title: AWS CloudWatch Agent not starting
body: <p>I have an Ubuntu EC2 instance. I manually created the following basic CloudWatch Agent config file in:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>/opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/etc/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.json</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <pre><code>{
      "metrics": {
          "metrics_collected": {
              "collectd": {},
              "mem": {
                  "measurement": [
                      "used_percent",
                      "total"
                  ]
              },
              "disk": {
                  "measurement": [
                      "used_percent",
                      "total"
                  ]
              }
          }
      }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm trying to start the CloudWatch Agent using the command below.</p>
  
  <pre><code>sudo /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/amazon-cloudwatch-agent-ctl -m ec2 -a start
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Then I check the status using the command below to confirm that it's running.</p>
  
  <pre><code>sudo /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/amazon-cloudwatch-agent-ctl -m ec2 -a status
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But I get the output below that shows the Agent as being in a stopped status.</p>
  
  <pre><code>{
    "status": "stopped",
    "starttime": "",
    "version": "1.223987.0"
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I checked the log file below.</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>/var/log/amazon/amazon-cloudwatch-agent</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>It contains:</p>
  
  <pre><code>2019/07/23 06:51:04 I! I! Detected the instance is EC2
  2019/07/23 06:51:04 Reading json config file path: /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/etc/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.json ...
  Valid Json input schema.
  I! Detecting runasuser...
  No csm configuration found.
  No log configuration found.
  No structuredlog configuration found.
  Configuration validation first phase succeeded
  
  2019/07/23 06:51:04 I! Config has been translated into TOML /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/etc/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.toml
  2019/07/23 06:51:04 Reading json config file path: /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/etc/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.json ...
  2019/07/23 06:51:04 I! Detected runAsUser: root
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What do I need to do get the CloudWatch Agent running?</p>