What I Investigated When ecs execute command Failed

ToC

• Overview
• First, check whether it is actually enabled
• Does the Task Role have the required permissions?
• Try it on another container
• Run the target container again
• Swap out the task with a forced deployment of the same task
• Summary

Overview

I had enabled execute command, but an error occurred when running ecs execute command, so I summarized how I investigated it.

An error occurred (InvalidParameterException) when calling the ExecuteCommand operation: The execute command failed because execute command was not enabled when the task was run or the execute command agent isn't running. Wait and try again or run a new task with execute command enabled and try again.

First, check whether it is actually enabled

Confirm that the ECS Service returns enableExecuteCommand = true.

$ aws ecs describe-services --cluster example-cluster --services example-service | jq '.services[].enableExecuteCommand'

true

Confirm that the running Task returns enableExecuteCommand = true.

$ aws ecs describe-tasks --cluster example-cluster --tasks 61cf31d333cd43508a412e1437814e19 | jq '.tasks[].enableExecuteCommand'

true

Both return true, so why is it failing?

Does the Task Role have the required permissions?

Looks fine ♪

statement {
  actions = [
    "ssmmessages:CreateControlChannel",
    "ssmmessages:CreateDataChannel",
    "ssmmessages:OpenControlChannel",
    "ssmmessages:OpenDataChannel",
  ]
  resources = ["*"]
}

Try it on another container

$ aws ecs execute-command \
    --cluster example-cluster \
    --task 61cf31d333cd43508a412e1437814e19 \
    --container other_container \
    --interactive \
    --command "ps aux"

ecs execute-command worked on the other container

At this point, the target container looks suspicious.

Run the target container again

With the rails container, the execute command agent isn't running. was occurring.

$ aws ecs execute-command \
    --cluster example-cluster \
    --task 61cf31d333cd43508a412e1437814e19 \
    --container rails \
    --interactive \
    --command "ps aux"

An error occurred (InvalidParameterException) when calling the ExecuteCommand operation: The execute command failed because execute command was not enabled when the task was run or the execute command agent isn't running. Wait and try again or run a new task with execute command enabled and try again.

Since I use rails c a lot, could it have been killed by OOM???

Swap out the task with a forced deployment of the same task

After running a forced deployment of the same task, running ecs execute-command succeeded!

It seems it was a temporary problem.

Summary

When The execute command failed because execute command was not enabled when the task was run or the execute command agent isn't running. occurs, be aware that it can also happen due to circumstances specific to each container.

If you run into the same error, I’d be more than happy if you could just drop a link to this article.

That’s all.
I hope this is helpful.