Hit My First Real AWS Error — Troubleshooting CloudShell
A beginner's experience debugging a CloudShell environment error, and lessons learned about tutorial sequencing gaps.
Introduction
After a short break from active learning, I came back to my AWS account and tried opening CloudShell to follow along with a CLI tutorial. Instead of the terminal loading, I hit an error.
The error CloudShell showed:
"Unable to create the environment, your account verification is in progress. This may take up to 2 days for new accounts to retry. Delete the environment by selecting Actions, Delete, and then try again."
My account was already over two weeks old at this point, so the "new account" message was unexpected.
My account was already over two weeks old at this point, so the "new account" message was unexpected.
- Checked that I was in a region where CloudShell is supported.
- Tried deleting and recreating the CloudShell environment, as the error suggested.
- Tried a different browser in case it was a caching issue.
None of these resolved it, so I opened a support case with AWS Support to get it looked into properly.
A separate lesson: tutorial gaps
While waiting, I tried continuing with an AWS CLI tutorial that jumped straight into connecting to an existing EC2 instance using PuTTY, without covering how to launch an EC2 instance in the first place. As a beginner with no EC2 instance running yet, this was confusing until I realized the playlist had skipped that step entirely.
Takeaway
Two things I learned this week:
- Even an older AWS account can occasionally hit verification-related errors, and AWS Support is the right place to resolve them, not endless self-troubleshooting
- When a tutorial jumps ahead of what you've learned, it's worth pausing to find a more foundational video first, rather than pushing through confused
Enjoyed reading this content? Let the author know!
Your likes, comments, shares, and saves help creators reach more builders.
Loading recommendations
Loading article