🐞 Known Issues During First Launch (EC2 from AWS Marketplace)
This document contains a list of known issues that may occur during the initial launch of the EC2 instance when deploying BookStack via AWS Marketplace. These behaviors are considered normal and self-recovering in most cases.
⚠️ 1. Transient DNF Cache Failures
Symptoms:
• Cloud-init fails with messages like:
[Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/var/cache/dnf/.../*.rpm'
Failed to run module scripts-userCause:
• This issue is caused by a temporary inconsistency between metadata and actual RPM packages in Amazon Linux 2023 mirrors.
• It may also be triggered by race conditions within cloud-init (e.g., DNF downloads package, then cache becomes unavailable before install completes).
Workaround:
• The Auto Scaling Group will automatically replace the failed instance.
• On the second attempt, the packages are downloaded again and the process typically succeeds.
Recommendation:
• Add retry logic and DNF cache clearing in your user-data, such as:
dnf clean all
dnf makecache
retry dnf install -y ...⚠️ 2. cloud-init Failure After SELinux Reboot
Symptoms:
⚠️ On Amazon Linux 2023, the system may reboot automatically on first launch to apply SELinux settings.
This may cause the initial cloud-init status to show as failed, even though the environment is ready.
Log shows:
Rebooting machine to apply SELinux kernel commandline setting
Failed to run module scripts-user
Ran 20 modules with 1 failuresWorkaround:
• The system reboots automatically and continues working fine.
• No action is required — this is an expected behavior.
• Optional: Use the following EC2AMI parameter value: /aws/service/ami-amazon-linux-latest/al2023-ami-kernel-default-arm64.
⚠️ 3. Duplicate Welcome Message in Shell
Symptoms:
sh-5.2$ sudo su - ec2-user
Last login: Tue Apr 8 08:03:38 UTC 2025 on pts/1
Welcome to your EC2 instance!
-----------------------------
Operating System: GNU/Linux
Hostname: ip-172-31-7-183.ec2.internal
Current Date and Time: Tue Apr 8 08:14:25 UTC 2025
-----------------------------
Welcome to your EC2 instance!
-----------------------------
Operating System: GNU/Linux
Hostname: ip-172-31-7-183.ec2.internal
Current Date and Time: Tue Apr 8 08:14:25 UTC 2025Cause:
• The base AMI used by AWS during scanning includes pre-installed user-data scripts or messages, and this overlaps with your current user-data.
Resolution:
• Ignore — has no effect on functionality.
• Optional: Use the following EC2AMI parameter value: /aws/service/ami-amazon-linux-latest/al2023-ami-kernel-default-arm64.
⚠️ 4. EC2 Instance Logs Are Not Persisted to File
Symptoms:
• File /var/log/journal/log-export.log is missing after instance launch.
Cause:
• The logging unit contains a misconfigured ExecStart command in the file: /etc/systemd/system/journald-export.service
Incorrect line:
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "journalctl -f -o short-iso > tee -a /var/log/journal/log-export.log"Correct line should be:
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "journalctl -f -o short-iso > /var/log/journal/log-export.log"Resolution:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now journald-export.service
sudo systemctl start journald-export.service✅ Summary
These issues do not indicate a failure of the product, but are a result of how cloud-init, Amazon Linux 2023, and Marketplace validation behave.
🔧 The duplicate welcome screen and missing EC2 instance logs are known issues and will be addressed in a future release.
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