleLibrary.ConsoleLibrary]::Instance().WriteToConsole("This was written using the Ec2ConfigLibrary", $true)
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As you can see below, me messages appear mixed in with the standard console messages, but note that the Console is only updated during boot. If you write to the log after boot the messages will not appear until the next reboot.
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2014/07/19 18:18:50Z: AMI Origin Version: 2014.07.10
2014/07/19 18:18:50Z: AMI Origin Name: Windows_Server-2012-R2_RTM-English-64Bit-Base
2014/07/19 18:18:50Z: OS: Microsoft Windows NT 6.2.9200.0
2014/07/19 18:18:50Z: Language: en-US
2014/07/19 18:18:50Z: EC2 Agent: Ec2Config service v2.2.5.0
2014/07/19 18:18:50Z: Driver: AWS PV Network Device v7.2.0.0
2014/07/19 18:18:50Z: Driver: AWS PV Storage Host Adapter v7.2.0.0
2014/07/19 18:18:51Z: Message: Waiting for meta-data accessibility...
2014/07/19 18:18:51Z: Message: Meta-data is now available.
2014/07/19 18:18:51Z: AMI-ID: ami-9ade1df2
2014/07/19 18:18:51Z: Instance-ID: i-05132d2e
2014/07/19 18:18:51Z: Ec2SetPassword: Disabled
2014/07/19 18:18:51Z: RDPCERTIFICATE-SUBJECTNAME: WIN-JCK73T6NRFU
2014/07/19 18:18:51Z: RDPCERTIFICATE-THUMBPRINT: 68D80A1B0567E60D0BD2C6A8068D7E1D55ED3DDC
2014/07/19 18:18:53Z: Message: Windows is Ready to use
<span style="background-color: yellow;">This was written directly to the serial port
2014/07/19 19:30:54Z: This was written using the Ec2ConfigLibrary</span>
2014/07/19 19:32:57Z: AMI Origin Version: 2014.07.10
2014/07/19 19:32:57Z: AMI Origin Name: Windows_Server-2012-R2_RTM-English-64Bit-Base
2014/07/19 19:32:57Z: OS: Microsoft Windows NT 6.2.9200.0
2014/07/19 19:32:57Z: Language: en-US
2014/07/19 19:32:57Z: EC2 Agent: Ec2Config service v2.2.5.0
2014/07/19 19:32:58Z: Driver: AWS PV Network Device v7.2.0.0
2014/07/19 19:32:58Z: Driver: AWS PV Storage Host Adapter v7.2.0.0
2014/07/19 19:32:58Z: Message: Waiting for meta-data accessibility...
2014/07/19 19:32:59Z: Message: Meta-data is now available.
2014/07/19 19:32:59Z: AMI-ID: ami-9ade1df2
2014/07/19 19:32:59Z: Instance-ID: i-05132d2e
2014/07/19 19:32:59Z: Ec2SetPassword: Disabled
2014/07/19 19:32:59Z: RDPCERTIFICATE-SUBJECTNAME: WIN-JCK73T6NRFU
2014/07/19 19:32:59Z: RDPCERTIFICATE-THUMBPRINT: 68D80A1B0567E60D0BD2C6A8068D7E1D55ED3DDC
2014/07/19 19:33:00Z: Message: Windows is Ready to use
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