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AWS CLI setup

Sat 11th Nov 2017 / Tags: #AWS

Table of Contents

  1. Installation
    1. On Linux
    2. On Cygwin
    3. Test it
    4. Tab completion
    5. Interactive shell
    6. Upgrading
  2. Configuration
  3. Troubleshooting
    1. Starting over
  4. Links

Installation

On Linux 

sudo pip install awscli

Note: The version in Ubuntu Xenial APT is 1.11.13 (Nov 2016), while the latest is 1.11.183 (Nov 2017). pip is also the recommended installation method.

On Cygwin

Either install apt-cyg or use the GUI to install python-setuptools manually.

apt-cyg install python python-setuptools
easy_install-2.7 pip
pip install awscli

Test it 

aws --version

Tab completion 

echo "complete -C aws_completer aws" >> ~/.bashrc

I added it to my dotfiles, but there is a bug preventing this working correctly with 'menu-complete'.

It doesn't seem to be available on Windows (standard console).

Interactive shell 

sudo pip install aws-shell
aws-shell

Upgrading 

sudo pip install --upgrade awscli aws-shell

Configuration

Go to AWS Console > (Your name) > My Security Credentials.

While there, make sure multi-factor authentication (MFA) is enabled/configured for the root account.

Then go to Access keys > Create New Access Key. Press Show Access Key.

(Later I'll create an IAM user instead of using the root account.)

To choose a default region, consult:

I chose Ireland (eu-west-1) because it's marginally cheaper than London and has more services available.

For available output formats see here.

$ aws configure
AWS Access Key ID [None]: AKIAJX36SHYAL4QL7Z2Q
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: ***
Default region name [None]: eu-west-1
Default output format [None]: json

Test it:

aws iam get-user

Troubleshooting 

An error occurred (SignatureDoesNotMatch) when calling the ListMFADevices operation: Signature expired: 20171110T224041Z is now earlier than 20171111T094029Z (20171111T095529Z - 15 min.)

Check the clock - in my case it was wrong after suspending the host machine.

$ sudo ntpdate ntp.org
11 Nov 09:58:14 ntpdate[24931]: step time server 128.4.24.98 offset 40487.921029 sec

Starting over

To revert everything set up above:

aws iam list-access-keys
aws iam delete-access-key --access-key-id AKIAIVEMCHMV42VQA7QA
vim ~/.bashrc
# Remove 'complete -C aws_completer aws'
sudo pip uninstall awscli aws-shell
rm -rf ~/.aws