Find the most recent Ubuntu AMI using aws-cli (or any other AMI for that matter)

amifind.sh

#!/bin/sh

# Use AWS CLI to get the most recent version of an AMI that 
# matches certain criteria. Has obvious uses. Made possible via
# --query, --output text, and the fact that RFC3339 datetime
# fields are easily sortable.

export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1

aws ec2 describe-images \
 --filters Name=name,Values=ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-trusty-14.04-amd64* \
 --query 'Images[*].[ImageId,CreationDate]' --output text \
 | sort -k2 -r \
 | head -n1

Nice!

Thanks!

You're awesome, thank you!

Piping it to cut -f 1 will give only the ami name :)

Might want to limit that to the Ubuntu Cloud account. Can also use sort_by in the query to get the most recent.

aws ec2 describe-images \
    --owners 099720109477 \
    --filters Name=name,Values=ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-xenial-16.04-amd64-server-* \
    --query 'sort_by(Images,&CreationDate)[-1].ImageId'

@michaelajr perfect, thanks.

Is there any way we can get the Latest AMI for all the regions instead of a specific one?

Is there a much more canonical filter to use,instead of "Name=name"?In case someone create a ami with similar name.

Good Find!

Revised to capture all Ubuntu Images:
aws ec2 describe-images --filters "Name=name,Values=ubuntu*" --query "sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[].Name"

@aggy07 Run command against region that you want, and it will give you the corresponding AMI for that region. Commands must be run against a specific region, no way to list all AMI's in all regions at once.

This is good, thanks!!

With Image Name and AMI ID together,
aws ec2 describe-images --filters "Name=name,Values=ubuntu*" --query "sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[].[Name, ImageId]"

BTW, Thanks to All of you for posting your comments on this. It helped me!

You can also do all of the sorting and filtering in the CLI itself, which should be portable between Windows / Mac / Linux:

$ aws ec2 describe-images --filters "Name=name,Values=amazon-eks-node-1.11*" --query 'reverse(sort_by(Images, &CreationDate))[0]'
{
    "Architecture": "x86_64",
    "CreationDate": "2019-06-15T06:31:01.000Z",
    "ImageId": "ami-053e2ac42d872cc20",
    "ImageLocation": "amazon/amazon-eks-node-1.11-v20190614",
    "ImageType": "machine",
    "Public": true,
    "OwnerId": "602401143452",
    "State": "available",
    "BlockDeviceMappings": [
        {
            "DeviceName": "/dev/xvda",
            "Ebs": {
                "DeleteOnTermination": true,
                "SnapshotId": "snap-06620aa1d7ab94987",
                "VolumeSize": 20,
                "VolumeType": "gp2",
                "Encrypted": false
            }
        }
    ],
    "Description": "EKS Kubernetes Worker AMI with AmazonLinux2 image (k8s: 1.11.9, docker:18.06)",
    "EnaSupport": true,
    "Hypervisor": "xen",
    "ImageOwnerAlias": "amazon",
    "Name": "amazon-eks-node-1.11-v20190614",
    "RootDeviceName": "/dev/xvda",
    "RootDeviceType": "ebs",
    "SriovNetSupport": "simple",
    "VirtualizationType": "hvm"
}

Is there any way we can get the Latest AMI for all the regions instead of a specific one?

in a bash environment:

for region in `aws ec2 describe-regions --output text | cut -f4`
do
	echo "region: $region, image: ubuntu-xenial-16.04*"
	aws ec2 describe-images --filters "Name=name,Values=ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-xenial-16.04*" \
        --query 'sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1].[CreationDate,Name,ImageId]' --region $region \
        --output text --owners 099720109477
done

Thanks! bacon saver.

Get the latest IMAGE as seen in the quick start instance screen on the AWS console:

In my case I want the latest ubuntu 20 server arm64 image (Take note of the [-1:] -- return the last element of the array). It will have the image name and ami-id.

aws ec2 describe-images \
--filters "Name=name,Values=ubuntu*20.04-arm64-server*" \
--query "sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1:].[Name, ImageId]"

To get the most recent Bionic 18.04 from Canonical themselves, I had to do

aws ec2 describe-images --filters "Name=name,Values=ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-bionic*" --query "sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1].[Name, ImageId]" --owners 099720109477

Thanks!

I am comparing the output I get from:

aws ec2 describe-images \
--filters "Name=name,Values=ubuntu*20.04-arm64-server*" \
--query "sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1:].[Name, ImageId]"

And the image-id is not the same in the quick-start interface, in the same region

This one seems to return the same as the console:

aws ec2 describe-images --filters "Name=name,Values=ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/*20.04-amd64-server-????????" \
--query "sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1:].[Name, ImageId]"

nice, thanks!

⚠️ A lot of the examples above don't use --owners to limit the account ID to one known to be owned by Canonical. This is a security risk, as anyone can make - and publicly share - an AMI with a similar name, with who-knows-what installed in it.

To just get "ubuntu jammy" and the latest AMI id only:

aws ec2 describe-images --owners 099720109477 --filters 'Name=name,Values=ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-jammy*' --query 'sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1].[ImageId]' --output text

Only image id with same original command:

AMI_ID=`aws ec2 describe-images \
 --filters 'Name=name,Values=ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-*' \
 --query 'Images[*].[ImageId,CreationDate]' --output text \
 | sort -k1 -r \
 | head -n1 | cut -f 1 -w`