Linux NAT instance script for EC2 invoked from rc.local.

configure-pat.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Configure the instance to run as a Port Address Translator (PAT) to provide 
# Internet connectivity to private instances. 

function log { logger -t "vpc" -- $1; }

function die {
    [ -n "$1" ] && log "$1"
    log "Configuration of PAT failed!"
    exit 1
}

# Sanitize PATH
PATH="/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin"

log "Determining the MAC address on eth0..."
ETH0_MAC=$(cat /sys/class/net/eth0/address) ||
    die "Unable to determine MAC address on eth0."
log "Found MAC ${ETH0_MAC} for eth0."

VPC_CIDR_URI="http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/network/interfaces/macs/${ETH0_MAC}/vpc-ipv4-cidr-block"
log "Metadata location for vpc ipv4 range: ${VPC_CIDR_URI}"

VPC_CIDR_RANGE=$(curl --retry 3 --silent --fail ${VPC_CIDR_URI})
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
   log "Unable to retrive VPC CIDR range from meta-data, using 0.0.0.0/0 instead. PAT may be insecure!"
   VPC_CIDR_RANGE="0.0.0.0/0"
else
   log "Retrieved VPC CIDR range ${VPC_CIDR_RANGE} from meta-data."
fi

log "Enabling PAT..."
sysctl -q -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 net.ipv4.conf.eth0.send_redirects=0 && (
   iptables -t nat -C POSTROUTING -o eth0 -s ${VPC_CIDR_RANGE} -j MASQUERADE 2> /dev/null ||
   iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -s ${VPC_CIDR_RANGE} -j MASQUERADE ) ||
       die

sysctl net.ipv4.ip_forward net.ipv4.conf.eth0.send_redirects | log
iptables -n -t nat -L POSTROUTING | log

log "Configuration of PAT complete."
exit 0

This is the magic sauce to autconfigure a NAT instance in AWS. The /usr/local/sbin/configure-pat.sh script is invoked by /etc/rc.local.

Also, in EC2 source and destination checks must be off and the instance must have an elastic IP.

Note this script requires curl, which is not installed on a Debian 7 (Wheezy) EC2 base image, so also need to do sudo apt-get install curl.