AWS EC2 Mac

Spin up a Mac EC2 instance on AWS using CloudFormation and GitHub Actions

https://aws.amazon.com/de/ec2/instance-types/mac/

How to deploy

• Fork the repository
• Add AWS credentials to repository secrets
• Run workflow "Deployment" and insert variables

Example variables

• Instance type: e. g. mac2.metal (M1 Mac mini)
• AMI ID: e. g. ami-00171e83b9ddc38bd (macOS Sequoia 15.4.1)
• Region: for example eu-west-1
• Availability zone: for example eu-west-1b
• VPC ID: e. g. vpc-0123456789abcdef (should be in the chosen AWS region, e. g. eu-west-1)
• Subnet ID: e. g. subnet-0123456789abcdef (should be in the chosen availability zone, e. g. eu-west-1b)
• SSH key name: e. g. my-keypair (should already exist, see also Prerequisites below)

Cost

Warning

The Mac dedicated host has a minimum allocation time of 24 hours, which means there is a minimum cost of approx. USD 15.60 for the host (depending on the host instance type) once it is running. The host cannot be destroyed before that time. After the 24 hours, the cost is caclulated per minute as usual.

Using the instance

SSH access

1. Download key pair

   From AWS Console, download the key pair used for the EC2 instance to your local machine.

   Ensure it has the proper permissions:

   chmod 400 my-keypair.pem

2. Connect to the instance:

   ssh -i my-keypair.pem ec2-user@<my-instance-hostname>.<region>.compute.amazonaws.com

VNC access

1. Enable macOS screen sharing

   sudo defaults write /var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd/overrides.plist com.apple.screensharing -dict Disabled -bool false
   sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.screensharing.plist

2. Set password for ec2-user

   sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -passwd /Users/ec2-user

3. Open SSH tunnel

   ssh -i my-keypair.pem -L 5900:localhost:5900 ec2-user@<my-instance-hostname>.<region>.compute.amazonaws.com

4. Connect to VNC

   On a Mac, for example, press Cmd+K in the Finder and connect to vnc://localhost:5900.

Prerequisites

Add AWS credentials to repo

• Add AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID to repository variables.
• Add AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY to repository secrets.

VPC setup

In case you have not set up a VPC yet: AWS Console > VPC > Your VPCs > Actions > Create default VPC

Note

Make sure to create the VPC in the same region as your new EC2 instance.

Create key pair (if needed)

aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-type rsa --key-name my-keypair --region <my region> --query 'KeyMaterial' --output text > my-keypair.pem
chmod 400 my-keypair.pem