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

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`