# Knfie ec2 fails consistently when trying to boot up three nodes

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/knfie-ec2-fails-consistently-when-trying-to-boot-up-three-nodes/2742>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [April 7, 2012, 9:14am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/knfie-ec2-fails-consistently-when-trying-to-boot-up-three-nodes/2742 "2012-04-07T09:14:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![David\_Montgomery](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/51bf81/32.png) [@David\_Montgomery](https://discourse.chef.io/u/David_Montgomery)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2012, 9:14am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/knfie-ec2-fails-consistently-when-trying-to-boot-up-three-nodes/2742/1 "2012-04-07T09:14:54Z")

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Hi,

I am using knife to boot up three nodes on my dev box. 9 out of 10  
times knife fails to run and hangs. One or two nodes will  
complete…one fails 90% of the time.

Below is the output and where is hangs. Is this a know bug with knife?

Instance ID: i-6e10dd3a  
Flavor: t1.micro  
Image: ami-c4622596  
Region: ap-southeast-1  
Availability Zone: ap-southeast-1a  
Security Groups: nginx  
SSH Key: sg\_development

Waiting for server…  
Public DNS Name: [ec2-175-41-190-215.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com](http://ec2-175-41-190-215.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com)  
Public IP Address: 175.41.190.215  
Private DNS Name: ip-10-130-13-51.ap-southeast-1.compute.internal  
Private IP Address: 10.130.13.51

Waiting for sshd.done  
Bootstrapping Chef on [ec2-175-41-190-215.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com](http://ec2-175-41-190-215.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Steven\_Danna](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/steven_danna/32/195_2.png) [@Steven\_Danna](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Steven_Danna)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2012, 7:18pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/knfie-ec2-fails-consistently-when-trying-to-boot-up-three-nodes/2742/2 "2012-04-07T19:18:44Z")

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Hi,

On Sat, Apr 7, 2012 at 2:14 AM, David Montgomery  
[davidmontgomery@gmail.com](mailto:davidmontgomery@gmail.com) wrote:

> Waiting for sshd.done  
> Bootstrapping Chef on [ec2-175-41-190-215.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com](http://ec2-175-41-190-215.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com)

Since the instance has come up in this case, can you ssh to the  
instance and run chef-client with debug logging?

```
chef-client -l debug

```

One possibility is that ohai is hanging, you can find out if this is  
the case by running the following on the node:

```
ohai -l debug

```

From the output it also looks like ssh came up surprisingly fast for a  
t1.micro. It could be that ssh isn't /actually/ up yet. How long have  
you let knife-ec2 sit? Does it ever timeout? You also might try  
running your server creation command with the `-VV` flag to get a bit  
more info.

Cheers,

Steven