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DescribeImages

From Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud: 2008-05-05

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DescribeImages

The DescribeImages operation returns information about AMIs, AKIs, and ARIs available to the user. Information returned includes image type, product codes, architecture, and kernel and RAM disk IDs. Images available to the user include public images available for any user to launch, private images owned by the user making the request, and private images owned by other users for which the user has explicit launch permissions.

Launch permissions fall into three categories:

Launch Permission Description
public The owner of the AMI granted launch permissions for the AMI to the all group. All users have launch permissions for these AMIs.
explicit The owner of the AMI granted launch permissions to a specific user.
implicit A user has implicit launch permissions for all AMIs he or she owns.

The list of AMIs returned can be modified by specifying AMI IDs, AMI owners, or users with launch permissions. If no options are specified, Amazon EC2 returns all AMIs for which the user has launch permissions.

If you specify one or more AMI IDs, only AMIs that have the specified IDs are returned. If you specify an invalid AMI ID, a fault is returned. If you specify an AMI ID for which you do not have access, it will not be included in the returned results.

If you specify one or more AMI owners, only AMIs from the specified owners and for which you have access are returned. The results can include the account IDs of the specified owners, amazon for AMIs owned by Amazon or self for AMIs that you own.

If you specify a list of executable users, only users that have launch permissions for the AMIs are returned. You can specify account IDs (if you own the AMI(s)), self for AMIs for which you own or have explicit permissions, or all for public AMIs.

[Note] Note

Deregistered images are included in the returned results for an unspecified interval after deregistration.

Request Parameters

The following table describes the request parameters for DescribeImages. Parameter names are case sensitive.

Name Description Required

imagesSet

AMI IDs to describe

Type: xsd:string[]

Default: none

Valid Values: Can be empty

Constraints: none

Yes

ownersSet

Owners of AMIs to describe

Type: xsd:string[]

Default: none

Valid Values: Can be empty

Constraints: none

Yes

executableBySet

AMIs for which specified users have access

Type: xsd:string[]

Default: none

Valid Values: Can be empty

Constraints: none

Yes

Response Elements

The following table describes the default response tags included in DescribeImages responses.

Name Description

imagesSet

A list of image descriptions

Type: DescribeImagesResponseItemType[]

Sample Request

<DescribeImages xmlns="http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2008-05-05">
  <executableBySet>
    <item>
      <user>all</user>
    </item>
  </executableBySet>
  <ownersSet />
  <imagesSet>
    <item>
      <imageId>ami-be3adfd7</imageId>
    </item>
  </imagesSet>
</DescribeImages>

Sample Response

<DescribeImagesResponse xmlns="http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2008-05-05">
  <imagesSet>
    <item>
      <imageId>ami-be3adfd7</imageId>
      <imageLocation>ec2-public-images/fedora-8-i386-base-v1.04.manifest.xml
      </imageLocation>
      <imageState>available</imageState>
      <imageOwnerId>206029621532</imageOwnerId>
      <isPublic>false</isPublic>
      <architecture>i386</architecture>
      <imageType>machine</imageType>
      <kernelId>aki-4438dd2d</kernelId>
      <ramdiskId>ari-4538dd2c</ramdiskId>
    </item>
  </imagesSet>
</DescribeImagesResponse>

Related Operations

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