Using AWS CLI

Notes on using aws cli.

MY setup.

I am using arch linux running a 32 bit system, kernel version 4.4.5

I run an aws system on amazon cloud and beleive me i am always kind of get confused with the immense set of tools they have and most of the time with their data centres. I tend to mess up the data centre and have to browse through all the data centres to find where my ec2 instance is running. I finally decided to have a look at how the aws cli works.

aws-cli tool installation.

For aws cli installation on arch linux its pretty simple. You can use yaourt to simple download and install it. I would not go much into how to install yaourt and aws through it. I would write about that sometime later, but for now trush google and arch wiki.

yaourt aws-cli

it will ask a couple of questions, please keep checking and respond accordingly.

configure the aws-cli

This is going to be a walk-through and I am doing it right now. Please bear if it look like random notes.

Sign up for an AWS account.

Since I am already done with it. Here is the quick guide at amazon, which will help you in registering on for you.

  1. Open http://aws.amazon.com/, and then choose Create an AWS Account.

    Follow the online instructions.

  2. Part of the sign-up procedure involves receiving a phone call and entering a PIN using the phone keypad.

AWS sends you a confirmation email after the sign-up process is complete. At any time, you can view your current account activity and manage your account by going to http://aws.amazon.com and clicking My Account/Console.

To get your access key ID and secret access key

Amazon recommends we create a IAM account key instead of the root aws key, this will let us manage our console securly. I will prefer the IAM account key and here are the steps.

  1. Open the IAM console.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Users.

  3. Choose your IAM user name (not the check box).

  4. Choose the Security Credentials tab and then choose Create Access Key.

  5. To see your access key, choose Show User Security Credentials. Your credentials will look something like this:

Access Key ID: AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE Secret Access Key: wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY

Choose Download Credentials, and store the keys in a secure location.

Configure the CLI

  1. This is quite simple

    $ aws configure AWS Access Key ID [None]: AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE AWS Secret Access Key [None]: wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY Default region name [None]: us-west-2 Default output format [None]: ENTER

  2. Well now its not a lot simple. The problem is the user which is configured doesn’t have access to any policy and without any policy one cannot be able to run commands. I did the basic testing without any policy and well. this is what happened.

    [~ (master)]$ aws ec2 create-security-group –group-name my-sg –description “My security group”

    A client error (UnauthorizedOperation) occurred when calling the CreateSecurityGroup operation: You are not authorized to perform this operation.

    [~ (master)]$ aws ec2 describe-instances –output table –region us-west-2

    A client error (UnauthorizedOperation) occurred when calling the DescribeInstances operation: You are not authorized to perform this operation.

So the smart thing to do is to go back and attach a policy to it.

This is my first time, so without taking time going through the nifty details of what each policy meant. I just attached the AdministratorAccess policy. { “Version”: “2012-10-17”, “Statement”: [ { “Effect”: “Allow”, “Action”: “”, “Resource”: “” } ] }

Now, the commands work like a charm.

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[~ (master)]$ aws ec2 create-security-group --group-name omps-sg --description "My security group"
{
    "GroupId": "sg-51146e36"
}

[~ (master)]$ aws ec2 describe-instances --output table --region us-west-2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                 DescribeInstances                                |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
||                                  Reservations                                  ||
|+----------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+|
||  OwnerId                               |  855938437083                         ||
||  ReservationId                         |  r-2ce7c3e9                           ||
|+----------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+|
|||                                   Instances                                  |||
||+------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------+||
|||  AmiLaunchIndex        |  0                                                  |||
|||  Architecture          |  x86_64                                             |||

and very long output. Trimmed the output to keep the page short.

Thats it.

I would probably write more about IAM Policies later.

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