`aws: error: argument --region: expected one argument` when running Kubernetes on AWS

Question

I'm following this guide to set up Kubernetes on an Ubuntu 14.04 image on AWS.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install curl
sudo apt-get install awscli
aws configure # enter credentials, etc.

# fix `locale` errors
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

export KUBE_AWS_ZONE=us-east-1b
export NUM_NODES=2
export MASTER_SIZE=t2.micro
export NODE_SIZE=t2.micro
export AWS_S3_BUCKET=my.s3.bucket.kube
export AWS_S3_REGION=us-east-1b
export INSTANCE_PREFIX=k8s

export KUBERNETES_PROVIDER=aws
curl -sS https://get.k8s.io | bash

This fails, however...

ubuntu@ip-172-31-24-216:~$ curl -sS https://get.k8s.io | bash
Downloading kubernetes release v1.2.4 to /home/ubuntu/kubernetes.tar.gz
--2016-05-21 17:01:20--  https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/v1.2.4/kubernetes.tar.gz
Resolving storage.googleapis.com (storage.googleapis.com)... 74.125.29.128, 2607:f8b0:400d:c03::80
Connecting to storage.googleapis.com (storage.googleapis.com)|74.125.29.128|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 496696744 (474M) [application/x-tar]
Saving to: ‘kubernetes.tar.gz’

100%[======================================>] 496,696,744 57.4MB/s   in 8.2s

2016-05-21 17:01:29 (58.1 MB/s) - ‘kubernetes.tar.gz’ saved [496696744/496696744]

Unpacking kubernetes release v1.2.4
Creating a kubernetes on aws...
... Starting cluster in us-east-1b using provider aws
... calling verify-prereqs
... calling kube-up
Starting cluster using os distro: jessie
Uploading to Amazon S3
+++ Staging server tars to S3 Storage: my.s3.bucket.kube/devel
usage: aws [options] <command> <subcommand> [parameters]
aws: error: argument --region: expected one argument

I tried editing cluster/aws/util.sh to print out s3_bucket_location (following advice from this question, and I get an empty string. I'm guessing that's why it fails?

The docs say an empty string for US East is normal, but I tried changing region (with everything else remaining the same) and I still get an empty string.

The s3 bucket does get created.

Any help would be appreciated.

Solution

Looks to me like you are getting region and zone confused.

Use the ec2-describe-regions command as follows to describe your regions.

PROMPT> ec2-describe-regions
REGION us-east-1  ec2.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
REGION  ap-northeast-1  ec2.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com
REGION  ap-southeast-1  ec2.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com
..
Use the ec2-describe-availability-zones command as follows to describe your Availability Zones within the us-east-1 region.

PROMPT>  ec2-describe-availability-zones --region us-east-1
AVAILABILITYZONE    us-east-1a  available   us-east-1
AVAILABILITYZONE    us-east-1b  available   us-east-1
AVAILABILITYZONE    us-east-1c  available   us-east-1
AVAILABILITYZONE    us-east-1d  available   us-east-1

be sure to use a region in export AWS_S3_REGION=