I get a generic "An error occurred while attempting to create the stack". How do I troubleshoot this?

Question

I have been trying unsuccessfully to create a change set for an existing stack I have in CloudFornation. I have executed many change sets for this stack before, but now I am getting a very generic "An error occurred while attempting to create the stack" error at step 4.

The only changes I have implemented were using more strings from the parameter store for strings that were hardcoded in the template before. Oddly, one parameter I created called  'Stage' resolves an ssm parameter `'{{resolve:ssm:Stage}}'` and that parameter does not seem to resolve. It literally appears as {{resolve:ssm:Stage}} in the parameters in CloudFormation while all other parameters show up correctly.

That is the only oddity I see in my template. Could that be the reason for the generic error? Any thoughts or ideas as to what else may be the problem?

bbaronas · Accepted Answer

Apparently, my issue was a malformed parameter, and improperly set ssm parameters in the CloudFormation template. However, I only found this by doing a straight-up update versus a change set. The update showed the errors I could use to figure out why the change set wasn't working.

I get a generic "An error occurred while attempting to create the stack". How do I troubleshoot this?

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