Divyen Patel's Weblog

Project Link: http://code.google.com/p/iphone-aws-manager/

I was looking for the free iPhone application to manage my ec2 account and came across this article: “Mobile Monitoring and Administration of Amazon Web Services: Developing an iPhone-Optimized Web Application”.

This article not only describes in details each steps on how to begin with developing iPhone application to manage AWS but also provides source code that you easily download from Google Code Repository and setup in-house.

In this blog entry I will walk you through steps on setting up this application on our popular OpenSolaris AMP Stack AMI.

Following Steps are also valid for the setup of “iPhone AWS Manager” on local machine with OpenSolaris and AMP Stack.

Lets begin with launching new OpenSolaris AMP Stack AMI Instance.
ec2-run-instances ami-c7cf28ae -k my-keypair

Get the public DNS address of an Instance and login into with your keypair
ec2-describe-instances i-xxxxxxxx
ssh -i <path_to_your_keypair> root@ec2-xx-xxx-xx-xxx.compute-1.amazonaws.com

Install SVN Package from the Repository
pkg refresh
pkg install SUNWsvn

Checkout iPhone AWS Manager code form the Google Code Repository
cd /var/apache2/2.2/htdocs/

svn co http://iphone-aws-manager.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ aws-iphone
A aws-iphone/amis.php
A aws-iphone/class.s3.php
A aws-iphone/reboot.php
A aws-iphone/deleteobj.php
A aws-iphone/contents.php
A aws-iphone/getbuckets.php
A aws-iphone/delete.php
A aws-iphone/create.php
A aws-iphone/run.php
A aws-iphone/index.php
A aws-iphone/about.php
A aws-iphone/size.php
A aws-iphone/class.ec2.php
A aws-iphone/lib
A aws-iphone/lib/iui
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/backButton.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/grayButton.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/loading.gif
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/pinstripes.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/toolbar.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/iuix.js
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/toolButton.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/whiteButton.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/iui.js
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/toggleOn.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/thumb.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/toggle.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/iuix.css
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/blueButton.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/cancel.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/selection.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/listArrow.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/listGroup.png
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/iui.css
A aws-iphone/lib/iui/listArrowSel.png
A aws-iphone/iPhone AWS Source Code.zip
A aws-iphone/instances.php
A aws-iphone/terminate.php
Checked out revision 3.

Set the Document Root in the httpd.conf file
vi /etc/apache2/2.2/httpd.conf

Set the DocumentRoot as given below
DocumentRoot “/var/apache2/2.2/htdocs/aws-iphone”

edit /etc/php/5.2/php.ini and set following variables to On
register_globals = On
register_long_arrays = On

Create “key.php” file at “/var/apache2/2.2/htdocs/aws-iphone/keys.php” with following code

<?php
define('my_access_key','XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX');
define('my_secret_key','XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX');
?>

Edit “/var/apache2/2.2/htdocs/aws-iphone/index.php” file and replace php code block at the top of the page with following code.

<?php
// start the session
session_start();
// include the EC2 and S3 libraries
require_once("class.ec2.php");
require_once("class.s3.php");
include_once("keys.php");
// create session variables for AWS keys
session_register("AMAZON_KEY");
session_register("AMAZON_PRIVATE_KEY");
$HTTP_SESSION_VARS["AMAZON_KEY"]=my_access_key;
$HTTP_SESSION_VARS["AMAZON_PRIVATE_KEY"]=my_secret_key;
?>

change your keypair in “/var/apache2/2.2/htdocs/aws-iphone/class.ec2.php” file
look for the function definition and replace your keyName

function runInstances($imageId, $min = 1, $max = 1, $keyName = "divyen-personal-aws-key")

Restart the Apache Server
svcadm disable svc:/network/http:apache22
svcadm enable svc:/network/http:apache22

Open Safari Browser in your iPhone and type in EC2 Instance DNS Address

Create a Shortcut icon so that you don’t need to type in URL every time

Snapshots of the basic operations supported on this application are described as given below

Describe AMIs – Both Public and Private

Create Instance, Reboot Instance, Terminate Instance

Create Bucket, Delete Bucket

Following instructions describes steps to access GUI on OpenSolaris 2009.06 EC2 AMI Instance using VNC Viewer.

Enable following desktop related services

Set xvm_vnc property to true for x11-server SMF service.

Set the root password, you may need it to get back to your session in case if screen saver starts.

Setup VNC server

Create .vnc directory under /root if it does not exist

Create /root/.vnc/xstartup file with following lines.

Note: if xstartup file is already exist, replace it with above lines to start gnome terminal session for VNC.

Provide execute permission on xtartup file.

Start the vncserver and set the password.

Authorize VNC Port
Here we are done with configuring EC2 instance for GUI Remote Access.
Finally we need to authorize the corresponding VNC port on users machine where VNC client is installed.

Screen Shots
VNC client connection configuration

Use public DNS address associated with EC2 instance as the host name.

VNC client connected to OpenSolaris 2009.06 EC2 Instance.

For more details on OpenSolaris AMIs visit http://blogs.sun.com/ec2/