Authenticate with IAM user credentials - Amazon Command Line Interface
Step 1: Create your IAM userStep 2: Get your access keysConfigure the Amazon CLI
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This documentation is for Version 1 of the Amazon CLI only. For documentation related to Version 2 of the Amazon CLI, see the Version 2 User Guide.

Authenticate with IAM user credentials

Warning

To avoid security risks, don't use IAM users for authentication when developing purpose-built software or working with real data. Instead, use federation with an identity provider such as Amazon IAM Identity Center.

This section explains how to configure basic settings with an IAM user. These include your security credentials using the config and credentials files.

Step 1: Create your IAM user

Create your IAM user by following the Creating IAM users (console) procedure in the IAM User Guide.

  • For Permission options, choose Attach policies directly for how you want to assign permissions to this user.

  • Most "Getting Started" SDK tutorials use the Amazon S3 service as an example. To provide your application with full access to Amazon S3, select the AmazonS3FullAccess policy to attach to this user.

Step 2: Get your access keys

  1. Sign in to the Amazon Web Services Management Console and open the IAM console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/iam/.

  2. In the navigation pane of the IAM console, select Users and then select the User name of the user that you created previously.

  3. On the user's page, select the Security credentials page. Then, under Access keys, select Create access key.

  4. For Create access key Step 1, choose Command Line Interface (CLI).

  5. For Create access key Step 2, enter an optional tag and select Next.

  6. For Create access key Step 3, select Download .csv file to save a .csv file with your IAM user's access key and secret access key. You need this information for later.

  7. Select Done.

Configure the Amazon CLI

For general use, the Amazon CLI needs the following pieces of information:

  • Access key ID

  • Secret access key

  • Amazon Region

  • Output format

The Amazon CLI stores this information in a profile (a collection of settings) named default in the credentials file. By default, the information in this profile is used when you run an Amazon CLI command that doesn't explicitly specify a profile to use. For more information on the credentials file, see Configuration and credential file settings.

To configure the Amazon CLI, use one of the following procedures:

Using aws configure

For general use, the aws configure command is the fastest way to set up your Amazon CLI installation. This configure wizard prompts you for each piece of information you need to get started. Unless otherwise specified by using the --profile option, the Amazon CLI stores this information in the default profile.

The following example configures a default profile using sample values. Replace them with your own values as described in the following sections.

$ 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]: json

The following example configures a profile named userprod using sample values. Replace them with your own values as described in the following sections.

$ aws configure --profile userprod
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]: json