spore.host

Appearance

Your First Instance ​

A complete walkthrough from a fresh install to a running EC2 instance and back. Allow 15–20 minutes.

What you'll accomplish ​

  • spawn and truffle installed and working
  • AWS credentials verified
  • An EC2 instance running in AWS
  • An active SSH connection to that instance
  • The instance terminated when you're done

Prerequisites ​

  • An AWS account (free tier works fine)
  • macOS, Linux, or Windows with WSL2
  • Basic comfort with the command line

1. Install ​

sh
brew install spore-host/tap/truffle
brew install spore-host/tap/spawn

Verify:

sh
truffle --version
spawn --version

If you're not on macOS or need a different install method, see the Installation guide.

2. Check your AWS credentials ​

sh
aws sts get-caller-identity

Expected output:

json
{
    "UserId": "AIDAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE",
    "Account": "123456789012",
    "Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/yourname"
}

If this fails, run aws configure and enter your Access Key ID, Secret Access Key, and preferred region. spore.host uses the same credentials as the AWS CLI — nothing extra to configure.

3. Find a cheap instance ​

Before launching, see what's available and what it costs:

sh
truffle find "t3 medium" --region us-east-1

You'll see a table with vCPUs, memory, and on-demand price. For this walkthrough we'll use a t3.micro — free tier eligible.

4. Launch ​

sh
spawn launch \
  --name my-first-instance \
  --instance-type t3.micro \
  --ttl 1h

After about 60–90 seconds:

✓ Instance i-0a1b2c3d4e5f running
✓ my-first-instance.abc123.spore.host
✓ SSH: ssh ec2-user@54.123.45.67
✓ Auto-terminates in 1h

spawn automatically found the latest Amazon Linux 2023 AMI, created an SSH key, configured networking, and installed spored on the instance.

5. Connect ​

sh
spawn connect my-first-instance

This prints the SSH command. Or connect directly:

sh
ssh ec2-user@54.123.45.67

TIP

If you get "Connection refused", the instance is still booting. Wait 30 seconds and try again.

Once connected, confirm spored is running:

sh
sudo systemctl status spored

6. Check status from your laptop ​

In a second terminal:

sh
spawn status my-first-instance

This shows state, IP, type, uptime, and time remaining before auto-termination.

7. Clean up ​

When you're done, permanently terminate it (destroys the instance and its EBS volume):

sh
spawn terminate my-first-instance       # confirms first; add -y to skip

Or spawn stop my-first-instance to keep the EBS volume and resume later — or just leave it, since it auto-terminates after 1 hour (the default idle timeout).

What just happened ​

spored was installed automatically on the instance. It runs in the background, enforces the TTL, and would detect idle activity if configured. This is the core spore.host contract: every instance knows when to stop.

Next steps ​