# Ugh - cannot verify AMI ID for FreeBSD EC2 AMIs ...



## absduser (Nov 1, 2019)

FreeBSD releases have an announcement page where all of the AWS EC2 AMI images are listed:

For instance, this page:









						FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE Announcement
					

FreeBSD is an operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms.




					www.freebsd.org
				




... indicates that this ami:

us-east-1 region: ami-03b0f822e17669866

... is available in US-EAST.

However, I cannot see any way to verify, and then use, this AMI.

I log into AWS in US-EAST and I go to "Choose AMI" and I paste "ami-03b0f822e17669866" into the search bar, expecting exactly one, single match for that unique AMI identifier.  Instead, I get over 3600 hits for that AMI.  Which doesn't make any sense.

OK, FINE.
I will just manually choose the 12.0-RELEASE AMI in US EAST and check the identifier string there.

Except, oops, nowhere, anywhere, anyhow, is there a way to match up the AMI ID (ami-03b0f822e17669866) with the AMI I am choosing.  That AMI identifier is NOWHERE in the description, or the index, or the Amazon ID or the properties ... nowhere.

How can I do this ?

How can I choose an AMI and verify that it is exactly the one (ami-03b0f822e17669866) specified in the FreeBSD release notes ?


Thanks.


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## absduser (Nov 1, 2019)

OK, for the archives ...

The AWS EC2 is, in fact, broken as I describe above ... you can go through the entire interface, step by step, and NEVER see the unique identifier of the AMI you are selecting.

However, if you choose "AMIs" from the left menu, then change your search settings to "Public Images" and then paste in "ami-03b0f822e17669866" you will (weirdly, incorrectly, suspiciously) get *two* results.  Presumably one of them is the "official" FreeBSD EC2 image and the other is someone who put that hash in the name of their image:

FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE-amd64-f5af2713-6d84-41f0-95ea-2eaee78f2af4-ami-03b0f822e17669866.4

... which is bad, bad news.

So, in summary, depending on how you click-click your way into the search interface, you can search for *hyper specific* strings and still get thousands of results *OR* you can get what you are looking for, but watch out for the obvious malicious AMI that, very much like counterfeit products on their shopping site, Amazon will never take down.


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## justinnoor (Jan 17, 2020)

Haha--I am also searching for the image ID, and cannot find it. The ID is required to launch instances with the API. To be continued.


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