How to find AWS AMI image for EBS backed instance that would let me connect

Question

I use AWS console to look for ebs backed : as below

then I use ec2 command line

ec2-run-instances ami-23b6534a -k key_hw3 --availability-zone us-east-1a

then try to connect to it using cygwin ( i'm on windows ) , below .. usually when I do

#ls 

it would give me a list of everything ..

what am I do it wrong here ? like ..

or how can I find ami that would give me something normal ..like below I was able to do command "ls" and it would give me the directory but the above instance did nothing.. so Im a bit confused.

What does it mean

-bash-4.0#

vs

-root@ip-10.284-8-50#

I'm new to the cloud , and never really use linux before any explanation would help.

Thanks

Answer 1

What you are seeing is perfectly normal behaviour. You logged in into your instance and what you are seeing is the "prompt" where you can enter commands. The prompt is configurable, so it can show different things on different machines. ls does not show anything because there is probably no file in the directory. Try to have a look at various linux tutorials to get a better understanding of what is happening there.