Jams (Competition Runbooks)

• Use this page when you need a fast, reliable checklist during incidents/interviews.
• Prefer SSM Session Manager over opening inbound RDP/SSH.
• Keep IAM + network + logs enabled before you need them.

Quick index

• Windows / RDP Troubleshooting
• AWS Systems Manager (SSM) Operations
• CloudWatch Agent (Windows/Linux)
• ACM PCA (Private CA)
• IAM roles & policy snippets

1) Windows / RDP Troubleshooting

1.1 Fix: RDP instance can reach the EC2 Instance Metadata Service (IMDS)

Problem: The instance cannot reach the metadata IP 169.254.169.254.

Why this happens

• Windows routing can be missing a persistent route to the link-local IMDS address.
• This is especially common after network changes, custom route manipulation, or certain AMI configurations.

Fix (persistent route to IMDS)

route print   # identify the default gateway IP
route add 169.254.169.254 mask 255.255.255.255 <gateway_ip> -p

Verify