WARNING: Failed to connect to ip-xxx-xx-xx-xx

Error: FATAL: # nodes found, but does not have the required attribute to establish the connection. Try setting another attribute to open the connection using --attribute.

The issue I'm having started with attempting to run a command using the chef knife command. The intent is to have the command run on any server part of the role as you'll see.

So, when I run the command I get the following I get the following

knife ssh "role:servers" "touch /home/ubuntu/file.txt"

WARNING: Failed to connect to ip-172-31-8-x.us-west-2.compute.internal -- SocketError: getaddrinfo: nodename nor servname provided, or not known
WARNING: Failed to connect to ip-172-31-94-xb.us-west-2.compute.internal -- SocketError: getaddrinfo: nodename nor servname provided, or not known
WARNING: Failed to connect to ip-172-31-99-x.us-west-2.compute.internal -- SocketError: getaddrinfo: nodename nor servname provided, or not known

When I try new attributes

knife ssh "role:web" "touch /home/ubuntu/file.txt" -x ubuntu -a hostname

FATAL: 6 nodes found, but does not have the required attribute to establish the 
connection. Try setting another attribute to open the connection using --attribute.

I tried differnet attributes but with no luck

knife ssh "role:servers" "touch /home/ubuntu/file.txt" -a ec2.public_hostname
knife ssh "role:servers" "touch /home/ubuntu/file.txt" -a public_hostname


knife ssh "role:servers" "touch /home/ubuntu/testfile.txt" --attribute 54.68.122.109 -i /Users/useraccount/.ssh/mykey.pem -x ubuntu

FATAL: 2 nodes found, but does not have the required attribute to establish the connection. Try setting another attribute to open the connection using --attribute.

Clearly I'm missing something.

I should note that I am able to ssh into the servers but not by using the ip-172-31-x-x.us-west-2.compute.internal that chef-clients detect at provisioning, rather, the AWS Public IP.

Would this affect my being able to run the command above properly?

Chef server lists node data as

FQDN: ip-172-31-xx-xx.us-west-2.compute.internal

IP Address: 172.31.xx.xx

With AWS setting matching like so,

Priviate DNS :ip-172-31-xx-xx.us-west-2.compute.internal

Priviate IPs : 172.31.xx.xx

However, the information AWS for sshing into the an instance is

Public DNS : ec2-54-200-xx-xxx.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com Public IP : 54.200.xx.xxx

It's the AWS Public DNS data I can use to properly ssh into a server(non knife).

If it's possible the issue is the way chef-client provisions node data into chef server, is there away to correct it so chef server reflects the nodes aws public ip data?