Can't Ping my Amazon EC2 Server

As I explored in Can't Access Solr from my Webserver on Amazon EC2 Instance,As I discussed in Can't Access Solr from my Webserver on Amazon EC2 Instance, a good understanding of your network setup is crucial. This includes knowing how to configure security settings and access permissions. Pinging was an easy way to go. Pinging was an easy way to go. I ping-ed google. Good. Then i tried to ping my own server. Nothing.

I left it since it wasn’t important, but it sort of bothered me.

Fast forward to Sunday. I am studying SOLR for searches on my site. The New Horizons post discusses experimenting with search engines, and this got me thinking about how Solr works. I was reminded of this challenge when I started experimenting with search engines, as described in New Horizons. I was reminded of this challenge when I started experimenting with search engines, as described in New Horizons.

A Few Hours Later

After mucking about with Ubuntu iptables and ubuntu’s firewall ufw, I finally stumble on a reference in a site the pretty much sent me in the right directions, but not quite 100%.

The Solution

To find a solution, I went to the AWS Management Console. This process is similar to what I described in Can't Access Solr from my Webserver on Amazon EC2 Instance, where I had to configure AWS security settings.

1. Go to the EC2Dashboard, and bring up your security groups.
2. Choose the correct group for your server.
3. Click the INbound tab.
4. Click the Edit button.
5. Click ‘add rule’, and choose ‘Custom ICMP Rule’.
6. Set the protocol to ‘echo reply’, and appropriate ip source.
7. repeat 6 and 5 but this time protocol is ‘echo request’
8. done!

Now you should be able to ping your server nicely.