This is a true story, which happened to me last month:
I am at work. I log into an EC2 instance via ssh. I establish a screen session. I do some work inside of screen. Go home after work, leaving screen running.
I arrive at work the next day. Log into EC2. I type "screen -ls" and I am told that there are no screen sockets. (In my experience, this usually means the server has been restarted.) I am annoyed. I create a new screen session and proceed to get some work done. That evening, I leave the screen session running, and head home.
I arrive the next day at work. I log into the server. I type "screen -ls". I am again told that there are no screen sockets. I am now very annoyed. I start a new screen session and proceed to get some work done. That evening, as before, I leave the screen session running, and I head home.
I arrive the next day at work. Once again, I log into the EC2 instance via ssh. Once again I type "screen -ls". Once again I am told that there are no screen sessions.
This happened 4 days in a row.
I was left feeling angry and I was left feeling like no EC2 instance could be trusted. I also feel like it damages my productivity that I can not rely on screen (I have in the past, on regular Linux servers, had screen sessions that lasted for many months).
Right now I have all of my personal sites on the Rackspace cloud, which I think was taken over from Slicehost. Although this is called a "cloud" service, the "slices" feel like real computers to me -- I can have a screen session that lasts for months.
The EC2 instances are strangely insubstantial, even when compared to other services that promote themselves as cloud services. Personally, I prefer to work with services that are at least solid enough that I can rely on screen sessions.
I'm confused, what exactly do you think is happening? Obviously individual EC2 instances run for years without being rebooted or having processes die or nobody would use it. (I've run services on EC2 since they first launched and have never had such issues)
What's your theory on why your screen instances are dying and how would EC2 be responsible for it?
I really do not know. I have not had the time to investigate how and why this particular service might suffer so much on EC2. I do not know if our EC2 servies were suffering something that was unique to us, or whether this is a general problem with EC2. I do know that I was annoyed as hell. And I know I have not had this problem with other cloud services, such as the one offered by Rackspace.
Are you sure it isn't just a difference in configuration or distribution that you are using? Hard to imagine how screen would be terribly unique here in uniquely misbehaving on EC2.
I've never had any issues with ec2 instances mysteriously restarting and I've dealt with a lot of them (personal and business). In fact I don't think I've ever seen amazon restart instances or mess with them in any way without warning.
Sounds like you're got a configuration problem somewhere (os on you instances, software you're running, etc.) on your end and are blaming amazon for it when they had nothing to do with it.
Now, potentially the instance is on bad hardware (start/stop if you've got no ephemeral storage which will put you on new hardware) but that can happen even if you're running your own hardware. However, you've done so little investigation that blaming amazon is downright bad IT (is this how you deal with other bugs, blame the first thing you can think off and rant about it?).
Agreed, the one time Amazon needed me to migrate an instance they told me when they would forcibly stop / start the instance and allowed me to do it before hand. How did you set up screen on EC2? I've had problems with it in the past but got it to work pretty well recently.
I am at work. I log into an EC2 instance via ssh. I establish a screen session. I do some work inside of screen. Go home after work, leaving screen running.
I arrive at work the next day. Log into EC2. I type "screen -ls" and I am told that there are no screen sockets. (In my experience, this usually means the server has been restarted.) I am annoyed. I create a new screen session and proceed to get some work done. That evening, I leave the screen session running, and head home.
I arrive the next day at work. I log into the server. I type "screen -ls". I am again told that there are no screen sockets. I am now very annoyed. I start a new screen session and proceed to get some work done. That evening, as before, I leave the screen session running, and I head home.
I arrive the next day at work. Once again, I log into the EC2 instance via ssh. Once again I type "screen -ls". Once again I am told that there are no screen sessions.
This happened 4 days in a row.
I was left feeling angry and I was left feeling like no EC2 instance could be trusted. I also feel like it damages my productivity that I can not rely on screen (I have in the past, on regular Linux servers, had screen sessions that lasted for many months).
Right now I have all of my personal sites on the Rackspace cloud, which I think was taken over from Slicehost. Although this is called a "cloud" service, the "slices" feel like real computers to me -- I can have a screen session that lasts for months.
The EC2 instances are strangely insubstantial, even when compared to other services that promote themselves as cloud services. Personally, I prefer to work with services that are at least solid enough that I can rely on screen sessions.