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Universal Command Line Interface for Amazon Web Services
This package provides a unified command line interface to Amazon Web Services.
The aws-cli package works on Python versions:
Attention!
We recommend that all customers regularly monitor the Amazon Web Services Security Bulletins website for any important security bulletins related to aws-cli.
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On 2024-11-13, support for macOS version 10.15 was dropped. To use up-to-date versions of AWS CLI v2, customers using macOS 10.15 or prior should upgrade to macOS 11 or later. For more information, please see this blog post.
AWS CLI v2 can easily be installed on most standard platforms:
You can find more detailed installation instructions here.
If you want to run the v2 development branch of the CLI, see the
"CLI Dev Version" section below.
The release notes for the AWS CLI can be found here.
The aws-cli package includes a very useful command completion feature.
This feature is not automatically installed so you need to configure it manually.
To enable tab completion for bash either use the built-in command complete:
$ complete -C aws_completer aws
Or add bin/aws_bash_completer file under /etc/bash_completion.d,
/usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d or any other bash_completion.d location.
For tcsh:
$ complete aws 'p/*/`aws_completer`/'
You should add this to your startup scripts to enable it for future sessions.
For zsh, run bashcompinit and compinit, then use the built-in
complete command:
$ autoload bashcompinit && bashcompinit $ autoload -Uz compinit && compinit $ complete -C '/usr/local/bin/aws_completer' aws
Replace /usr/local/bin/aws_completer with the path returned by
which aws_completer if different. Add these commands to your
~/.zshrc to enable completion in future sessions.
Before using aws-cli, you need to tell it about your AWS credentials. You can do this in several ways:
The quickest way to get started is to run the aws configure command:
$ aws configure AWS Access Key ID: foo AWS Secret Access Key: bar Default region name [us-west-2]: us-west-2 Default output format [None]: json
To use environment variables, do the following:
$ export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<access_key> $ export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<secret_key>
To use the shared credentials file, create an INI formatted file like this:
[default] aws_access_key_id=foo aws_secret_access_key=bar [testing] aws_access_key_id=foo aws_secret_access_key=bar
and place it in ~/.aws/credentials (or in
%UserProfile%\.aws/credentials on Windows). If you wish to place the
shared credentials file in a different location than the one specified above,
you need to tell aws-cli where to find it. Do this by setting
the appropriate environment variable:
$ export AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE=/path/to/shared_credentials_file
To use a config file, create a configuration file like this:
[default] aws_access_key_id=<default access key> aws_secret_access_key=<default secret key> # Optional, to define default region for this profile. region=us-west-1 [profile testing] aws_access_key_id=<testing access key> aws_secret_access_key=<testing secret key> region=us-west-2
and place it in ~/.aws/config (or in %UserProfile%\.aws\config on Windows). If you wish to place the config file in a different location than the one
specified above, you need to tell aws-cli where to find it. Do this by setting
the appropriate environment variable:
$ export AWS_CONFIG_FILE=/path/to/config_file
As you can see, you can have multiple profiles defined in both the shared
credentials file and the configuration file. You can then specify which
profile to use by using the --profile option. If no profile is specified
the default profile is used.
In the config file, except for the default profile, you
must prefix each config section of a profile group with profile.
For example, if you have a profile named "testing" the section header would
be [profile testing].
The final option for credentials is highly recommended if you are using aws-cli on an EC2 instance. IAM Roles are a great way to have credentials installed automatically on your instance. If you are using IAM Roles, aws-cli will find them and use them automatically.
In addition to credentials, a number of other variables can be configured either with environment variables, configuration file entries or both. The following table documents these.
| Variable | Option | Config Entry | Environment Variable | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| profile | --profile | profile | AWS_PROFILE | Default profile name |
| region | --region | region | AWS_DEFAULT_REGION | Default AWS Region |
| config_file | AWS_CONFIG_FILE | Alternate location of config | ||
| credentials_file | AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE | Alternate location of credentials | ||
| output | --output | output | AWS_DEFAULT_OUTPUT | Default output style |
| ca_bundle | --ca-bundle | ca_bundle | AWS_CA_BUNDLE | CA Certificate Bundle |
| access_key | aws_access_key_id | AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID | AWS Access Key | |
| secret_key | aws_secret_access_key | AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY | AWS Secret Key | |
| token | aws_session_token | AWS_SESSION_TOKEN | AWS Token (temp credentials) | |
| cli_timestamp_format | cli_timestamp_format | Output format of timestamps | ||
| metadata_service_timeout | metadata_service_timeout | AWS_METADATA_SERVICE_TIMEOUT | EC2 metadata timeout | |
| metadata_service_num_attempts | metadata_service_num_attempts | AWS_METADATA_SERVICE_NUM_ATTEMPTS | EC2 metadata retry count | |
| parameter_validation | parameter_validation | Toggles local parameter validation |
If you get tired of specifying a --region option on the command line
all of the time, you can specify a default region to use whenever no
explicit --region option is included using the region variable.
To specify this using an environment variable:
$ export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-west-2
To include it in your config file:
[default] aws_access_key_id=<default access key> aws_secret_access_key=<default secret key> region=us-west-1
Similarly, the profile variable can be used to specify which profile to use
if one is not explicitly specified on the command line via the
--profile option. To set this via environment variable:
$ export AWS_PROFILE=testing
The profile variable can not be specified in the configuration file
since it would have to be associated with a profile and would defeat the
purpose.
For more information about configuration options, please refer the
AWS CLI Configuration Variables topic. You can access this topic
from the CLI as well by running aws help config-vars.
Some services, such as AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) have a single, global endpoint rather than different endpoints for each region.
To make access to these services simpler, aws-cli will automatically
use the global endpoint unless you explicitly supply a region (using
the --region option) or a profile (using the --profile option).
Therefore, the following:
$ aws iam list-users
will automatically use the global endpoint for the IAM service
regardless of the value of the AWS_DEFAULT_REGION environment
variable or the region variable specified in your profile.
Many options that need to be provided are simple string or numeric values. However, some operations require JSON data structures as input parameters either on the command line or in files.
For example, consider the command to authorize access to an EC2 security group. In this case, we will add ingress access to port 22 for all IP addresses:
$ aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-name MySecurityGroup \
--ip-permissions '{"FromPort":22,"ToPort":22,"IpProtocol":"tcp","IpRanges":[{"CidrIp": "0.0.0.0/0"}]}'
Some parameter values are so large or so complex that it would be easier to place the parameter value in a file and refer to that file rather than entering the value directly on the command line.
Let's use the authorize-security-group-ingress command shown above.
Rather than provide the value of the --ip-permissions parameter directly
in the command, you could first store the values in a file. Let's call
the file ip_perms.json:
{"FromPort":22,
"ToPort":22,
"IpProtocol":"tcp",
"IpRanges":[{"CidrIp":"0.0.0.0/0"}]}
Then, we could make the same call as above like this:
$ aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-name MySecurityGroup \
--ip-permissions file://ip_perms.json
The file:// prefix on the parameter value signals that the parameter value
is actually a reference to a file that contains the actual parameter value.
aws-cli will open the file, read the value and use that value as the
parameter value.
This is also useful when the parameter is really referring to file-based
data. For example, the --user-data option of the aws ec2 run-instances
command or the --public-key-material parameter of the
aws ec2 import-key-pair command.
The default output for commands is currently JSON. You can use the
--query option to extract the output elements from this JSON document.
For more information on the expression language used for the --query
argument, you can read the
JMESPath Tutorial.
Get a list of IAM user names:
$ aws iam list-users --query Users[].UserName
Get a list of key names and their sizes in an S3 bucket:
$ aws s3api list-objects --bucket b --query Contents[].[Key,Size]
Get a list of all EC2 instances and include their Instance ID, State Name, and their Name (if they've been tagged with a Name):
$ aws ec2 describe-instances --query \ 'Reservations[].Instances[].[InstanceId,State.Name,Tags[?Key==`Name`] | [0].Value]'
You may also find the jq tool useful in processing the JSON output for other uses.
There is also an ASCII table format available. You can select this style with
the --output table option or you can make this style your default output
style via environment variable or config file entry as described above.
Try adding --output table to the above commands.
If you are just interested in using the latest released version of the AWS CLI, please see the Installation section above. This section is for anyone who wants to install the development version of the CLI. You normally would not need to do this unless:
The latest changes to the CLI are in the v2 branch on github. This is
NOT the default branch when you clone the git repository, so you'll need
to make sure you git checkout v2.
If you just want to install a snapshot of the latest development version of
the CLI, you can use the requirements-dev-lock.txt file included in this repo.
This file points to the development version of our dependencies:
$ cd <path_to_awscli> && git checkout v2 $ pip install -r requirements-dev-lock.txt $ pip install -e .
Verify that the AWS CLI is correctly installed. Note that the word source should appear in the output:
$ aws --version aws-cli/2.2.30 Python/3.8.11 Darwin/20.4.0 source/x86_64 prompt/off
Generate the autocompletion index:
$ ./scripts/gen-ac-index --include-builtin-index
Verify the autocompletion index is generated by entering auto-prompt mode:
$ aws --cli-auto-prompt
The best way to interact with our team is through GitHub. You can open an issue and choose from one of our templates for guidance, bug reports, or feature requests.
You may find help from the community on Stack Overflow with the tag aws-cli or on the AWS Discussion Forum for CLI. If you have a support plan with AWS Premium Support, you can also create a new support case.
Please check for open similar issues before opening another one.
The AWS CLI implements AWS service APIs. For general issues regarding the services or their limitations, you may find the Amazon Web Services Discussion Forums helpful.