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AWS Command Line Interface

User Guide
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide

AWS Command Line Interface: User Guide

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide

Table of Contents
....................................................................................................................................................... vi
What Is the AWS CLI? ......................................................................................................................... 1
AWS CLI versions ....................................................................................................................... 1
Maintenance and support for SDK major versions .......................................................................... 1
About Amazon Web Services ....................................................................................................... 2
AWS CLI versions ....................................................................................................................... 2
AWS CLI version 2 .............................................................................................................. 2
AWS CLI version 1 .............................................................................................................. 2
Using the examples .................................................................................................................... 3
Additional documentation and resources ....................................................................................... 4
AWS CLI documentation and resources ................................................................................. 4
Other AWS SDKs ................................................................................................................ 4
Installing the AWS CLI ........................................................................................................................ 6
AWS CLI version 2 ...................................................................................................................... 6
Docker .............................................................................................................................. 6
Linux .............................................................................................................................. 11
macOS ............................................................................................................................ 19
Windows ......................................................................................................................... 23
AWS CLI version 1 .................................................................................................................... 25
Amazon Linux .................................................................................................................. 25
Linux .............................................................................................................................. 26
macOS ............................................................................................................................ 33
Windows ......................................................................................................................... 39
Virtualenv ........................................................................................................................ 42
Configuring the AWS CLI ................................................................................................................... 45
Configuration basics ................................................................................................................. 45
Quick configuration with aws configure .......................................................................... 46
Access key ID and secret access key .................................................................................... 46
Region ............................................................................................................................ 47
Output format ................................................................................................................. 47
Profiles ........................................................................................................................... 47
Configuration settings and precedence ................................................................................ 48
Configuration and credential file settings .................................................................................... 48
Where are configuration settings stored? ............................................................................. 49
Set and view configuration settings .................................................................................... 49
Supported config file settings ......................................................................................... 51
Named profiles ........................................................................................................................ 61
Using profiles with the AWS CLI ......................................................................................... 62
Configuring the AWS CLI to use AWS Single Sign-On .................................................................... 62
Configuring a named profile to use AWS SSO ...................................................................... 63
Using an AWS SSO enabled named profile .......................................................................... 66
Environment Variables .............................................................................................................. 68
How to set environment variables ...................................................................................... 68
AWS CLI supported environment variables ........................................................................... 69
Command line options .............................................................................................................. 71
Command completion ............................................................................................................... 74
How it works ................................................................................................................... 75
Configuring command completion on Linux or macOS .......................................................... 75
Configuring command completion on Windows .................................................................... 77
Verify command completion .............................................................................................. 78
Retries .................................................................................................................................... 78
Available retry modes ....................................................................................................... 78
Configuring a retry mode .................................................................................................. 80
Viewing logs of retry attempts .......................................................................................... 81

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide

Sourcing credentials with an external process .............................................................................. 82

Using credentials for Amazon EC2 instance metadata ................................................................... 83
Prerequisites .................................................................................................................... 83
Configuring a profile for Amazon EC2 metadata ................................................................... 83
Using an HTTP proxy ................................................................................................................ 84
Authenticating to a proxy .................................................................................................. 85
Using a proxy on Amazon EC2 instances ............................................................................. 85
Using an IAM role in the AWS CLI .............................................................................................. 85
Configuring and using a role ............................................................................................. 86
Using MFA ....................................................................................................................... 88
Cross-account roles and external ID .................................................................................... 89
Specifying a role session name for easier auditing ................................................................ 89
Assume role with web identity ........................................................................................... 90
Clearing cached credentials ............................................................................................... 90
Using the AWS CLI ........................................................................................................................... 92
Getting Help ............................................................................................................................ 92
AWS CLI documentation .................................................................................................... 95
API documentation ........................................................................................................... 95
Command Structure ................................................................................................................. 96
Command structure .......................................................................................................... 96
Wait commands ............................................................................................................... 97
Specifying Parameter Values ...................................................................................................... 98
Common Parameter Types ................................................................................................. 98
Quotes with Strings ........................................................................................................ 100
Parameters from Files ..................................................................................................... 102
Generating a CLI Skeleton Template ................................................................................. 104
Shorthand Syntax ........................................................................................................... 112
Auto-prompt .......................................................................................................................... 114
How it works ................................................................................................................. 114
Auto-prompt features ..................................................................................................... 114
Auto-prompt modes ....................................................................................................... 116
Configure auto-prompt ................................................................................................... 117
Controlling Command Output .................................................................................................. 117
Output Format ............................................................................................................... 117
Pagination ..................................................................................................................... 124
Filtering ......................................................................................................................... 128
Return Codes ......................................................................................................................... 144
Wizards ................................................................................................................................. 145
How it works ................................................................................................................. 145
Aliases ................................................................................................................................... 146
Prerequisites .................................................................................................................. 146
Step 1: Creating the alias file ........................................................................................... 147
Step 2: Creating an alias ................................................................................................. 147
Step 3: Calling an alias .................................................................................................... 149
Alias repository examples ................................................................................................ 150
Resources ...................................................................................................................... 151
Using the AWS CLI with AWS Services ............................................................................................... 152
DynamoDB ............................................................................................................................. 152
Prerequisites .................................................................................................................. 152
Creating and using DynamoDB tables ............................................................................... 153
Using DynamoDB Local ................................................................................................... 154
Resources ...................................................................................................................... 154
Amazon EC2 .......................................................................................................................... 155
Amazon EC2 Key Pairs .................................................................................................... 155
Amazon EC2 Security Groups ........................................................................................... 157
EC2 Instances ................................................................................................................. 161
Change EC2 type using bash scripting ............................................................................... 167

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide

S3 Glacier .............................................................................................................................. 179

Create an Amazon S3 Glacier vault ................................................................................... 179
Prepare a file for uploading ............................................................................................. 179
Initiate a multipart upload and upload files ....................................................................... 180
Complete the upload ...................................................................................................... 181
IAM ....................................................................................................................................... 182
Creating IAM users and groups ......................................................................................... 183
Attaching an IAM managed policy to an IAM user ............................................................... 184
Setting an initial password for an IAM user ........................................................................ 185
Create an access key for an IAM user ................................................................................ 185
Amazon S3 ............................................................................................................................ 186
High-level (s3) commands ............................................................................................... 186
API-level (s3 api) commands ............................................................................................ 194
Bucket lifecycle scripting example (s3api) ......................................................................... 195
Amazon SNS .......................................................................................................................... 205
Create a topic ................................................................................................................ 205
Subscribe to a topic ........................................................................................................ 205
Publish to a topic ........................................................................................................... 206
Unsubscribe from a topic ................................................................................................ 206
Delete a topic ................................................................................................................ 206
Amazon SWF ......................................................................................................................... 207
List of Amazon SWF Commands ....................................................................................... 207
Working with Amazon SWF Domains ................................................................................ 210
Security ......................................................................................................................................... 212
Data Protection ...................................................................................................................... 212
Data encryption ............................................................................................................. 213
Identity and Access Management .............................................................................................. 213
Compliance Validation ............................................................................................................. 214
Enforcing TLS 1.2 ................................................................................................................... 214
Configuring the AWS CLI version 1 to enforce a minimum version of TLS 1.2 minimum ............. 215
Configuring the AWS CLI version 2 to enforce a minimum version of TLS 1.2 .......................... 217
Troubleshooting Errors .................................................................................................................... 218
Migrating/Breaking Changes ............................................................................................................ 225
File encoding environment variable .......................................................................................... 225
Passing binary parameters ....................................................................................................... 225
Improved Amazon S3 property and tag handling during s3 copy operations ................................. 226
No automatic retrieval of webpages for parameters .................................................................... 227
Output paging ....................................................................................................................... 227
All date/time values in ISO 8601 format ................................................................................... 228
Improved AWS CloudFormation deployment handling ................................................................. 228
Consistent Amazon S3 keys and paths ...................................................................................... 229
Amazon S3 and us-east-1 Region ............................................................................................. 229
AWS STS and regional endpoints .............................................................................................. 229
Deprecate ecr get-login .................................................................................................... 229
Changing support for [plugins] ............................................................................................ 230
No hidden aliases ................................................................................................................... 230
Document History .......................................................................................................................... 232

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide

Python 2.7, 3.4, and 3.5 is being deprecated for the AWS CLI version 1. For more information see the
AWS CLI version 1 section of About the AWS CLI versions.

vi
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
AWS CLI versions

What is the AWS Command Line

Interface?
The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) is an open source tool that enables you to interact with
AWS services using commands in your command-line shell. With minimal conﬁguration, the AWS CLI
enables you to start running commands that implement functionality equivalent to that provided by the
browser-based AWS Management Console from the command prompt in your terminal program:

• Linux shells – Use common shell programs such as bash, zsh, and tcsh to run commands in Linux or
macOS.
• Windows command line – On Windows, run commands at the Windows command prompt or in
PowerShell.
• Remotely – Run commands on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances through a
remote terminal program such as PuTTY or SSH, or with AWS Systems Manager.

All IaaS (infrastructure as a service) AWS administration, management, and access functions in the AWS
Management Console are available in the AWS API and CLI. New AWS IaaS features and services provide
full AWS Management Console functionality through the API and CLI at launch or within 180 days of
launch.

The AWS CLI provides direct access to the public APIs of AWS services. You can explore a service's
capabilities with the AWS CLI, and develop shell scripts to manage your resources. In addition to the
low-level, API-equivalent commands, several AWS services provide customizations for the AWS CLI.
Customizations can include higher-level commands that simplify using a service with a complex API.

AWS CLI versions

The AWS CLI is available in two versions and information in this guide applies to both versions unless
stated otherwise.

• Version 2.x – The current, generally available release of the AWS CLI that is intended for use in
production environments.
• Version 1.x – The previous version of the AWS CLI that is available for backwards compatibility.

For more information on the diﬀerent versions, see About the AWS CLI versions (p. 2)

Maintenance and support for SDK major versions

For information about maintenance and support for SDK major versions and their underlying
dependencies, see the following in the AWS SDKs and Tools Shared Conﬁguration and Credentials
Reference Guide:

• AWS SDKs and Tools Maintenance Policy

• AWS SDKs and Tools Version Support Matrix

1
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
About Amazon Web Services

About Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a collection of digital infrastructure services that developers can leverage
when developing their applications. The services include computing, storage, database, and application
synchronization (messaging and queuing). AWS uses a pay-as-you-go service model. You are charged
only for the services that you—or your applications—use. Also, to make AWS more approachable as a
platform for prototyping and experimentation, AWS oﬀers a free usage tier. On this tier, services are free
below a certain level of usage. For more information about AWS costs and the Free Tier, see Test-Driving
AWS in the Free Usage Tier. To obtain an AWS account, open the AWS home page and then click Sign Up.

About the AWS CLI versions

The AWS CLI is available in two versions and information in this guide applies to both versions unless
stated otherwise. To check which version you may have currently installed, run the aws --version
command in your shell. The returned value provides the current version you have installed. The following
example shows that the version running is 2.1.29.

$ aws --version
aws-cli/2.1.29 Python/3.7.4 Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/2.0.0

AWS CLI version 2

The AWS CLI version 2 is the most recent major version of the AWS CLI and supports all of the latest
features. Some features introduced in version 2 are not backported to version 1 and you must upgrade
to access those features. There are some "breaking" changes from version 1 that might require you to
change your scripts. For a list of breaking changes in version 2, see Breaking changes – Migrating from
AWS CLI version 1 to version 2 (p. 225).

The AWS CLI version 2 is available to install only as a bundled installer. While you may find it in package
managers, these are unsupported and unofficial packages that are not produced or managed by
AWS. We recommend that you install the AWS CLI from only the official AWS distribution points, as
documented in this guide.

To install the AWS CLI version 2, see Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI version
2 (p. 6).

For version history, see the AWS CLI version 2 Changelog on GitHub.

AWS CLI version 1

Warning
Python 2.7 was deprecated by the Python Software Foundation on January 1, 2020. Going
forward, customers using the AWS CLI version 1 should transition to using Python 3, with a
minimum of Python 3.6. Python 2.7 support is deprecated for new versions of the AWS CLI
version 1 starting 7/19/2021. Python 3.4 and 3.5 is deprecated starting 2/1/2021.
To continue using AWS CLI version 1 with older versions of Python, see the Python version
support matrix below.
For Python installation instructions, see the Downloading Python page in Python's Beginner
Guide.

The AWS CLI version 1 is the original AWS CLI, and we continue to support it. However, major new
features that are introduced in the AWS CLI version 2 might not be backported to the AWS CLI version 1.
To use those features, you must install the AWS CLI version 2.

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Using the examples

The AWS CLI version 1 is built using the Python SDK, and therefore requires you to install a compatible
version of Python.

Python version support matrix

AWS CLI version Supported Python version

Versions starting 7/19/2021 Python 3.6+

1.19.0 – current Python 2.7+, Python 3.6+

1.17 – 1.18.x Python 2.7+, Python 3.4+

1.0 – 1.16.x Python 2.6 and older, Python 3.3 and older

To install the AWS CLI version 1, see Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI version
1 (p. 25).

For version history, see the AWS CLI version 1 Changelog on GitHub.

Using the AWS CLI examples

The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) examples in this guide are formatted using the following
conventions:

• Prompt – The command prompt uses the Linux prompt and is displayed as ($ ). For commands
that are Windows specific, C:\> is used as the prompt. Do not include the prompt when you type
commands.
• Directory – When commands must be executed from a specific directory, the directory name is shown
before the prompt symbol.
• User input – Command text that you enter at the command line is formatted as user input.
• Replaceable text – Variable text, including names of resources that you choose, or IDs generated by
AWS services that you must include in commands, is formatted as replaceable text. In multiple-
line commands or commands where specific keyboard input is required, keyboard commands can also
be shown as replaceable text.
• Output – Output returned by AWS services is shown under user input, and is formatted as computer
output.

The following aws configure command example demonstrates user input, replaceable text, and
output:

1. Enter aws configure at the command line, and then press Enter.
2. The AWS CLI outputs lines of text, prompting you to enter additional information.
3. Enter each of your access keys in turn, and then press Enter.
4. Then, enter an AWS Region name in the format shown, press Enter, and then press Enter a ﬁnal time
to skip the output format setting.
5. The ﬁnal Enter command is shown as replaceable text because there is no user input for that line.
6.

$ aws configure
AWS Access Key ID [None]: AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Additional documentation and resources

Default region name [None]: us-west-2

Default output format [None]: ENTER

The following example shows a simple command with output. To use this example, enter the full text of
the command (the highlighted text after the prompt), and then press Enter. The name of the security
group, my-sg, is replaceable to your desired security group name. The JSON document, including the
curly braces, is output. If you conﬁgure your CLI to output in text or table format, the output will be
formatted diﬀerently. JSON is the default output format.

$ aws ec2 create-security-group --group-name my-sg --description "My security group"

{
"GroupId": "sg-903004f8"
}

Note
Arguments that must be replaced (such as AWS Access Key ID), and those that should be
replaced (such as group name), are both shown as replaceable text in italics. If an
argument must be replaced, it's noted in the text that describes the example.

Additional documentation and resources

AWS CLI documentation and resources
In addition to this user guide, the following are valuable online resources for the AWS CLI.

• AWS CLI version 1 reference guide

• AWS CLI version 2 reference guide
• AWS CLI GitHub repository You can view and fork the source code for the AWS CLI on GitHub. Join
the community of users on GitHub to provide feedback, request features, and submit your own
contributions.
• AWS CLI alias examples repository You can view and fork AWS CLI alias examples on GitHub.
• AWS CLI version 1 change notes
• AWS CLI version 2 change notes
• AWS CLI code examples repository

Other AWS SDKs

Depending on your use case, you might want to choose one of the AWS SDKs or the AWS Tools for
PowerShell:

• AWS Tools for PowerShell

• AWS SDK for Java
• AWS SDK for .NET
• AWS SDK for JavaScript
• AWS SDK for Ruby
• AWS SDK for Python (Boto)
• AWS SDK for PHP
• AWS SDK for Go
• AWS Mobile SDK for iOS

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Other AWS SDKs

• AWS Mobile SDK for Android

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
AWS CLI version 2

Installing, updating, and uninstalling

the AWS CLI
The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) is available in version 1 and version 2. For more information
on each version, see About the AWS CLI versions (p. 2)

For instructions on installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI, select your version:

Versions
• Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6)
• Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 1 (p. 25)

Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI

version 2
This topic provides links to information about how to install, update, and uninstall version 2 of the AWS
Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) on the supported operating systems. For information on the latest
releases of AWS CLI version 2, see the AWS CLI version 2 change notes on GitHub.

AWS CLI version 2 installation instructions:

• Using the oﬃcial AWS CLI version 2 Docker image (p. 6)
• Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 on Linux (p. 11)
• Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 on macOS (p. 19)
• Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 on Windows (p. 23)

Using the oﬃcial AWS CLI version 2 Docker image

This topic describes how to run, version control, and conﬁgure the AWS CLI version 2 on Docker. For more
information on how to use Docker, see Docker's documentation.

Oﬃcial Docker images provide isolation, portability, and security that AWS directly supports and
maintains. This enables you to use the AWS CLI version 2 in a container-based environment without
having to manage the installation yourself.
Note
The AWS CLI version 2 is the only tool that's supported on the oﬃcial AWS Docker image.

Topics
• Prerequisites (p. 7)
• Run the official AWS CLI version 2 Docker image (p. 7)
• Use specific versions and tags (p. 7)
• Update to the latest Docker image (p. 8)
• Share host files, credentials, environment variables, and configuration (p. 8)
• Shorten the Docker command (p. 10)

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Docker

Prerequisites
You must have Docker installed. For installation instructions, see the Docker website.

To verify your installation of Docker, run the following command and conﬁrm there is an output.

$ docker --version
Docker version 19.03.1

Run the oﬃcial AWS CLI version 2 Docker image

The oﬃcial AWS CLI version 2 Docker image is hosted on DockerHub in the amazon/aws-cli repository.
The ﬁrst time you use the docker run command, the latest Docker image is downloaded to your
computer. Each subsequent use of the docker run command runs from your local copy.

To run the AWS CLI version 2 Docker image, use the docker run command.

$ docker run --rm -it amazon/aws-cli command

This is how the command functions:

• docker run --rm -it amazon/aws-cli – The equivalent of the aws executable. Each time you
run this command, Docker spins up a container of your downloaded amazon/aws-cli image, and
executes your aws command. By default, the Docker image uses the latest version of the AWS CLI
version 2.

For example, to call the aws --version command in Docker, you run the following.

$ docker run --rm -it amazon/aws-cli --version

aws-cli/2.1.29 Python/3.7.3 Linux/4.9.184-linuxkit botocore/2.0.0dev10

• --rm – Speciﬁes to clean up the container after the command exits.

• -it – Speciﬁes to open a pseudo-TTY with stdin. This enables you to provide input to the AWS CLI
version 2 while it's running in a container, for example, by using the aws configure and aws help
commands. If you are running scripts, -it is not needed. If you are experiencing errors with your
scripts, omit -it from your Docker call.

For more information about the docker run command, see the Docker reference guide.

Use speciﬁc versions and tags

The official AWS CLI version 2 Docker image has multiple versions you can use, starting with version
2.0.6. To run a specific version of the AWS CLI version 2, append the appropriate tag to your docker
run command. The first time you use the docker run command with a tag, the latest Docker image for
that tag is downloaded to your computer. Each subsequent use of the docker run command with that
tag runs from your local copy.

You can use two types of tags:

• latest – Deﬁnes the latest version of the AWS CLI version 2 for the Docker image. We recommend
you use the latest tag when you want the latest version of the AWS CLI version 2. However, there are
no backward-compatibility guarantees when relying on this tag. The latest tag is used by default in
the docker run command. To explicitly use the latest tag, append the tag to the container image
name.

$ docker run --rm -it amazon/aws-cli:latest command

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Docker

• <major.minor.patch> – Defines a specific version of the AWS CLI version 2 for the Docker image. If
you plan to use the Docker image in production, we recommend you use a specific version of the AWS
CLI version 2 to ensure backward compatibility. For example, to run version 2.0.6, append the version
to the container image name.

$ docker run --rm -it amazon/aws-cli:2.0.6 command

Update to the latest Docker image

Because the latest Docker image is downloaded to your computer only the ﬁrst time you use the docker
run command, you need to manually pull an updated image. To manually update to the latest version,
we recommend you pull the latest tagged image. Pulling the Docker image downloads the latest
version to your computer.

$ docker pull amazon/aws-cli:latest

Share host ﬁles, credentials, environment variables, and

configuration
Because the AWS CLI version 2 is run in a container, by default the CLI can't access the host file
system, which includes configuration and credentials. To share the host file system, credentials,
and configuration to the container, mount the host system’s ~/.aws directory to the container at /
root/.aws with the -v flag to the docker run command. This allows the AWS CLI version 2 running in
the container to locate host file information.

Linux and macOS

$ docker run --rm -it -v ~/.aws:/root/.aws amazon/aws-cli command

Windows

$ docker run --rm -it -v %userprofile%\.aws:/root/.aws amazon/aws-cli command

For more information about the -v ﬂag and mounting, see the Docker reference guide.

Example 1: Providing credentials and conﬁguration

In this example, we're providing host credentials and configuration when running the s3 ls command
to list your buckets in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). The below examples use the default
location for AWS CLI credentials and configuration files, to use a different location, change the file path.

Linux and macOS

$ docker run --rm -it -v ~/.aws:/root/.aws amazon/aws-cli s3 ls

2020-03-25 00:30:48 aws-cli-docker-demo

Windows

$ docker run --rm -it -v %userprofile%\.aws:/root/.aws amazon/aws-cli s3 ls

2020-03-25 00:30:48 aws-cli-docker-demo

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Docker

You can call speciﬁc system's environment variables using the -e ﬂag. To use an environment variable,
call it by name.

Linux and macOS

$ docker run --rm -it -v ~/.aws:/root/.aws -e ENVVAR_NAME amazon/aws-cli s3 ls

2020-03-25 00:30:48 aws-cli-docker-demo

Windows

$ docker run --rm -it -v %userprofile%\.aws:/root/.aws -e ENVVAR_NAME amazon/aws-cli s3

ls
2020-03-25 00:30:48 aws-cli-docker-demo

Example 2: Downloading an Amazon S3 ﬁle to your host system

For some AWS CLI version 2 commands, you can read ﬁles from the host system in the container or write
ﬁles from the container to the host system.

In this example, we download the S3 object s3://aws-cli-docker-demo/hello to your local ﬁle

system by mounting the current working directory to the container's /aws directory. By downloading
the hello object to the container's /aws directory, the ﬁle is saved to the host system’s current working
directory also.

Linux and macOS

$ docker run --rm -it -v ~/.aws:/root/.aws -v $(pwd):/aws amazon/aws-cli s3 cp s3://

aws-cli-docker-demo/hello .
download: s3://aws-cli-docker-demo/hello to ./hello

Windows

$ docker run --rm -it -v %userprofile%\.aws:/root/.aws -v %cd%:/aws amazon/aws-cli s3

cp s3://aws-cli-docker-demo/hello .
download: s3://aws-cli-docker-demo/hello to ./hello

To confirm the downloaded file exists in the local file system, run the following.

Linux and macOS

$ cat hello
Hello from Docker!

Windows

$ type hello
Hello from Docker!

Example 3: Using your AWS_PROFILE environment variable

You can call specific system's environment variables using the -e flag. Call each environment variable
you'd like to use. In this example, we're providing host credentials, configuration, and the AWS_PROFILE
environment variable when running the s3 ls command to list your buckets in Amazon Simple Storage
Service (Amazon S3).

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Docker

Linux and macOS

$ docker run --rm -it -v ~/.aws:/root/.aws -e AWS_PROFILE amazon/aws-cli s3 ls

2020-03-25 00:30:48 aws-cli-docker-demo

Windows

$ docker run --rm -it -v %userprofile%\.aws:/root/.aws -e AWS_PROFILE amazon/aws-cli s3

ls
2020-03-25 00:30:48 aws-cli-docker-demo

Shorten the Docker command

To shorten the Docker aws command, we suggest you use your operating system's ability to create a
symbolic link (symlink) or alias in Linux and macOS, or doskey in Windows. To set the aws alias,
you can run one of the following commands.

• For basic access to aws commands, run the following.

Linux and macOS

$ alias aws='docker run --rm -it amazon/aws-cli'

Windows

C:\> doskey aws=docker run --rm -it amazon/aws-cli $*

• For access to the host ﬁle system and conﬁguration settings when using aws commands, run the
following.
Linux and macOS

$ alias aws='docker run --rm -it -v ~/.aws:/root/.aws -v $(pwd):/aws amazon/aws-cli'

Windows

C:\> doskey aws=docker run --rm -it -v %userprofile%\.aws:/root/.aws -v %cd%:/aws

amazon/aws-cli $*

• To assign a speciﬁc version to use in your aws alias, append your version tag.
Linux and macOS

$ alias aws='docker run --rm -it -v ~/.aws:/root/.aws -v $(pwd):/aws amazon/aws-

cli:2.0.6'

Windows

C:\> doskey aws=docker run --rm -it -v %userprofile%\.aws:/root/.aws -v %cd%:/aws

amazon/aws-cli:2.0.6 $*

After setting your alias, you can run the AWS CLI version 2 from within a Docker container as if it's
installed on your host system.

$ aws --version

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Linux

aws-cli/2.1.29 Python/3.7.3 Linux/4.9.184-linuxkit botocore/2.0.0dev10

Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI

version 2 on Linux
This section describes how to install, update, and remove the AWS CLI version 2 on Linux. The AWS CLI
version 2 has no dependencies on other Python packages. It has a self-contained, embedded copy of
Python included in the installer.
Important
AWS CLI versions 1 and 2 use the same aws command name. If you have both versions installed,
your computer uses the ﬁrst one found in your search path. If you previously installed AWS CLI
version 1, we recommend that you do one of the following to use AWS CLI version 2:

• Recommended – Uninstall AWS CLI version 1 and use only AWS CLI version 2. For uninstall
instructions, determine the method you used to install AWS CLI version 1 and follow the
appropriate uninstall instructions for your operating system in Installing, updating, and
uninstalling the AWS CLI version 1 (p. 25)
• Use your operating system's ability to create a symbolic link (symlink) or alias with a diﬀerent
name for one of the two aws commands. For example, you can use a symbolic link or alias on
Linux and macOS, or DOSKEY on Windows.

For information on breaking changes between version 1 and version 2, see Breaking changes –
Migrating from AWS CLI version 1 to version 2 (p. 225).

Topics
• Prerequisites for Linux (p. 11)
• Install the AWS CLI version 2 on Linux (p. 11)
• Update the AWS CLI version 2 on Linux (p. 14)
• Uninstall the AWS CLI version 2 on Linux (p. 16)
• Verify the integrity and authenticity of the downloaded installer ﬁles (p. 16)

Prerequisites for Linux

• You must be able to extract or "unzip" the downloaded package. If your operating system doesn't have
the built-in unzip command, use an equivalent.
• The AWS CLI version 2 uses glibc, groff, and less. These are included by default in most major
distributions of Linux.
• We support the AWS CLI version 2 on 64-bit versions of recent distributions of CentOS, Fedora,
Ubuntu, Amazon Linux 1, and Amazon Linux 2.
• We support the AWS CLI version 2 on 64-bit Linux ARM.
• Because AWS doesn't maintain third-party repositories, we can’t guarantee that they contain the latest
version of the AWS CLI.

Install the AWS CLI version 2 on Linux

Follow these steps from the command line to install the AWS CLI on Linux.

We provide the steps in one easy to copy and paste group based on whether you use 64-bit Linux or
Linux ARM. See the descriptions of each line in the steps that follow.

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Linux

Linux x86 (64-bit)

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"

unzip awscliv2.zip
sudo ./aws/install

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the
filename. For this example the filename for version 2.0.30 would be awscli-exe-linux-
x86_64-2.0.30.zip resulting in the following command:

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64-2.0.30.zip" -o
"awscliv2.zip"
unzip awscliv2.zip
sudo ./aws/install

For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.
Linux ARM

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-aarch64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"

unzip awscliv2.zip
sudo ./aws/install

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the
filename. For this example the filename for version 2.0.30 would be awscli-exe-linux-
aarch64-2.0.30.zip resulting in the following command:

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-aarch64-2.0.30.zip" -o
"awscliv2.zip"
unzip awscliv2.zip
sudo ./aws/install

For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.

1. Download the installation ﬁle in one of the following ways:

• Use the curl command – The -o option specifies the file name that the downloaded package
is written to. The options on the following example command write the downloaded file to the
current directory with the local name awscliv2.zip.
Linux x86 (64-bit)

For the current version of the AWS CLI, use the following command:

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o
"awscliv2.zip"

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64-2.0.30.zip" -o
"awscliv2.zip"

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Linux

For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.
Linux ARM

For the current version of the AWS CLI, use the following command:

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-aarch64.zip" -o
"awscliv2.zip"

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-aarch64-2.0.30.zip"
-o "awscliv2.zip"curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-
x86_64-2.0.30.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"

For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.
• Downloading from the URL – To download the installer with your browser, use one of the
following URLs. You can verify the integrity and authenticity of your downloaded installation
ﬁle before you extract (unzip) the package. See Verify the integrity and authenticity of the
downloaded installer ﬁles (p. 16) for more information.
Linux x86 (64-bit)

For the latest version of the AWS CLI: https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-

x86_64.zip

For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.
Linux ARM

For the latest version of the AWS CLI: https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-

aarch64.zip

For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.
2. Unzip the installer. If your Linux distribution doesn't have a built-in unzip command, use an
equivalent to unzip it. The following example command unzips the package and creates a directory
named aws under the current directory.

$ unzip awscliv2.zip

3. Run the install program. The installation command uses a ﬁle named install in the newly
unzipped aws directory. By default, the ﬁles are all installed to /usr/local/aws-cli, and
a symbolic link is created in /usr/local/bin. The command includes sudo to grant write
permissions to those directories.

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Linux

$ sudo ./aws/install

You can install without sudo if you specify directories that you already have write permissions to.
Use the following instructions for the install command to specify the installation location:

• Ensure that the paths you provide to the -i and -b parameters contain no volume name or
directory names that contain any space characters or other white space characters. If there is a
space, the installation fails.
• --install-dir or -i – This option speciﬁes the directory to copy all of the ﬁles to.

The default value is /usr/local/aws-cli.

• --bin-dir or -b – This option specifies that the main aws program in the install directory is
symbolically linked to the file aws in the specified path. You must have write permissions to the
specified directory. Creating a symlink to a directory that is already in your path eliminates the
need to add the install directory to the user's $PATH variable.

The default value is /usr/local/bin.

$ ./aws/install -i /usr/local/aws-cli -b /usr/local/bin

4. Conﬁrm the installation.

$ aws --version
aws-cli/2.1.29 Python/3.7.4 Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/2.0.0

Update the AWS CLI version 2 on Linux

To update your copy of the AWS CLI version 2, from the Linux command line, follow these steps.

1. Download the installation ﬁle in one of the following ways:

Using the curl command – The options on the following example command write the downloaded
ﬁle to the current directory with the local name awscliv2.zip.

The -o option specifies the file name that the downloaded package is written to. In this example,
the file is written to awscliv2.zip in the current directory.

Linux x86 (64-bit)

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64-2.0.30.zip" -o
"awscliv2.zip"

For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.

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Linux

Linux ARM

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-aarch64.zip" -o
"awscliv2.zip"

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-aarch64-2.0.30.zip" -o
"awscliv2.zip"

For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.

Downloading from the URL – To download the installer using your browser, use one of the
following URLs. You can verify the integrity and authenticity of the installation ﬁle after you
download it. For more information before you unzip the package, see Verify the integrity and
authenticity of the downloaded installer ﬁles (p. 16).

Linux x86 (64-bit)

For the latest version of the AWS CLI: https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-

x86_64.zip

For a specific version of the AWS CLI: Append a hyphen and the version number to the
filename. For this example the filename for version 2.0.30 would be awscli-exe-linux-
x86_64-2.0.30.zip resulting in the following link https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-
linux-x86_64-2.0.30.zip. For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.
Linux ARM

For the latest version of the AWS CLI: https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-

aarch64.zip

For a specific version of the AWS CLI: Append a hyphen and the version number to the
filename. For this example the filename for version 2.0.30 would be awscli-exe-linux-
aarch64-2.0.30.zip resulting in the following link: https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-
exe-linux-aarch64-2.0.30.zip. For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on
GitHub.
2. Unzip the installer. If your Linux distribution doesn't have a built-in unzip command, use an
equivalent to install it. The following example command unzips the package and creates a directory
named aws under the current directory.

$ unzip awscliv2.zip

3. To ensure that the update installs in the same location as your current AWS CLI version 2, locate the
existing symlink and installation directory.

• Use the which command to ﬁnd your symlink. This gives you the path to use with the --bin-dir
parameter.

$ which aws
/usr/local/bin/aws

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Linux

• Use the ls command to ﬁnd the directory that your symlink points to. This gives you the path to
use with the --install-dir parameter.

$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/aws
lrwxrwxrwx 1 ec2-user ec2-user 49 Oct 22 09:49 /usr/local/bin/aws -> /usr/local/aws-
cli/v2/current/bin/aws

4. Use your symlink and installer information to construct the install command with the --update
parameter.

$ sudo ./aws/install --bin-dir /usr/local/bin --install-dir /usr/local/aws-cli --update

5. Conﬁrm the installation.

$ aws --version
aws-cli/2.1.29 Python/3.7.4 Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/2.0.0

Uninstall the AWS CLI version 2 on Linux

To uninstall the AWS CLI version 2, run the following commands.

1. Locate the symlink and install paths.

• Use the which command to ﬁnd the symlink. This shows the path you used with the --bin-dir
parameter.

$ which aws
/usr/local/bin/aws

• Use the ls command to ﬁnd the directory that the symlink points to. This gives you the path you
used with the --install-dir parameter.

$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/aws
lrwxrwxrwx 1 ec2-user ec2-user 49 Oct 22 09:49 /usr/local/bin/aws -> /usr/local/aws-
cli/v2/current/bin/aws

2. Delete the two symlinks in the --bin-dir directory. If your user account has write permission to
these directories, you don't need to use sudo.

$ sudo rm /usr/local/bin/aws
$ sudo rm /usr/local/bin/aws_completer

3. Delete the --install-dir directory. If your user account has write permission to this directory,
you don't need to use sudo.

$ sudo rm -rf /usr/local/aws-cli

Verify the integrity and authenticity of the downloaded installer

files
The AWS CLI version 2 installer package .zip files are cryptographically signed using PGP signatures.
You can use the following steps to verify the signatures by using the GnuPG tool. If there is any damage
or alteration of the files, this verification fails and you should not proceed with installation.

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Linux

The following example assumes you downloaded the installer package and saved it locally as
awscliv2.zip. If you named it something else, substitute that name in the following steps.

To validate the ﬁles using the PGP signature

1. Download and install the gpg command using your package manager. For more information about
GnuPG, see the GnuPG website.
2. To create the public key ﬁle, create a text ﬁle and paste in the following text.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
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=vYOk
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

For reference, the following are the details of the public key.

Key ID: A6310ACC4672

Type: RSA
Size: 4096/4096
Created: 2019-09-18
Expires: 2023-09-17
User ID: AWS CLI Team <[email protected]>
Key fingerprint: FB5D B77F D5C1 18B8 0511 ADA8 A631 0ACC 4672 475C

3. Import the AWS CLI public key with the following command, substituting public-key-file-name
with the ﬁle name of the public key you created.

$ gpg --import public-key-file-name

gpg: /home/username/.gnupg/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created
gpg: key A6310ACC4672475C: public key "AWS CLI Team <[email protected]>" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1

4. Download the AWS CLI signature file for the package you downloaded. It has the same path and
name as the .zip file it corresponds to, but has the extension .sig. In the following examples, we
save it to the current directory as a file named awscliv2.sig.

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Linux

Linux x86 (64-bit)

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl -o awscliv2.sig https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip.sig

$ curl -o awscliv2.sig https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-

x86_64-2.0.30.zip.sig

For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.
Linux ARM

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl -o awscliv2.sig https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-

aarch64.zip.sig

$ curl -o awscliv2.sig https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-

aarch64-2.0.30.zip.sig

For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.
5. Verify the signature, passing both the downloaded .sig and .zip ﬁle names as parameters to the
gpg command.

$ gpg --verify awscliv2.sig awscliv2.zip

The output should look similar to the following.

gpg: Signature made Mon Nov 4 19:00:01 2019 PST

gpg: using RSA key FB5D B77F D5C1 18B8 0511 ADA8 A631 0ACC 4672 475C
gpg: Good signature from "AWS CLI Team <[email protected]>" [unknown]
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg: There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: FB5D B77F D5C1 18B8 0511 ADA8 A631 0ACC 4672 475C

Important
The warning in the output is expected and doesn't indicate a problem. It occurs because
there isn't a chain of trust between your personal PGP key (if you have one) and the AWS
CLI PGP key. For more information, see Web of trust.

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
macOS

Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI

version 2 on macOS
This topic describes how to install, update, and remove the AWS CLI version 2 on macOS.
Important
AWS CLI versions 1 and 2 use the same aws command name. If you have both versions installed,
your computer uses the ﬁrst one found in your search path. If you previously installed AWS CLI
version 1, we recommend that you do one of the following to use AWS CLI version 2:

For information on breaking changes between version 1 and version 2, see Breaking changes –
Migrating from AWS CLI version 1 to version 2 (p. 225).

Topics
• Prerequisites (p. 19)
• Install and update the AWS CLI version 2 using the macOS user interface (p. 19)
• Install and update the AWS CLI version 2 using the macOS command line (p. 20)
• Verify the installation (p. 22)
• Uninstall the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 23)

Prerequisites
• We support the AWS CLI version 2 on Apple-supported versions of 64-bit macOS.
• Because AWS doesn't maintain third-party repositories, we can’t guarantee that they contain the latest
version of the AWS CLI.

Install and update the AWS CLI version 2 using the macOS user
interface
The following steps show how to install or update to the latest version of the AWS CLI version 2 by using
the standard macOS user interface and your browser. If you are updating to the latest version, use the
same installation method that you used for your current version.

1. In your browser, download the macOS pkg ﬁle:

• For the latest version of the AWS CLI: https://awscli.amazonaws.com/AWSCLIV2.pkg

• For a specific version of the AWS CLI: Append a hyphen and the version number to the filename.
For this example the filename for version 2.0.30 would be AWSCLIV2-2.0.30.pkg resulting in
the following link https://awscli.amazonaws.com/AWSCLIV2-2.0.30.pkg. For a list of versions, see
the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.
2. Double-click the downloaded file to launch the installer.
3. Follow the on-screen instructions. You can choose to install the AWS CLI version 2 in the following
ways:

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
macOS

• For all users on the computer (requires sudo)

• You can install to any folder, or choose the recommended default folder of /usr/local/aws-
cli.
• The installer automatically creates a symlink at /usr/local/bin/aws that links to the main
program in the installation folder you chose.
• For only the current user (doesn't require sudo)
• You can install to any folder to which you have write permission.
• Due to standard user permissions, after the installer finishes, you must manually create a
symlink file in your $PATH that points to the aws and aws_completer programs by using the
following commands at the command prompt. If your $PATH includes a folder you can write to,
you can run the following command without sudo if you specify that folder as the target's path.
If you don't have a writable folder in your $PATH, you must use sudo in the commands to get
permissions to write to the specified target folder. The default location for a symlink is /usr/
local/bin/.

$ sudo ln -s /folder/installed/aws-cli/aws /usr/local/bin/aws

$ sudo ln -s /folder/installed/aws-cli/aws_completer /usr/local/bin/aws_completer

Note
You can view debug logs for the installation by pressing Cmd+L anywhere in the installer.
This opens a log pane that enables you to ﬁlter and save the log. The log ﬁle is also
automatically saved to /var/log/install.log.
4. To verify the AWS CLI version 2 is installed, follow the steps in Verify the installation (p. 22).

Install and update the AWS CLI version 2 using the macOS
command line
You can download, install, and update from the command line. If you are updating to the latest version,
use the same installation method that you used in your current version. You can install the AWS CLI
version 2 in one of the following ways:

• For all users (p. 20) – Requires sudo.

• For only the current user (p. 21) – Might require sudo to create a symlink in a folder in your $PATH
variable.

To install and update for all users using the macOS command line

If you have sudo permissions, you can install the AWS CLI version 2 for all users on the computer.

We provide the steps in one easy to copy and paste group. See the descriptions of each line in the
following steps.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/AWSCLIV2.pkg" -o "AWSCLIV2.pkg"

$ sudo installer -pkg AWSCLIV2.pkg -target /

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the filename. For this
example the filename for version 2.0.30 would be AWSCLIV2-2.0.30.pkg resulting in the following
command:

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
macOS

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/AWSCLIV2-2.0.30.pkg" -o "AWSCLIV2.pkg"

$ sudo installer -pkg AWSCLIV2.pkg -target /

For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.

1. Download the file using the curl command. The -o option specifies the file name that the
downloaded package is written to. In this example, the file is written to AWSCLIV2.pkg in the
current folder.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/AWSCLIV2.pkg" -o "AWSCLIV2.pkg"

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the filename.
For this example the filename for version 2.0.30 would be AWSCLIV2-2.0.30.pkg resulting in
the following command:

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/AWSCLIV2-2.0.30.pkg" -o "AWSCLIV2.pkg"

For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.
2. Run the standard macOS installer program, specifying the downloaded .pkg ﬁle as the
source. Use the -pkg parameter to specify the name of the package to install, and the -target /
parameter for which drive to install the package to. The ﬁles are installed to /usr/local/aws-
cli, and a symlink is automatically created in /usr/local/bin. You must include sudo on the
command to grant write permissions to those folders.

$ sudo installer -pkg ./AWSCLIV2.pkg -target /

After installation is complete, debug logs are written to /var/log/install.log.

3. To verify the AWS CLI version 2 installed, follow the steps in Verify the installation (p. 22).

To install and update for only the current user using the macOS command line

1. To specify which folder the AWS CLI is installed to, you must create an XML file. This file is an XML-
formatted file that looks like the following example. Leave all values as shown, except you must
replace the path /Users/myusername in line 9 with the path to the folder you want the AWS CLI
version 2 installed to. The folder must already exist, or the command fails. This XML example specifies
that the installer installs the AWS CLI in the folder /Users/myusername, where it creates a folder
named aws-cli.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/
PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<array>
<dict>
<key>choiceAttribute</key>
<string>customLocation</string>
<key>attributeSetting</key>
<string>/Users/myusername</string>
<key>choiceIdentifier</key>
<string>default</string>
</dict>
</array>
</plist>

21
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
macOS

2. Download the pkg installer using the curl command. The -o option specifies the file name that
the downloaded package is written to. In this example, the file is written to AWSCLIV2.pkg in the
current folder.
3. For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/AWSCLIV2.pkg" -o "AWSCLIV2.pkg"

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the filename.
For this example the filename for version 2.0.30 would be AWSCLIV2-2.0.30.pkg resulting in
the following command:

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/AWSCLIV2-2.0.30.pkg" -o "AWSCLIV2.pkg"

For a list of versions, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.
4. Run the standard macOS installer program with the following options:

• Specify the name of the package to install by using the -pkg parameter.
• Specify a current user only installation by setting the parameter --target
CurrentUserHomeDirectory.
• Specify the path (relative to the current folder) and name of the XML ﬁle that you created in the
--applyChoiceChangesXML parameter.

The following example installs the AWS CLI in the folder /Users/myusername/aws-cli.

$ installer -pkg AWSCLIV2.pkg \

-target CurrentUserHomeDirectory \
-applyChoiceChangesXML choices.xml

5. Because standard user permissions typically don't allow writing to folders in your $PATH, the
installer in this mode doesn't try to add the symlinks to the aws and aws_completer programs.
For the AWS CLI to run correctly, you must manually create the symlinks after the installer ﬁnishes.
If your $PATH includes a folder you can write to and you specify the folder as the target's path, you
can run the following command without sudo. If you don't have a writable folder in your $PATH,
you must use sudo for permissions to write to the speciﬁed target folder. The default location for a
symlink is /usr/local/bin/.

$ sudo ln -s /folder/installed/aws-cli/aws /usr/local/bin/aws

$ sudo ln -s /folder/installed/aws-cli/aws_completer /usr/local/bin/aws_completer

After installation is complete, debug logs are written to /var/log/install.log.

6. To verify the AWS CLI version 2 installed, follow the steps in Verify the installation (p. 22).

Verify the installation

To verify that the shell can ﬁnd and run the aws command in your $PATH, use the following commands.

$ which aws
/usr/local/bin/aws
$ aws --version
aws-cli/2.1.29 Python/3.7.4 Darwin/18.7.0 botocore/2.0.0

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Windows

Uninstall the AWS CLI version 2

To uninstall the AWS CLI version 2, run the following commands, substituting the paths you used to
install.

1. Find the folder that contains the symlinks to the main program and the completer.

$ which aws
/usr/local/bin/aws

2. Using that information, run the following command to ﬁnd the installation folder that the symlinks
point to.

$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/aws
lrwxrwxrwx 1 ec2-user ec2-user 49 Oct 22 09:49 /usr/local/bin/aws -> /usr/local/aws-
cli/aws

3. Delete the two symlinks in the ﬁrst folder. If your user account already has write permission to these
folders, you don't need to use sudo.

$ sudo rm /usr/local/bin/aws
$ sudo rm /usr/local/bin/aws_completer

4. Delete the main installation folder. Use sudo to gain write access to the /usr/local folder.

$ sudo rm -rf /usr/local/aws-cli

Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI

version 2 on Windows
This section describes how to install, update, and remove the AWS CLI version 2 on Windows.
Important
AWS CLI versions 1 and 2 use the same aws command name. If you have both versions installed,
your computer uses the ﬁrst one found in your search path. If you previously installed AWS CLI
version 1, we recommend that you do one of the following to use AWS CLI version 2:

For information on breaking changes between version 1 and version 2, see Breaking changes –
Migrating from AWS CLI version 1 to version 2 (p. 225).

Topics
• Prerequisites (p. 24)
• Install or update the AWS CLI version 2 on Windows using the MSI installer (p. 24)
• Uninstall the AWS CLI version 2 from Windows (p. 24)

23
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Windows

Prerequisites
Before you can install or update the AWS CLI version 2 on Windows, be sure you have the following:

• A 64-bit version of Windows XP or later.

• Admin rights to install software

Install or update the AWS CLI version 2 on Windows using the

MSI installer
1. Download the AWS CLI MSI installer for Windows (64-bit):

• For the latest version of the AWS CLI: https://awscli.amazonaws.com/AWSCLIV2.msi

• For a specific version of the AWS CLI: Append a hyphen and the version number to the filename.
For this example the filename for version 2.0.30 would be AWSCLIV2-2.0.30.msi resulting in
the following link https://awscli.amazonaws.com/AWSCLIV2-2.0.30.msi. For a list of versions, see
the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.

To update your current installation of AWS CLI version 2 on Windows, download a new installer each
time you update to overwrite previous versions. AWS CLI is updated regularly. To see when the latest
version was released, see the AWS CLI version 2 changelog on GitHub.
2. Run the downloaded MSI installer and follow the on-screen instructions. By default, the AWS CLI
installs to C:\Program Files\Amazon\AWSCLIV2.
3. To conﬁrm the installation, open the Start menu, search for cmd to open a command prompt
window, and at the command prompt use the aws --version command.

Don't include the prompt symbol (C:\>) when you type a command. These are included in program
listings to diﬀerentiate commands that you type from output returned by the AWS CLI. The rest
of this guide uses the generic prompt symbol ($), except in cases where a command is Windows-
speciﬁc. For more information about how we format code examples, see Using the AWS CLI
examples (p. 3).

C:\> aws --version

aws-cli/2.1.29 Python/3.7.4 Windows/10 botocore/2.0.0

If Windows is unable to ﬁnd the program, you might need to close and reopen the command prompt
window to refresh the path, or add the installation directory to your PATH (p. 41) environment
variable manually.

Uninstall the AWS CLI version 2 from Windows

1. Open Programs and Features by doing one of the following:

• Open the Control Panel, and then choose Programs and Features.
• Open a command prompt, and then enter the following command.

C:\> appwiz.cpl

2. Select the entry named AWS Command Line Interface, and then choose Uninstall to launch the
uninstaller.
3. Conﬁrm that you want to uninstall the AWS CLI.

24
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
AWS CLI version 1

Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI

version 1
This topic provides links to information about how to install version 1 of the AWS Command Line
Interface (AWS CLI). For information on the latest releases of AWS CLI version 1, see the AWS CLI version
1 change notes on GitHub.

We recommend that you use AWS CLI version 2 instead. For information about how to install version 2,
see Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

AWS CLI version 1 installation instructions:

• Install, Update, and Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 on Amazon Linux (p. 25)
• Install, Update, and Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 on Linux (p. 26)
• Install, Update, and Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 on macOS (p. 33)
• Install, Update, and Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 on Windows (p. 39)
• Install and Update the AWS CLI version 1 in a virtual environment (p. 42)

Install, Update, and Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1

on Amazon Linux
The AWS CLI version 1 is preinstalled on Amazon Linux and Amazon Linux 2. Check the currently
installed version by using the following command.

$ aws --version
aws-cli/1.19.3 Python/3.7.4 Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/1.13

Sections
• Prerequisites (p. 25)
• Install or update the AWS CLI version 1 on Amazon Linux using pip (p. 26)
• Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 using pip (p. 26)

Prerequisites
You must have Python 2 version 2.7 or later, or Python 3 version 3.6 or later installed. For installation
instructions, see the Downloading Python page in Python's Beginner Guide.
Warning
As of 2/1/2021 Python 3.4 and 3.5 is deprecated.
Python 2.7 was deprecated by the Python Software Foundation on January 1, 2020. Going
forward, customers using the AWS CLI version 1 should transition to using Python 3, with a
minimum of Python 3.6. Python 2.7 support is deprecated for new versions of the AWS CLI
version 1 starting 7/19/2021.
In order to use the AWS CLI version 1 with an older version of Python, you need to install an
earlier version of the AWS CLI version 1.
To view the AWS CLI version 1 Python version support matrix, see About the AWS CLI
versions (p. 2).

25
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Linux

Install or update the AWS CLI version 1 on Amazon Linux using

pip
To install the latest version of the AWS CLI version 1 for the current user, use the following instructions.

1. We recommend that if you have Python version 3 or later installed that you use pip3. Use pip3
install to install or update to the latest version of the AWS CLI version 1. If you run the command
from within a Python virtual environment (venv), you don't need to use the --user option.

$ pip3 install --upgrade --user awscli

2. Ensure the folder that contains aws is part of your PATH variable.

a. Find your shell's proﬁle script in your user directory. If you're not sure which shell you have, run
echo $SHELL.

$ ls -a ~
. .. .bash_logout .bash_profile .bashrc Desktop Documents Downloads

• Bash – .bash_profile, .profile, or .bash_login

• Zsh – .zshrc
• Tcsh – .tcshrc, .cshrc or .login
b. Add an export command at the end of your proﬁle script that's similar to the following example.

export PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH

This command inserts the path, $HOME/.local/bin in this example, at the front of the existing
$PATHvariable.
c. Reload the proﬁle into your current session to put those changes into eﬀect.

$ source ~/.bash_profile

3. To verify that you're running the new version, use the aws --version command.

$ aws --version
aws-cli/1.19.3 Python/3.7.4 Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/1.13

Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 using pip

If you need to uninstall the AWS CLI, use pip uninstall.

$ pip3 uninstall awscli

Install, Update, and Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1

on Linux
You can install the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) version 1 and its dependencies on most Linux
distributions by using the pip package manager or the bundled installer.

26
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Linux

Although the awscli package is available in repositories for other package managers such as apt and
yum, these are not produced, managed, or supported by AWS. We recommend that you install the AWS
CLI from only the oﬃcial AWS distribution points, as documented in this guide.

Sections
• Prerequisites (p. 27)
• Install and uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 on Linux using the bundled installer (p. 27)
• Install and uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 using pip (p. 31)

Install and uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 on Linux using the
bundled installer
On Linux or macOS, you can use the bundled installer to install version 1 of the AWS CLI. The bundled
installer includes all dependencies and can be used oﬄine.
Note
The bundled installer doesn't support installing to paths that contain spaces.

Topics
• Install the AWS CLI version 1 using the bundled installer with sudo (p. 27)
• Install the AWS CLI version 1 using the bundled installer without sudo (p. 29)
• Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 bundled installer (p. 30)

Install the AWS CLI version 1 using the bundled installer with sudo
The following steps enable you to install the AWS CLI version 1 from the command line on any build of
Linux or macOS.

The following is a summary of the installation commands explained below that you can cut and paste to
run as a single set of commands.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle.zip" -o "awscli-bundle.zip"

unzip awscli-bundle.zip
sudo ./awscli-bundle/install -i /usr/local/aws -b /usr/local/bin/aws

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Linux

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the filename. For this
example the filename for version 1.16.312 would be awscli-bundle-1.16.312.zip resulting in the
following command:

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle-1.16.312.zip" -o "awscli-bundle.zip"

unzip awscli-bundle.zip
sudo ./awscli-bundle/install -i /usr/local/aws -b /usr/local/bin/aws

Follow these steps from the command line to install the AWS CLI version 1 using the bundled installer.

To install the AWS CLI version 1 using the bundled installer

1. Download the AWS CLI version 1 bundled installer using one of the the following methods.

• Download using the curl command.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle.zip" -o "awscli-bundle.zip"

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the filename.
For this example the filename for version 1.16.312 would be awscli-bundle-1.16.312.zip
resulting in the following command:

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle-1.16.312.zip" -o "awscli-

bundle.zip"

• Download using the direct link.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI: https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle.zip

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the
filename. For this example the filename for version 1.16.312 would be awscli-exe-linux-
aarch64-2.0.30.zip resulting in the following url https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-
bundle-2.0.30.zip
2. Extract the files from the package. If you don't have unzip to extract the files, use your Linux
distribution's built-in package manager to install it.

$ unzip awscli-bundle.zip

3. Run the install program. The installer installs the AWS CLI at /usr/local/aws and creates the
symlink aws at the /usr/local/bin directory. Using the -b option to create a symlink eliminates
the need to specify the install directory in the user's $PATH variable. This should enable all users to
call the AWS CLI by entering aws from any directory.

$ sudo ./awscli-bundle/install -i /usr/local/aws -b /usr/local/bin/aws

By default, the install script runs under the system default version of Python. If you have installed
an alternative version of Python and want to use that version to install the AWS CLI, run the install
script with that version by absolute path to the Python executable, as follows.

$ sudo /usr/local/bin/python3.7 awscli-bundle/install -i /usr/local/aws -b /usr/local/

bin/aws

4. Verify that the AWS CLI installed correctly.

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Linux

$ aws --version
aws-cli/1.19.3 Python/3.7.4 Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/1.13

If you get an error, see Troubleshooting AWS CLI errors (p. 218).

Install the AWS CLI version 1 using the bundled installer without sudo
If you don't have sudo permissions or want to install the AWS CLI only for the current user, you can use a
modiﬁed version of the previous commands. The ﬁrst two commands are the same.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle.zip" -o "awscli-bundle.zip"

unzip awscli-bundle.zip
./awscli-bundle/install -b ~/bin/aws

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle-1.16.312.zip" -o "awscli-bundle.zip"

unzip awscli-bundle.zip
./awscli-bundle/install -b ~/bin/aws

To install the AWS CLI version 1 for current user

1. Download the AWS CLI version 1 bundled installer in one of the following ways.

• Download using the curl command.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle.zip" -o "awscli-bundle.zip"

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the filename.
For this example the filename for version 1.16.312 would be awscli-bundle-1.16.312.zip
resulting in the following command:

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle-1.16.312.zip" -o "awscli-

bundle.zip"

• Download using the direct link.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI: https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle.zip

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the
filename. For this example the filename for version 1.16.312 would be awscli-exe-linux-
aarch64-2.0.30.zip resulting in the following url https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-
bundle-2.0.30.zip
2. Extract the files from the package by using unzip. If you don't have unzip, use your Linux
distribution's built-in package manager to install it.

$ unzip awscli-bundle.zip

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Linux

3. Run the install program. The installer installs the AWS CLI at /usr/local/aws and creates the
symlink aws at the /usr/local/bin directory. The command uses the -b parameter to specify
the directory where the installer places the aws symlink ﬁle. You must have write permissions to the
speciﬁed folder.

$ ./awscli-bundle/install -b ~/bin/aws

This installs the AWS CLI to the default location (~/.local/lib/aws) and creates a symbolic link
(symlink) at ~/bin/aws. Make sure that ~/bin is in your PATH environment variable for the symlink
to work.

$ echo $PATH | grep ~/bin // See if $PATH contains ~/bin (output will be empty if
it doesn't)
$ export PATH=~/bin:$PATH // Add ~/bin to $PATH if necessary

4. Ensure the directory that the AWS CLI version 1 is part of your PATH variable.

a. Find your shell's proﬁle script in your user folder. If you're not sure which shell you have, run echo
$SHELL.

$ ls -a ~
. .. .bash_logout .bash_profile .bashrc Desktop Documents Downloads

• Bash – .bash_profile, .profile, or .bash_login

• Zsh – .zshrc
• Tcsh – .tcshrc, .cshrc or .login
b. Add an export command at the end of your proﬁle script that's similar to the following example.

export PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH

This command inserts the path, ~/.local/bin in this example, at the front of the existing PATH
variable.
c. Reload the proﬁle into your current session to put those changes into eﬀect.

$ source ~/.bash_profile

5. Verify that the AWS CLI installed correctly.

$ aws --version
aws-cli/1.19.3 Python/3.7.4 Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/1.13

If you get an error, see Troubleshooting AWS CLI errors (p. 218).

Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 bundled installer

If you installed the AWS CLI using the bundled installer, follow these instructions. The bundled installer
doesn't put anything outside of the installation directory except the optional symlink, so uninstalling is
as simple as deleting those two items.

$ sudo rm -rf /usr/local/aws

$ sudo rm /usr/local/bin/aws

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Linux

Install and uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 using pip

Topics
• Install pip (p. 31)
• Install and update the AWS CLI version 1 using pip (p. 32)
• Add the AWS CLI version 1 executable to your command line path (p. 32)
• Uninstall the AWS CLI using pip (p. 33)

Install pip
If you don't already have pip installed, you can install it by using the script that the Python Packaging
Authority provides. Run pip --version to see if your version of Linux already includes Python and pip.
We recommend that if you have Python version 3 or later installed, you use the pip3 command.

1. Use the curl command to download the installation script. The following command uses the -O
(uppercase "O")parameter to specify that the downloaded ﬁle is to be stored in the current directory
using the same name it has on the remote host.

$ curl -O https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py

2. Run the script with the python or python3 command to download and install the latest version of
pip and other required support packages. When you include the --user switch, the script installs
pip to the path ~/.local/bin.

$ python3 get-pip.py --user

3. Ensure the directory that contains pip is part of your PATH variable.

a. Find your shell's proﬁle script in your user folder. If you're not sure which shell you have, run echo
$SHELL.

$ ls -a ~
. .. .bash_logout .bash_profile .bashrc Desktop Documents Downloads

• Bash – .bash_profile, .profile, or .bash_login

• Zsh – .zshrc
• Tcsh – .tcshrc, .cshrc or .login
b. Add an export command at the end of your proﬁle script that's similar to the following example.

export PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH

This command inserts the path, ~/.local/bin in this example, at the front of the existing PATH
variable.
c. Reload the proﬁle into your current session to put those changes into eﬀect.

$ source ~/.bash_profile

4. To verify that pip or pip3 is installed correctly, run the following command.

$ pip3 --version
pip 19.2.3 from ~/.local/lib/python3.7/site-packages (python 3.7)

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Linux

Install and update the AWS CLI version 1 using pip

1. Use the pip or pip3 command to install or update the AWS CLI. We recommend that if you use
Python version 3 or later that you use the pip3 command. The --user switch, pip installs the AWS
CLI to ~/.local/bin.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ pip3 install awscli --upgrade --user

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a less-than symbol < and the version number to the
filename. For this example the filename for version 1.16.312 would be <1.16.312 resulting in the
following command:

$ pip3 install awscli<1.16.312 --upgrade --user

2. Verify that the AWS CLI installed correctly.

$ aws --version
aws-cli/1.19.3 Python/3.7.4 Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/1.13

If you get an error, see Troubleshooting AWS CLI errors (p. 218).

Add the AWS CLI version 1 executable to your command line path
After installing with pip, you might need to add the aws executable to your operating system' PATH
environment variable.

You can verify which folder pip installed the AWS CLI in by running the following command.

$ which aws
/home/username/.local/bin/aws

You can reference this as ~/.local/bin/ because /home/username corresponds to ~ in Linux.

If you omitted the --user switch and so didn't install in user mode, the executable might be in the bin
folder of your Python installation. If you don't know where Python is installed, run this command.

$ which python
/usr/local/bin/python

The output might be the path to a symlink, not to the actual executable. Run ls -al to see where it
points.

$ ls -al /usr/local/bin/python
/usr/local/bin/python -> ~/.local/Python/3.6/bin/python3.6

pip installs programs in the same folder that contains the Python application. Add this folder to your
PATH variable.

To modify your PATH variable

1. Find your shell's proﬁle script in your user directory. If you're not sure which shell you have, run echo
$SHELL.

32
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
macOS

$ ls -a ~
. .. .bash_logout .bash_profile .bashrc Desktop Documents Downloads

• Bash – .bash_profile, .profile, or .bash_login

• Zsh – .zshrc
• Tcsh – .tcshrc, .cshrc, or .login
2. Add an export command to your proﬁle script.

export PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH

This command adds a path, ~/.local/bin in this example, to the current PATH variable.
3. Load the updated proﬁle into your current session.

$ source ~/.bash_profile

Uninstall the AWS CLI using pip

If you installed the AWS CLI using pip or pip3, you need to uninstall the AWS CLI using the same
package manager by running one of the following commands.

$ pip uninstall awscli

$ pip3 uninstall awscli

Install, Update, and Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1

on macOS
You can install the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) version 1 and its dependencies on macOS by
using the bundled installer or pip.

Sections
• Prerequisites (p. 33)
• Install, update and uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 on macOS using the bundled installer (p. 34)
• Install, update and uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 using pip (p. 37)

Prerequisites
Before you can install the AWS CLI version 1 on macOS, be sure you have Python 2 version 2.7 or later, or
Python 3 version 3.6 or later installed. For installation instructions, see the Downloading Python page in
Python's Beginner Guide.
Warning
As of 2/1/2021 Python 3.4 and 3.5 is deprecated.
Python 2.7 was deprecated by the Python Software Foundation on January 1, 2020. Going
forward, customers using the AWS CLI version 1 should transition to using Python 3, with a
minimum of Python 3.6. Python 2.7 support is deprecated for new versions of the AWS CLI
version 1 starting 7/19/2021.

33
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
macOS

In order to use the AWS CLI version 1 with an older version of Python, you need to install an
earlier version of the AWS CLI version 1.
To view the AWS CLI version 1 Python version support matrix, see About the AWS CLI
versions (p. 2).

Install, update and uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 on macOS

using the bundled installer
On Linux or macOS, you can use the bundled installer to install version 1 of the AWS Command Line
Interface (AWS CLI). The bundled installer includes all dependencies and can be used oﬄine.

The bundled installer doesn't support installing to paths that contain spaces.

Topics
• Install the AWS CLI version 1 using the bundled installer with sudo (p. 34)
• Install the AWS CLI version 1 using the bundled installer without sudo (p. 35)
• Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 bundled installer (p. 37)

Install the AWS CLI version 1 using the bundled installer with sudo
The following steps enable you to install the AWS CLI version 1 from the command line on any build of
macOS.

The following is a summary of the installation commands that you can cut and paste to run as a single
set of commands.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle.zip" -o "awscli-bundle.zip"

unzip awscli-bundle.zip
sudo ./awscli-bundle/install -i /usr/local/aws -b /usr/local/bin/aws

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle-1.16.312.zip" -o "awscli-bundle.zip"

unzip awscli-bundle.zip
sudo ./awscli-bundle/install -i /usr/local/aws -b /usr/local/bin/aws

To install the AWS CLI version 1 using the bundled installer

1. Download the AWS CLI version 1 bundled installer in one of the following ways:

• Download using the curl command.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle.zip" -o "awscli-bundle.zip"

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the filename.
For this example the filename for version 1.16.312 would be awscli-bundle-1.16.312.zip
resulting in the following command:

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
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$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle-1.16.312.zip" -o "awscli-

bundle.zip"

• Download using the direct link.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI: https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle.zip

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the
filename. For this example the filename for version 1.16.312 would be awscli-exe-linux-
aarch64-2.0.30.zip resulting in the following url https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-
bundle-2.0.30.zip
2. Extract (unzip) the files from the package. If you don't have unzip, use your macOs distribution's
built-in package manager to install it.

$ unzip awscli-bundle.zip

3. Run the install program. The installer installs the AWS CLI at /usr/local/aws and creates the
symlink aws at the /usr/local/bin folder. Using the -b option to create a symlink eliminates the
need to specify the install folder in the user's $PATH variable. This should enable all users to call the
AWS CLI by entering aws from any directory.

$ sudo ./awscli-bundle/install -i /usr/local/aws -b /usr/local/bin/aws

By default, the install script runs under the system default version of Python. If you have installed an
alternative version of Python and want to use that to install the AWS CLI, run the install script with
that version by absolute path to the Python executable, as follows.

$ sudo /usr/local/bin/python3.7 awscli-bundle/install -i /usr/local/aws -b /usr/local/

bin/aws

4. Verify that the AWS CLI installed correctly.

$ aws --version
aws-cli/1.19.3 Python/3.7.4 Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/1.13

If you get an error, see Troubleshooting AWS CLI errors (p. 218).

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle.zip" -o "awscli-bundle.zip"

unzip awscli-bundle.zip
./awscli-bundle/install -b ~/bin/aws

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle-1.16.312.zip" -o "awscli-bundle.zip"

unzip awscli-bundle.zip

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macOS

./awscli-bundle/install -b ~/bin/aws

To install the AWS CLI version 1 for the current user

1. Download the AWS CLI version 1 bundled installer using one of the the following methods:

• Download using the curl command.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle.zip" -o "awscli-bundle.zip"

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the filename.
For this example the filename for version 1.16.312 would be awscli-bundle-1.16.312.zip
resulting in the following command:

$ curl "https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle-1.16.312.zip" -o "awscli-

bundle.zip"

• Download using the direct link.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI: https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-bundle.zip

For a specific version of the AWS CLI, append a hyphen and the version number to the
filename. For this example the filename for version 1.16.312 would be awscli-exe-linux-
aarch64-2.0.30.zip resulting in the following url https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/awscli-
bundle-2.0.30.zip
2. Extract the files from the package. If you don't have unzip, use your Linux distribution's built-in
package manager to install it.

$ unzip awscli-bundle.zip

$ ./awscli-bundle/install -b ~/bin/aws

This installs the AWS CLI to the default location (~/.local/lib/aws) and creates a symbolic
link (symlink) at ~/bin/aws. Make sure that ~/bin is in your $PATH environment variable for the
symlink to work.

$ echo $PATH | grep ~/bin // See if $PATH contains ~/bin (output will be empty if
it doesn't)
$ export PATH=~/bin:$PATH // Add ~/bin to $PATH if necessary

4. Ensure the folder that the AWS CLI version 1 is installed in is part of your $PATH variable.

a. Find your shell's proﬁle script in your user folder. If you're not sure which shell you have, run echo
$SHELL.

$ ls -a ~
. .. .bash_logout .bash_profile .bashrc Desktop Documents Downloads

• Bash – .bash_profile, .profile, or .bash_login

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macOS

• Zsh – .zshrc
• Tcsh – .tcshrc, .cshrc or .login
b. Add an export command at the end of your proﬁle script that's similar to the following example.

export PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH

This command inserts the path, ~/.local/bin in this example, at the front of the existing PATH
variable.
c. Reload the proﬁle into your current session to put those changes into eﬀect.

$ source ~/.bash_profile

5. Verify that the AWS CLI installed correctly.

$ aws --version
aws-cli/1.19.3 Python/3.7.4 Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/1.13

If you get an error, see Troubleshooting AWS CLI errors (p. 218).

Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 bundled installer

The bundled installer puts everything inside of the installation directory except the optional symlink, so
to uninstall, you just need to delete those two items.

$ sudo rm -rf /usr/local/aws

$ sudo rm /usr/local/bin/aws

Install, update and uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 using pip
You can use pip directly to install the AWS CLI.

Topics
• Install pip (p. 37)
• Install and update the AWS CLI using pip (p. 38)
• Add the AWS CLI version 1 executable to your macOS command line path (p. 38)
• Uninstall the AWS CLI using pip (p. 39)

1. Use the curl command to download the installation script. The following command uses the -O
(uppercase "O") parameter to specify that the downloaded ﬁle is to be stored in the current folder
using the same name it has on the remote host.

$ curl -O https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py

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macOS

$ python3 get-pip.py --user

Install and update the AWS CLI using pip

1. Use the pip or pip3 command to install the AWS CLI. We recommend that if you use Python version
3 or later, that you use the pip3 command.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

$ pip3 install awscli --upgrade --user

$ pip3 install awscli<1.16.312 --upgrade --user

2. Verify that the AWS CLI is installed correctly.

$ aws --version
aws-cli/1.19.3 Python/3.7.4 Darwin/18.7.0 botocore/1.13

If the program isn't found, add it to your command line path (p. 38).

Add the AWS CLI version 1 executable to your macOS command line path
After installing with pip, you may need to add the aws program to your operating system's PATH
environment variable. The location of the program depends on where Python is installed.

Example AWS CLI install location - macOS with Python 3.6 and pip (user mode)

~/Library/Python/3.7/bin

Substitute the version of Python that you have for the version in the previous example.

If you don't know where Python is installed, run which python.

$ which python
/usr/local/bin/python

The output might be the path to a symlink, not the actual program. Run ls -al to see where it points.

$ ls -al /usr/local/bin/python
~/Library/Python/3.7/bin/python3.7

pip installs programs in the same folder that contains the Python application. Add this folder to your
PATH variable.

To modify your PATH variable

1. Find your shell's proﬁle script in your user directory. If you're not sure which shell you have, run echo
$SHELL.

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Windows

$ ls -a ~
. .. .bash_logout .bash_profile .bashrc Desktop Documents Downloads

• Bash – .bash_profile, .profile, or .bash_login

• Zsh – .zshrc
• Tcsh – .tcshrc, .cshrc, or .login
2. Add an export command to your proﬁle script.

export PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH

This command adds a path, ~/.local/bin in this example, to the current PATH variable.
3. Load the updated proﬁle into your current session.

$ source ~/.bash_profile

Uninstall the AWS CLI using pip

If you need to uninstall the AWS CLI, use pip uninstall.

$ pip3 uninstall awscli

Install, Update, and Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1

on Windows
You can install version 1 of the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) on Windows by using a
standalone installer (recommended) or pip, which is a package manager for Python.

Don't include the prompt symbol (C:\>) when you type a command. These are included in program
listings to diﬀerentiate commands that you type from output returned by the CLI. The rest of this guide
uses the generic prompt symbol ($), except in cases where a command is Windows-speciﬁc.

Topics
• Install, update, and uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 using the MSI installer (p. 39)
• Install, update, and uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 using Python and pip on Windows (p. 40)
• Add the AWS CLI version 1 executable to your command line path (p. 41)

Install, update, and uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 using the
MSI installer
The AWS CLI version 1 is supported on Windows XP or later. For Windows users, the MSI installation
package oﬀers a familiar and convenient way to install the AWS CLI version 1 without installing any
other prerequisites.

Install and update the AWS CLI version 1 using the MSI installer
Check the Releases page on GitHub to see when the latest version was released. When updates are
released, you must repeat the installation process to get the latest version of the AWS CLI version 1.

1. Download the appropriate MSI installer:

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Windows

• AWS CLI MSI installer for Windows (64-bit): https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/AWSCLI64PY3.msi

• AWS CLI MSI installer for Windows (32-bit): https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/AWSCLI32PY3.msi
• AWS CLI combined setup file for Windows: https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-cli/AWSCLISetup.exe
(includes both the 32-bit and 64-bit MSI installers, and automatically installs the correct version)
2. Run the downloaded MSI installer or the setup file.
3. Follow the on-screen instructions. By default, the AWS CLI version 1 installs to C:\Program Files
\Amazon\AWSCLI (64-bit version) or C:\Program Files (x86)\Amazon\AWSCLI (32-bit
version).
4. To confirm the installation, use the aws --version command at a command prompt (open the
Start menu and search for cmd to start a command prompt).

C:\> aws --version

aws-cli/1.19.3 Python/3.7.4 Windows/10 botocore/1.13

If Windows is unable to ﬁnd the program, you might need to close and reopen the command prompt
to refresh the path, or add the installation directory to your PATH (p. 41) environment variable
manually.

Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1

To use the following uninstall instructions, you need to have installed the AWS CLI version 1 with the MSI
installer or setup ﬁle.

1. Open Programs and Features by doing one of the following:

• Open the Control Panel, and then choose Programs and Features.
• Open a command prompt and enter the following command.

C:\> appwiz.cpl

2. Select the entry named AWS Command Line Interface, and then choose Uninstall to launch the
uninstaller.
3. Conﬁrm that you want to uninstall the AWS CLI.

Install, update, and uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 using

Python and pip on Windows
The Python Software Foundation provides installers for Windows that include pip.

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Windows

To view the AWS CLI version 1 Python version support matrix, see About the AWS CLI
versions (p. 2).

Install and update the AWS CLI version 1 using pip

1. To Install the AWS CLI version 1, use the pip3 command (if you use Python version 3 or later) or the
pip command.

For the latest version of the AWS CLI, use the following command block:

C:\> pip3 install awscli --upgrade --user

C:\> pip3 install awscli<1.16.312 --upgrade --user

2. Verify that the AWS CLI version 1 is installed correctly. If there is no response, see the Add the AWS
CLI version 1 executable to your command line path (p. 41) section.

C:\> aws --version

aws-cli/1.19.3 Python/3.7.4 Windows/10 botocore/1.13

Uninstall the AWS CLI version 1 using pip

If you installed the AWS CLI version 1 using pip, you must also uninstall using pip. If you use Python
version 3 or later, we recommend that you use the pip3 command.

C:\> pip3 uninstall awscli

You might need to restart your command prompt window or your computer to remove all ﬁles.

Add the AWS CLI version 1 executable to your command line

path
After installing the AWS CLI version 1 with pip, add the aws program to your operating system's
PATH environment variable. With an MSI installation, this should happen automatically. But if the aws
command doesn't run after you install it, you might need to set it manually.

1. Use the where command to find the aws file location. By default, the where command shows where
a specified program is found in the system's PATH.

C:\> where aws

The paths that show up depend on your platform and which method you used to install the AWS
CLI. Folder names that include version numbers can vary. These examples reﬂect the use of Python
version 3.7. Replace the version with the version number you're using, as needed. Typical paths
include the following:

• Python 3 and pip3 – C:\Program Files\Python37\Scripts\

• Python 3 and pip3 --user option on earlier versions of Windows – %USERPROFILE%\AppData
\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\Scripts

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Virtualenv

• Python 3 and pip3 --user option on Windows 10 – %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming

\Python\Python37\Scripts
• MSI installer (64-bit) – C:\Program Files\Amazon\AWSCLI\bin
• MSI installer (32-bit) – C:\Program Files (x86)\Amazon\AWSCLI\bin

Use the following steps based on whether a ﬁle path is returned.

A ﬁle path is returned

C:\> where aws

C:\Program Files\Amazon\AWSCLI\bin\aws.exe

You can ﬁnd where the aws program is installed by running the following command.

C:\> where c:\ aws

C:\Program Files\Python37\Scripts\aws

A ﬁle path is NOT returned

If the where command returns the following error, it's not in the system PATH and you can't run
it by entering its name.

C:\> where c:\ aws

INFO: Could not find files for the given pattern(s).

In that case, run the where command with the /R path parameter to tell it to search all
folders, and then add the path manually. Use the command line or File Explorer to discover
where it's installed on your computer.

C:\> where /R c:\ aws

c:\Program Files\Amazon\AWSCLI\bin\aws.exe
c:\Program Files\Amazon\AWSCLI\bincompat\aws.cmd
c:\Program Files\Amazon\AWSCLI\runtime\Scripts\aws
c:\Program Files\Amazon\AWSCLI\runtime\Scripts\aws.cmd
...

2. Press the Windows key and enter environment variables.

3. Choose Edit environment variables for your account.
4. Choose PATH, and then choose Edit.
5. Add the path you found into the Variable value ﬁeld, for example, C:\Program Files\Amazon
\AWSCLI\bin\aws.exe.
6. Choose OK twice to apply the new settings.
7. Close any running command prompts and reopen the command prompt window.

Install and Update the AWS CLI version 1 in a virtual

environment
You can avoid requirement version conﬂicts with other pip packages by installing version 1 of the AWS
Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) in a virtual environment.

Topics
• Prerequisites (p. 43)

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Virtualenv

• Install and update the AWS CLI version 1 in a virtual environment (p. 43)

Prerequisites
• Python 2 version 2.7 or later, or Python 3 version 3.6 or later. For installation instructions, see the
Downloading Python page in Python's Beginner Guide.
Warning
As of 2/1/2021 Python 3.4 and 3.5 is deprecated.
Python 2.7 was deprecated by the Python Software Foundation on January 1, 2020. Going
forward, customers using the AWS CLI version 1 should transition to using Python 3, with a
minimum of Python 3.6. Python 2.7 support is deprecated for new versions of the AWS CLI
version 1 starting 7/19/2021.
In order to use the AWS CLI version 1 with an older version of Python, you need to install an
earlier version of the AWS CLI version 1.
To view the AWS CLI version 1 Python version support matrix, see About the AWS CLI
versions (p. 2).
• pip or pip3 is installed.

Install and update the AWS CLI version 1 in a virtual

environment
1. Install virtualenv using pip.

$ pip install --user virtualenv

2. Create a virtual environment and name it.

$ virtualenv ~/cli-ve

Alternatively, you can use the -p option to specify a version of Python other than the default.

$ virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python37 ~/cli-ve

3. Activate your new virtual environment.

Linux or macOS

$ source ~/cli-ve/bin/activate

Windows

$ %USERPROFILE%\cli-ve\Scripts\activate

The prompt changes to show that your virtual environment is active.

(cli-ve)~$

4. Install or update the AWS CLI version 1 into your virtual environment.

(cli-ve)~$ pip install --upgrade awscli

5. Verify that the AWS CLI version 1 is installed correctly.

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Virtualenv

$ aws --version
aws-cli/1.19.3 Python/3.7.4 Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/1.13

6. You can use the deactivate command to exit the virtual environment. Whenever you start a new
session, you must reactivate the environment.

44
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Conﬁguration basics

Conﬁguring the AWS CLI

This section explains how to conﬁgure the settings that the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) uses
to interact with AWS. These include your security credentials, the default output format, and the default
AWS Region.
Note
AWS requires that all incoming requests are cryptographically signed. The AWS CLI does this
for you. The "signature" includes a date/time stamp. Therefore, you must ensure that your
computer's date and time are set correctly. If you don't, and the date/time in the signature is too
far oﬀ of the date/time recognized by the AWS service, AWS rejects the request.

Topics
• Configuration basics (p. 45)
• Configuration and credential file settings (p. 48)
• Named profiles (p. 61)
• Configuring the AWS CLI to use AWS Single Sign-On (p. 62)
• Environment variables to configure the AWS CLI (p. 68)
• Command line options (p. 71)
• Command completion (p. 74)
• AWS CLI retries (p. 78)
• Sourcing credentials with an external process (p. 82)
• Using credentials for Amazon EC2 instance metadata (p. 83)
• Using an HTTP proxy (p. 84)
• Using an IAM role in the AWS CLI (p. 85)

Configuration basics
This section explains how to quickly configure basic settings that the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS
CLI) uses to interact with AWS. These include your security credentials, the default output format, and
the default AWS Region.
Note
AWS requires that all incoming requests are cryptographically signed. The AWS CLI does this
for you. The "signature" includes a date/time stamp. Therefore, you must ensure that your
computer's date and time are set correctly. If you don't, and the date/time in the signature is too
far off of the date/time recognized by the AWS service, AWS rejects the request.

Topics
• Quick configuration with aws configure (p. 46)
• Access key ID and secret access key (p. 46)
• Region (p. 47)
• Output format (p. 47)
• Profiles (p. 47)

45
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Quick conﬁguration with aws configure

• Conﬁguration settings and precedence (p. 48)

Quick conﬁguration with aws configure

For general use, the aws configure command is the fastest way to set up your AWS CLI installation.
When you enter this command, the AWS CLI prompts you for four pieces of information:

• Access key ID (p. 46)

• Secret access key (p. 46)
• AWS Region (p. 47)
• Output format (p. 47)

The AWS 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 AWS CLI command
that doesn't explicitly specify a profile to use. For more information on the credentials file, see
Configuration and credential file settings (p. 48)

The following example shows 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

Access key ID and secret access key

Access keys consist of an access key ID and secret access key, which are used to sign programmatic
requests that you make to AWS. If you don't have access keys, you can create them from the AWS
Management Console. As a best practice, do not use the AWS account root user access keys for any task
where it's not required. Instead, create a new administrator IAM user with access keys for yourself.

The only time that you can view or download the secret access key is when you create the keys. You
cannot recover them later. However, you can create new access keys at any time. You must also have
permissions to perform the required IAM actions. For more information, see Permissions Required to
Access IAM Resources in the IAM User Guide.

To create access keys for an IAM user

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the IAM console at https://
console.aws.amazon.com/iam/.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Users.
3. Choose the name of the user whose access keys you want to create, and then choose the Security
credentials tab.
4. In the Access keys section, choose Create access key.
5. To view the new access key pair, choose Show. You will not have access to the secret access key again
after this dialog box closes. Your credentials will look something like this:

• Access key ID: AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE

• Secret access key: wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRﬁCYEXAMPLEKEY
6. To download the key pair, choose Download .csv ﬁle. Store the keys in a secure location. You will
not have access to the secret access key again after this dialog box closes.

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Region

Keep the keys conﬁdential in order to protect your AWS account and never email them. Do not share
them outside your organization, even if an inquiry appears to come from AWS or Amazon.com. No
one who legitimately represents Amazon will ever ask you for your secret key.
7. After you download the .csv ﬁle, choose Close. When you create an access key, the key pair is active
by default, and you can use the pair right away.

• What Is IAM? in the IAM User Guide

• AWS Security Credentials in AWS General Reference

Region
The Default region name identiﬁes the AWS Region whose servers you want to send your requests
to by default. This is typically the Region closest to you, but it can be any Region. For example, you can
type us-west-2 to use US West (Oregon). This is the Region that all later requests are sent to, unless
you specify otherwise in an individual command.
Note
You must specify an AWS Region when using the AWS CLI, either explicitly or by setting a
default Region. For a list of the available Regions, see Regions and Endpoints. The Region
designators used by the AWS CLI are the same names that you see in AWS Management Console
URLs and service endpoints.

Output format
The Default output format speciﬁes how the results are formatted. The value can be any of the
values in the following list. If you don't specify an output format, json is used as the default.

• json (p. 118) – The output is formatted as a JSON string.

• yaml (p. 119) – The output is formatted as a YAML string. (Available in the AWS CLI version 2 only.)
• yaml-stream (p. 119) – The output is streamed and formatted as a YAML string. Streaming allows
for faster handling of large data types. (Available in the AWS CLI version 2 only.)
• text (p. 120) – The output is formatted as multiple lines of tab-separated string values. This can be
useful to pass the output to a text processor, like grep, sed, or awk.
• table (p. 123) – The output is formatted as a table using the characters +|- to form the cell borders.
It typically presents the information in a "human-friendly" format that is much easier to read than the
others, but not as programmatically useful.

Profiles
A collection of settings is called a profile. By default, the AWS CLI uses the default profile. You can
create and use additional named profiles with varying credentials and settings by specifying the --
profile option and assigning a name.

The following example creates a proﬁle named produser.

$ aws configure --profile produser

AWS Access Key ID [None]: AKIAI44QH8DHBEXAMPLE
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: je7MtGbClwBF/2Zp9Utk/h3yCo8nvbEXAMPLEKEY
Default region name [None]: us-east-1
Default output format [None]: text

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Conﬁguration settings and precedence

You can then specify a --profile profilename and use the credentials and settings stored under
that name.

$ aws s3 ls --profile produser

To update these settings, run aws configure again (with or without the --profile parameter,
depending on which profile you want to update) and enter new values as appropriate. The next sections
contain more information about the files that aws configure creates, additional settings, and named
profiles.

For more information on named proﬁles, see Named proﬁles (p. 61).

Conﬁguration settings and precedence

The AWS CLI uses credentials and configuration settings located in multiple places, such as the system or
user environment variables, local AWS configuration files, or explicitly declared on the command line as
a parameter. Certain locations take precedence over others. The AWS CLI credentials and configuration
settings take precedence in the following order:

1. Command line options (p. 71) – Overrides settings in any other location. You can specify --
region, --output, and --profile as parameters on the command line.
2. Environment variables (p. 68) – You can store values in your system's environment variables.
3. CLI credentials file (p. 48) – The credentials and config file are updated when you run the
command aws configure. The credentials file is located at ~/.aws/credentials on Linux
or macOS, or at C:\Users\USERNAME\.aws\credentials on Windows. This file can contain the
credential details for the default profile and any named profiles.
4. CLI configuration file (p. 48) – The credentials and config file are updated when you run the
command aws configure. The config file is located at ~/.aws/config on Linux or macOS, or at
C:\Users\USERNAME\.aws\config on Windows. This file contains the configuration settings for
the default profile and any named profiles.
5. Container credentials – You can associate an IAM role with each of your Amazon Elastic Container
Service (Amazon ECS) task definitions. Temporary credentials for that role are then available to that
task's containers. For more information, see IAM Roles for Tasks in the Amazon Elastic Container
Service Developer Guide.
6. Instance profile credentials – You can associate an IAM role with each of your Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. Temporary credentials for that role are then available to
code running in the instance. The credentials are delivered through the Amazon EC2 metadata service.
For more information, see IAM Roles for Amazon EC2 in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances
and Using Instance Profiles in the IAM User Guide.

Conﬁguration and credential ﬁle settings

You can save your frequently used conﬁguration settings and credentials in ﬁles that are maintained by
the AWS CLI.

The files are divided into profiles. By default, the CLI uses the settings found in the profile named
default. To use alternate settings, you can create and reference additional profiles. For more
information on named profiles, see Named profiles (p. 61).

You can override an individual setting by either setting one of the supported environment variables,
or by using a command line parameter. For more information on conﬁguration setting precedence, see
Conﬁguration settings and precedence (p. 48).

Topics

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Where are conﬁguration settings stored?

• Where are conﬁguration settings stored? (p. 49)

• Set and view configuration settings (p. 49)
• Supported config file settings (p. 51)

Where are conﬁguration settings stored?

The AWS CLI stores sensitive credential information that you specify with aws configure in a local file
named credentials, in a folder named .aws in your home directory. The less sensitive configuration
options that you specify with aws configure are stored in a local file named config, also stored in
the .aws folder in your home directory.
Storing credentials in the config file
You can keep all of your profile settings in a single file as the AWS CLI can read credentials from
the config file. If there are credentials in both files for a profile sharing the same name, the
keys in the credentials file take precedence.
These files are also used by the various language software development kits (SDKs). If you use
one of the SDKs in addition to the AWS CLI, confirm if the credentials should be stored in their
own file.

Where you find your home directory location varies based on the operating system, but is referred to
using the environment variables %UserProfile% in Windows and $HOME or ~ (tilde) in Unix-based
systems. You can specify a non-default location for the config file by setting the AWS_CONFIG_FILE
environment variable to another local path. See Environment variables to configure the AWS
CLI (p. 68) for details.

For example, the files generated by the CLI for a default profile configured with aws configure looks
similar to the following.

~/.aws/credentials

[default]
aws_access_key_id=AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
aws_secret_access_key=wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY

~/.aws/config

[default]
region=us-west-2
output=json

For file examples with multiple named profiles, see Named profiles (p. 61).

When you use a shared proﬁle that speciﬁes an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role, the
AWS CLI calls the AWS STS AssumeRole operation to retrieve temporary credentials. These credentials
are then stored (in ~/.aws/cli/cache). Subsequent AWS CLI commands use the cached temporary
credentials until they expire, and at that point the AWS CLI automatically refreshes the credentials.

Set and view conﬁguration settings

There are several ways to view and set your conﬁguration settings in the ﬁles.

Credentials and conﬁg ﬁle

View and edit your settings by directly editing the config and credentials ﬁles in a text editor.
For more information see Where are conﬁguration settings stored? (p. 49)

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Set and view conﬁguration settings

To remove a setting, delete the corresponding setting in your config and credentials ﬁles.
aws configure

Run this command to quickly set and view your credentials, region, and output format. The
following example shows sample values.

For more information see Quick conﬁguration with aws configure (p. 46)
aws configure set

You can set any credentials or conﬁguration settings using aws configure set. Specify the proﬁle
that you want to view or modify with the --profile setting.

For example, the following command sets the region in the proﬁle named integ.

$ aws configure set region us-west-2 --profile integ

To remove a setting, use an empty string as the value, or manually delete the setting in your config
and credentials ﬁles in a text editor.

$ aws configure set cli_pager "" --profile integ

aws configure get

You can retrieve any credentials or conﬁguration settings you've set using aws configure get.
Specify the proﬁle that you want to view or modify with the --profile setting.

For example, the following command retrieves the region setting in the proﬁle named integ.

$ aws configure get region --profile integ

us-west-2

If the output is empty, the setting is not explicitly set and uses the default value.
aws configure import
This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you
run AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating,
and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

Import CSV credentials generated from the AWS web console. A CSV file is imported with the profile
name matching the IAM user name. The CSV file must contain the following headers.
• User Name
• Access key ID
• Secret access key

$ aws configure import --csv file://credentials.csv

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aws configure list

To list all configuration data, use the aws configure list command. This command displays
the AWS CLI name of all settings you've configured, their values, and where the configuration was
retrieved from.

$ aws configure list

Name Value Type Location
---- ----- ---- --------
profile <not set> None None
access_key ****************ABCD shared-credentials-file
secret_key ****************ABCD shared-credentials-file
region us-west-2 env AWS_DEFAULT_REGION

aws configure list-profiles

This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you
run AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating,
and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

To list all your proﬁle names, use the aws configure list-profiles command.

$ aws configure list-profiles

default
test

Supported config ﬁle settings

Topics
• Global settings (p. 51)
• S3 Custom command settings (p. 58)

The following settings are supported in the config file. The values listed in the specified (or default)
profile are used unless they are overridden by the presence of an environment variable with the same
name, or a command line option with the same name. For more information on what order settings take
precendence, see Configuration settings and precedence (p. 48)

Global settings
api_versions

Some AWS services maintain multiple API versions to support backward compatibility. By default,
CLI commands use the latest available API version. You can specify an API version to use for a proﬁle
by including the api_versions setting in the config ﬁle.

This is a "nested" setting that is followed by one or more indented lines that each identify one AWS
service and the API version to use. See the documentation for each service to understand which API
versions are available.

The following example shows how to specify an API version for two AWS services. These API versions
are used only for commands that run under the proﬁle that contains these settings.

api_versions =
ec2 = 2015-03-01
cloudfront = 2015-09-017

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This setting does not have an environment variable or command line parameter equivalent.

aws_access_key_id (p. 46)

Specifies the AWS access key used as part of the credentials to authenticate the command
request. Although this can be stored in the config file, we recommend that you store this in the
credentials file.

Can be overridden by the AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID environment variable. You can't specify the access
key ID as a command line option.

aws_access_key_id = 123456789012

aws_secret_access_key (p. 46)

Specifies the AWS secret key used as part of the credentials to authenticate the command
request. Although this can be stored in the config file, we recommend that you store this in the
credentials file.

Can be overridden by the AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY environment variable. You can't specify the
secret access key as a command line option.

aws_secret_access_key = wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY

aws_session_token

Specifies an AWS session token. A session token is required only if you manually specify temporary
security credentials. Although this can be stored in the config file, we recommend that you store
this in the credentials file.

Can be overridden by the AWS_SESSION_TOKEN environment variable. You can't specify the session
token as a command line option.

aws_session_token = AQoEXAMPLEH4aoAH0gNCAPyJxz4BlCFFxWNE1OPTgk5TthT
+FvwqnKwRcOIfrRh3c/LTo6UDdyJwOOvEVPvLXCrrrUtdnniCEXAMPLE/
IvU1dYUg2RVAJBanLiHb4IgRmpRV3zrkuWJOgQs8IZZaIv2BXIa2R4Olgk

ca_bundle

Specifies a CA certificate bundle (a file with the .pem extension) that is used to verify SSL
certificates.

Can be overridden by the AWS_CA_BUNDLE environment variable or the --ca-bundle command

line option.

ca_bundle = dev/apps/ca-certs/cabundle-2019mar05.pem

cli_auto_prompt
This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you
run AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating,
and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

Enables the auto-prompt for the AWS CLI version 2. There are two settings that can be used:
• on uses the full auto-prompt mode each time you attempt to run an aws command. This includes
pressing ENTER after both a complete command or incomplete command.

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cli_auto_prompt = on

• on-partial uses partial auto-promptmode. If a command is incomplete or cannot be run due

to client-side validation errors, auto-prompt is used. This mode is particular useful if you have
pre-existing scripts, runbooks, or you only want to be auto-prompted for commands you are
unfamiliar with rather than prompted on every command.

cli_auto_prompt = on-partial

You can override this setting by using the aws_cli_auto_prompt (p. 69) environment variable
or the --cli-auto-prompt (p. 72) and --no-cli-auto-prompt (p. 73) command line
parameters.

For information on the AWS CLI version 2 auto-prompt feature, see Having the AWS CLI prompt you
for commands (p. 114).
cli_binary_format
This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you
run AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating,
and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

Specifies how the AWS CLI version 2 interprets binary input parameters. It can be one of the
following values:
• base64 – This is the default value. An input parameter that is typed as a binary large object (BLOB)
accepts a base64-encoded string. To pass true binary content, put the content in a file and provide
the file's path and name with the fileb:// prefix as the parameter's value. To pass base64-
encoded text contained in a file, provide the file's path and name with the file:// prefix as the
parameter's value.
• raw-in-base64-out – Provides backward compatibility with the AWS CLI version 1 behavior where
binary values must be passed literally.

This entry does not have an equivalent environment variable. You can specify the value on a single
command by using the --cli-binary-format raw-in-base64-out parameter.

cli_binary_format = raw-in-base64-out

If you reference a binary value in a file using the fileb:// prefix notation, the AWS CLI always
expects the file to contain raw binary content and does not attempt to convert the value.

If you reference a binary value in a file using the file:// prefix notation, the AWS CLI handles
the file according to the current cli_binary_format setting. If that setting's value is base64
(the default when not explicitly set), the CLI expects the file to contain base64-encoded text. If that
setting's value is raw-in-base64-out, the CLI expects the file to contain raw binary content.
cli_follow_urlparam
This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 1.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 1. It isn't available if you
run AWS CLI version 2.

Speciﬁes whether the CLI attempts to follow URL links in command line parameters that begin with
http:// or https://. When enabled, the retrieved content is used as the parameter value instead
of the URL.
• true – This is the default value. If speciﬁed, any string parameters that begin with http://
or https:// are fetched and any downloaded content is used as the parameter value for the
command.

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• false – If speciﬁed, the CLI does not treat parameter string values that begin with http:// or
https:// diﬀerently from other strings.

This entry does not have an equivalent environment variable or command line option.

cli_follow_urlparam = false

cli_pager
This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you
run AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating,
and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

Speciﬁes the pager program used for output. By default, AWS CLI version 2 returns all output
through your operating system’s default pager program.

Can be overridden by the AWS_PAGER environment variable.

cli_pager=less

To disable all use of an external paging program, set the variable to an empty string as shown in the
following example.

cli_pager=

cli_timestamp_format

Specifies the format of timestamp values included in the output. You can specify either of the
following values:
• iso8601 – The default value for the AWS CLI version 2. If specified, the AWS CLI reformats all
timestamps according to ISO 8601.
• wire – The default value for the AWS CLI version 1. If specified, the AWS CLI displays all timestamp
values exactly as received in the HTTP query response.

This entry does not have an equivalent environment variable or command line option.

cli_timestamp_format = iso8601

credential_process (p. 82)

Speciﬁes an external command that the CLI runs to generate or retrieve authentication credentials
to use for this command. The command must return the credentials in a speciﬁc format. For
more information about how to use this setting, see Sourcing credentials with an external
process (p. 82).

This entry does not have an equivalent environment variable or command line option.

credential_process = /opt/bin/awscreds-retriever --username susan

credential_source (p. 85)

Used within Amazon EC2 instances or EC2 containers to specify where the AWS CLI can find
credentials to use to assume the role you specified with the role_arn parameter. You cannot
specify both source_profile and credential_source in the same profile.

This parameter can have one of three values:

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• Environment – Specifies that the AWS CLI is to retrieve source credentials from environment
variables.
• Ec2InstanceMetadata – Specifies that the AWS CLI is to use the IAM role attached to the EC2
instance profile to get source credentials.
• EcsContainer – Specifies that the AWS CLI is to use the IAM role attached to the ECS container as
source credentials.

credential_source = Ec2InstanceMetadata

duration_seconds

Speciﬁes the maximum duration of the role session, in seconds. The value can range from 900
seconds (15 minutes) up to the maximum session duration setting for the role (which can be a
maximum of 43200). This is an optional parameter and by default, the value is set to 3600 seconds.
external_id (p. 89)

Specifies a unique identifier that is used by third parties to assume a role in their customers'
accounts. This maps to the ExternalId parameter in the AssumeRole operation. This parameter is
needed only if the trust policy for the role specifies a value for ExternalId. For more information,
see How to use an External Gateway When Granting Access to Your AWS Resources to a Third Party
in the IAM User Guide.
max_attempts (p. 78)

Speciﬁes a value of maximum retry attempts the AWS CLI retry handler uses, where the initial call
counts toward the max_attempts value that you provide.

You can override this value by using the AWS_MAX_ATTEMPTS environment variable.

max_attempts = 3

mfa_serial (p. 88)

The identiﬁcation number of an MFA device to use when assuming a role. This is mandatory
only if the trust policy of the role being assumed includes a condition that requires MFA
authentication. The value can be either a serial number for a hardware device (such as
GAHT12345678) or an Amazon Resource Name (ARN) for a virtual MFA device (such as
arn:aws:iam::123456789012:mfa/user).
output (p. 47)

Speciﬁes the default output format for commands requested using this proﬁle. You can specify any
of the following values:
• json (p. 118) – The output is formatted as a JSON string.
• yaml (p. 119) – The output is formatted as a YAML string. (Available in the AWS CLI version 2
only.)
• yaml-stream (p. 119) – The output is streamed and formatted as a YAML string. Streaming
allows for faster handling of large data types. (Available in the AWS CLI version 2 only.)
• text (p. 120) – The output is formatted as multiple lines of tab-separated string values. This can
be useful to pass the output to a text processor, like grep, sed, or awk.
• table (p. 123) – The output is formatted as a table using the characters +|- to form the cell
borders. It typically presents the information in a "human-friendly" format that is much easier to
read than the others, but not as programmatically useful.

Can be overridden by the AWS_DEFAULT_OUTPUT environment variable or the --output command

line option.

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AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
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output = table

parameter_validation

Specifies whether the AWS CLI client attempts to validate parameters before sending them to the
AWS service endpoint.
• true – This is the default value. If specified, the CLI performs local validation of command line
parameters.
• false – If specified, the CLI does not validate command line parameters before sending them to
the AWS service endpoint.

This entry does not have an equivalent environment variable or command line option.

parameter_validation = false

region (p. 47)

Speciﬁes the AWS Region to send requests to for commands requested using this proﬁle.
• You can specify any of the Region codes available for the chosen service as listed in AWS Regions
and Endpoints in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.
• aws_global enables you to specify the global endpoint for services that support a global
endpoint in addition to regional endpoints, such as AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS) and
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

You can override this value by using the AWS_DEFAULT_REGION environment variable or the --
region command line option.

region = us-west-2

retry_mode (p. 78)

Speciﬁes which retry mode AWS CLI uses. There are three retry modes available: legacy (default),
standard, and adaptive. For more information on retries, see AWS CLI retries (p. 78).

You can override this value by using the AWS_RETRY_MODE environment variable.

retry_mode = standard

role_arn (p. 85)

Speciﬁes the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of an IAM role that you want to use to run the AWS CLI
commands. You must also specify one of the following parameters to identify the credentials that
have permission to assume this role:
• source_proﬁle
• credential_source

role_arn = arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/role-name

role_session_name (p. 89)

Speciﬁes the name to attach to the role session. This value is provided to the
RoleSessionName parameter when the AWS CLI calls the AssumeRole operation, and
becomes part of the assumed role user ARN: arn:aws:sts::123456789012:assumed-
role/role_name/role_session_name. This is an optional parameter. If you do not provide this

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value, a session name is generated automatically. This name appears in AWS CloudTrail logs for
entries associated with this session.

role_session_name = maria_garcia_role

source_proﬁle (p. 85)

Specifies a named profile with long-term credentials that the AWS CLI can use to assume a role
that you specified with the role_arn parameter. You cannot specify both source_profile and
credential_source in the same profile.

source_profile = production-profile

sso_account_id (p. 62) (Available in the AWS CLI version 2 only.)

Speciﬁes the AWS account ID that contains the IAM role with the permission that you want to grant
to the associated AWS SSO user.

This setting does not have an environment variable or command line option.

sso_account_id = 123456789012

sso_region (p. 62) (Available in the AWS CLI version 2 only.)

Speciﬁes the AWS Region that contains the AWS SSO portal host. This is separate from, and can be a
diﬀerent Region than the default CLI region parameter.

This setting does not have an environment variable or command line option.

aws_sso_region = us_west-2

sso_role_name (p. 62) (Available in the AWS CLI version 2 only.)

Specifies the friendly name of the IAM role that defines the user's permissions when using this
profile.

This setting does not have an environment variable or command line option.

sso_role_name = ReadAccess

sso_start_url (p. 62) (Available in the AWS CLI version 2 only.)

Speciﬁes the URL that points to the organization's AWS SSO user portal. The AWS CLI uses this URL
to establish a session with the AWS SSO service to authenticate its users.

This setting does not have an environment variable or command line option.

sso_start_url = https://my-sso-portal.awsapps.com/start

sts_regional_endpoints

Speciﬁes how the AWS CLI determines the AWS service endpoint that the AWS CLI client uses to talk
to the AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS).

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• The default value for AWS CLI version 1 is legacy.

• The default value for AWS CLI version 2 is regional.

You can specify one of two values:

• legacy – Uses the global STS endpoint, sts.amazonaws.com, for the following AWS Regions:
ap-northeast-1, ap-south-1, ap-southeast-1, ap-southeast-2, aws-global, ca-
central-1, eu-central-1, eu-north-1, eu-west-1, eu-west-2, eu-west-3, sa-east-1,
us-east-1, us-east-2, us-west-1, and us-west-2. All other Regions automatically use their
respective regional endpoint.
• regional – The AWS CLI always uses the AWS STS endpoint for the currently conﬁgured Region.
For example, if the client is conﬁgured to use us-west-2, all calls to AWS STS are made to the
regional endpoint sts.us-west-2.amazonaws.com instead of the global sts.amazonaws.com
endpoint. To send a request to the global endpoint while this setting is enabled, you can set the
Region to aws-global.

This setting can be overwritten by using the AWS_STS_REGIONAL_ENDPOINTS environment

variable. You can't set this value as a command line parameter.
web_identity_token_ﬁle (p. 90)

Specifies the path to a file that contains an OAuth 2.0 access token or OpenID Connect ID token that
is provided by an identity provider. The AWS CLI loads the contents of this file and passes it as the
WebIdentityToken argument to the AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity operation.
tcp_keepalive

Speciﬁes whether the AWS CLI client uses TCP keep-alive packets.

This entry does not have an equivalent environment variable or command line option.

tcp_keepalive = false

S3 Custom command settings

Amazon S3 supports several settings that conﬁgure how the AWS CLI performs Amazon S3 operations.
Some apply to all S3 commands in both the s3api and s3 namespaces. Others are speciﬁcally for the
S3 "custom" commands that abstract common operations and do more than a one-to-one mapping to
an API operation. The aws s3 transfer commands cp, sync, mv, and rm have additional settings you can
use to control S3 transfers.

All of these options can be configured by specifying the s3 nested setting in your config file. Each
setting is then indented on its own line.
Note
These settings are entirely optional. You should be able to successfully use the aws s3 transfer
commands without configuring any of these settings. These settings are provided to enable you
to tune for performance or to account for the specific environment where you are running these
aws s3 commands.

The following settings apply to any S3 command in the s3 or s3api namespaces.

addressing_style

Speciﬁes which addressing style to use. This controls whether the bucket name is in the hostname or
is part of the URL. Valid values are: path, virtual, and auto. The default value is auto.

There are two styles of constructing an S3 endpoint. The ﬁrst is called virtual and includes the
bucket name as part of the hostname. For example: https://bucketname.s3.amazonaws.com.

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Alternatively, with the path style, you treat the bucket name as if it is a path in the URI; for example,
https://s3.amazonaws.com/bucketname. The default value in the CLI is to use auto, which
attempts to use the virtual style where it can, but will fall back to path style when required.
For example, if your bucket name is not DNS compatible, the bucket name cannot be part of the
hostname and must be in the path. With auto, the CLI will detect this condition and automatically
switch to path style for you. If you set the addressing style to path, you must then ensure that the
AWS Region you conﬁgured in the AWS CLI matches the Region of your bucket.
payload_signing_enabled

Speciﬁes whether to SHA256 sign sigv4 payloads. By default, this is disabled for streaming uploads
(UploadPart and PutObject) when using HTTPS. By default, this is set to false for streaming
uploads (UploadPart and PutObject), but only if a ContentMD5 is present (it is generated by
default) and the endpoint uses HTTPS.

If set to true, S3 requests receive additional content validation in the form of a SHA256 checksum
which is calculated for you and included in the request signature. If set to false, the checksum
isn't calculated. Disabling this can be useful to reduce the performance overhead created by the
checksum calculation.
use_dualstack_endpoint

Use the Amazon S3 dual IPv4 / IPv6 endpoint for all s3 and s3api commands. The default value is
false. This is mutually exclusive with the use_accelerate_endpoint setting.

If set to true, the AWS CLI directs all Amazon S3 requests to the dual IPv4 / IPv6 endpoint for the
conﬁgured Region.
use_accelerate_endpoint

Use the Amazon S3 Accelerate endpoint for all s3 and s3api commands. The default value is false.
This is mutually exclusive with the use_dualstack_endpoint setting.

If set to true, the AWS CLI directs all Amazon S3 requests to the S3 Accelerate endpoint at
s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com. To use this endpoint, you must enable your bucket to use S3
Accelerate. All requests are sent using the virtual style of bucket addressing: my-bucket.s3-
accelerate.amazonaws.com. Any ListBuckets, CreateBucket, and DeleteBucket
requests aren't sent to the S3 Accelerate endpoint as that endpoint doesn't support those
operations. This behavior can also be set if the --endpoint-url parameter is set to https://s3-
accelerate.amazonaws.com or http://s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com for any s3 or s3api
command.

The following settings apply only to commands in the s3 namespace command set.

max_bandwidth

Speciﬁes the maximum bandwidth that can be consumed for uploading and downloading data to
and from Amazon S3. The default is no limit.

This limits the maximum bandwidth that the S3 commands can use to transfer data to and from
Amazon S3. This value applies to only uploads and downloads; it doesn't apply to copies or deletes.
The value is expressed as bytes per second. The value can be specified as:
• An integer. For example, 1048576 sets the maximum bandwidth usage to 1 megabyte per second.
• An integer followed by a rate suffix. You can specify rate suffixes using: KB/s, MB/s, or GB/s. For
example, 300KB/s, 10MB/s.

In general, we recommend that you ﬁrst try to lower bandwidth consumption by lowering
max_concurrent_requests. If that doesn't adequately limit bandwidth consumption to the
desired rate, you can use the max_bandwidth setting to further limit bandwidth consumption. This

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is because max_concurrent_requests controls how many threads are currently running. If you
instead ﬁrst lower max_bandwidth but leave a high max_concurrent_requests setting, it can
result in threads having to wait unnecessarily. This can lead to excess resource consumption and
connection timeouts.
max_concurrent_requests

Speciﬁes the maximum number of concurrent requests. The default value is 10.

The aws s3 transfer commands are multithreaded. At any given time, multiple Amazon S3 requests
can be running. For example, when you use the command aws s3 cp localdir s3://bucket/
--recursive to upload files to an S3 bucket, the AWS CLI can upload the files localdir/file1,
localdir/file2, and localdir/file3 in parallel. The setting max_concurrent_requests
specifies the maximum number of transfer operations that can run at the same time.

You might need to change this value for a few reasons:

• Decreasing this value – On some environments, the default of 10 concurrent requests can
overwhelm a system. This can cause connection timeouts or slow the responsiveness of the
system. Lowering this value makes the S3 transfer commands less resource intensive. The tradeoﬀ
is that S3 transfers can take longer to complete. Lowering this value might be necessary if you use
a tool to limit bandwidth.
• Increasing this value – In some scenarios, you might want the S3 transfers to complete as quickly
as possible, using as much network bandwidth as necessary. In this scenario, the default number
of concurrent requests might not be suﬃcient to use all of the available network bandwidth.
Increasing this value can improve the time it takes to complete an S3 transfer.
max_queue_size

Speciﬁes the maximum number of tasks in the task queue. The default value is 1000.

The AWS CLI internally uses a model where it queues up Amazon S3 tasks that are then executed by
consumers whose numbers are limited by max_concurrent_requests. A task generally maps to
a single S3 operation. For example, a task could be a PutObjectTask, or a GetObjectTask, or an
UploadPartTask. The rate at which tasks are added to the queue can be much faster than the rate
at which consumers ﬁnish the tasks. To avoid unbounded growth, the task queue size is capped to a
speciﬁc size. This setting changes the value of that maximum number.

You generally don't need to change this setting. This setting also corresponds to the number of
tasks that the CLI is aware of that need to be run. This means that by default the CLI can only see
1000 tasks ahead. Increasing this value means that the CLI can more quickly know the total number
of tasks needed, assuming that the queuing rate is quicker than the rate of task completion. The
tradeoﬀ is that a larger max_queue_size requires more memory.
multipart_chunksize

Speciﬁes the chunk size that the AWS CLI uses for multipart transfers of individual ﬁles. The default
value is 8 MB, with a minimum of 5 MB.

When a file transfer exceeds the multipart_threshold, the CLI divides the file into chunks of this
size. This value can be specified using the same syntax as multipart_threshold, either as the
number of bytes as an integer, or by using a size and a suffix.
multipart_threshold

Speciﬁes the size threshold the AWS CLI uses for multipart transfers of individual ﬁles. The default
value is 8 MB.

When uploading, downloading, or copying a file, the S3 commands switch to multipart operations if
the file exceeds this size. You can specify this value in one of two ways:
• The file size in bytes. For example, 1048576.

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Named proﬁles

• The ﬁle size with a size suﬃx. You can use KB, MB, GB, or TB. For example: 10MB, 1GB.
Note
S3 can impose constraints on valid values that can be used for multipart operations. For
more information, see the S3 Multipart Upload documentation in the Amazon Simple
Storage Service Developer Guide.

These settings are all set under a top-level s3 key in the config ﬁle, as shown in the following example
for the development proﬁle.

[profile development]
s3 =
max_concurrent_requests = 20
max_queue_size = 10000
multipart_threshold = 64MB
multipart_chunksize = 16MB
max_bandwidth = 50MB/s
use_accelerate_endpoint = true
addressing_style = path

Named profiles
A named profile is a collection of settings and credentials that you can apply to a AWS CLI command.
When you specify a profile to run a command, the settings and credentials are used to run that
command. You can specify one profile that is the "default", and is used when no profile is explicitly
referenced. Other profiles have names that you can specify as a parameter on the command
line for individual commands. Alternatively, you can specify a profile in an environment variable
(AWS_PROFILE) (p. 68) which essentially overrides the default profile for commands that run in that
session.

The AWS CLI supports using any of multiple named profiles that are stored in the config and
credentials files. You can configure additional profiles by using aws configure with the --profile
option, or by adding entries to the config and credentials files.

The following example shows a credentials file with two profiles. The first [default] is used when
you run a CLI command with no profile. The second is used when you run a CLI command with the --
profile user1 parameter.

~/.aws/credentials (Linux & Mac) or %USERPROFILE%\.aws\credentials (Windows)

[default]
aws_access_key_id=AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
aws_secret_access_key=wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY

[user1]
aws_access_key_id=AKIAI44QH8DHBEXAMPLE
aws_secret_access_key=je7MtGbClwBF/2Zp9Utk/h3yCo8nvbEXAMPLEKEY

Each profile can specify different credentials—perhaps from different IAM users—and can also specify
different AWS Regions and output formats.

~/.aws/config (Linux & Mac) or %USERPROFILE%\.aws\config (Windows)

[default]
region=us-west-2
output=json

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Using proﬁles with the AWS CLI

[profile user1]
region=us-east-1
output=text

Important
The credentials file uses a different naming format than the CLI config file for named
profiles. Include the prefix word "profile" only when configuring a named profile in the
config file. Do not use the word profile when creating an entry in the credentials file.

Using proﬁles with the AWS CLI

To use a named profile, add the --profile profile-name option to your command. The following
example lists all of your Amazon EC2 instances using the credentials and settings defined in the user1
profile from the previous example files.

$ aws ec2 describe-instances --profile user1

To use a named proﬁle for multiple commands, you can avoid specifying the proﬁle in every command
by setting the AWS_PROFILE environment variable at the command line.

Linux or macOS

$ export AWS_PROFILE=user1

Windows

C:\> setx AWS_PROFILE user1

Using set to set an environment variable changes the value used until the end of the current command
prompt session, or until you set the variable to a diﬀerent value.

Using setx to set an environment variable changes the value in all command shells that you create after
running the command. It does not aﬀect any command shell that is already running at the time you run
the command. Close and restart the command shell to see the eﬀects of the change.

Setting the environment variable changes the default profile until the end of your shell session, or until
you set the variable to a different value. You can make environment variables persistent across future
sessions by putting them in your shell's startup script. For more information, see Environment variables
to configure the AWS CLI (p. 68).
Note
If you specify a profile with --profile on an individual command, that overrides the setting
specified in the environment variable for only that command.

Conﬁguring the AWS CLI to use AWS Single Sign-

On
This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you run
AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating, and
uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

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Conﬁguring a named proﬁle to use AWS SSO

If your organization uses AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO), your users can sign in to Active Directory, a
built-in AWS SSO directory, or another iDP connected to AWS SSO and get mapped to an AWS Identity
and Access Management (IAM) role that enables you to run AWS CLI commands. Regardless of which iDP
you use, AWS SSO abstracts those distinctions away, and they all work with the AWS CLI as described
below. For example, you can connect Microsoft Azure AD as described in the blog article The Next
Evolution in AWS Single Sign-On

For more information about AWS SSO, see the AWS Single Sign-On User Guide.

This topic describes how to conﬁgure the AWS CLI to authenticate the user with AWS SSO to get short-
term credentials to run AWS CLI commands. It includes the following sections:

• Configuring a named profile to use AWS SSO (p. 63) - How to create and configure profiles that
use AWS SSO for authentication and mapping to an IAM role for AWS permissions.
• Using an AWS SSO enabled named profile (p. 66) - how to login to AWS SSO from the CLI and use
the provided AWS temporary credentials to run AWS CLI commands.

Conﬁguring a named proﬁle to use AWS SSO

You can configure one or more of your AWS CLI named profiles (p. 61) to use a role from AWS SSO
You can create and configure multiple profiles and configure each one to use a a different AWS SSO user
portal or SSO-defined role.

You can conﬁgure the proﬁle in the following ways:

• Automatically (p. 63), using the command aws configure sso

• Manually (p. 65), by editing the .aws/config file that stores the named profiles.

Automatic conﬁguration
You can add an AWS SSO enabled proﬁle to your AWS CLI by running the following command, providing
your AWS SSO start URL and the AWS Region that hosts the AWS SSO directory.

$ aws configure sso

SSO start URL [None]: [None]: https://my-sso-portal.awsapps.com/start
SSO region [None]:us-east-1

The AWS CLI attempts to open your default browser and begin the login process for your AWS SSO
account.

SSO authorization page has automatically been opened in your default browser.
Follow the instructions in the browser to complete this authorization request.

If the AWS CLI cannot open the browser, the following message appears with instructions on how to
manually start the login process.

Using a browser, open the following URL:

https://my-sso-portal.awsapps.com/verify

and enter the following code:

QCFK-N451

AWS SSO uses the code to associate the AWS SSO session with your current AWS CLI session. The AWS
SSO browser page prompts you to sign in with your AWS SSO account credentials. This enables the AWS

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CLI (through the permissions associated with your AWS SSO account) to retrieve and display the AWS
accounts and roles that you are authorized to use with AWS SSO.

Next, the AWS CLI displays the AWS accounts available for you to use. If you are authorized to use only
one account, the AWS CLI selects that account for you automatically and skips the prompt. The AWS
accounts that are available for you to use are determined by your user conﬁguration in AWS SSO.

There are 2 AWS accounts available to you.

> DeveloperAccount, [email protected] (123456789011)
ProductionAccount, [email protected] (123456789022)

Use the arrow keys to select the account you want to use with this proﬁle. The ">" character on the left
points to the current choice. Press ENTER to make your selection.

Next, the AWS CLI conﬁrms your account choice, and displays the IAM roles that are available to you in
the selected account. If the selected account lists only one role, the AWS CLI selects that role for you
automatically and skips the prompt. The roles that are available for you to use are determined by your
user conﬁguration in AWS SSO.

Using the account ID 123456789011

There are 2 roles available to you.
> ReadOnly
FullAccess

As before, use the arrow keys to select the IAM role you want to use with this proﬁle. The ">" character
on the left points to the current choice. Press <ENTER> to make your selection.

The AWS CLI conﬁrms your role selection.

Using the role name "ReadOnly"

Now you can finish the configuration of your profile, by specifying the default output format (p. 55),
the default AWS Region (p. 56) to send commands to, and providing a name for the profile (p. 47)
so you can reference this profile from among all those defined on the local computer. In the following
example, the user enters a default Region, default output format, and the name of the profile. You can
alternatively press <ENTER> to select any default values that are shown between the square brackets.
The suggested profile name is the account ID number followed by an underscore followed by the role
name.

CLI default client Region [None]: us-west-2<ENTER>

CLI default output format [None]: json<ENTER>
CLI profile name [123456789011_ReadOnly]: my-dev-profile<ENTER>

Note
If you specify default as the profile name, this profile becomes the one used whenever you run
an AWS CLI command and do not specify a profile name.

A final message describes the completed profile configuration.

To use this profile, specify the profile name using --profile, as shown:

aws s3 ls --profile my-dev-profile

The previous example entries would result in a named proﬁle in ~/.aws/config that looks like the
following example.

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[profile my-dev-profile]
sso_start_url = https://my-sso-portal.awsapps.com/start
sso_region = us-east-1
sso_account_id = 123456789011
sso_role_name = readOnly
region = us-west-2
output = json

At this point, you have a profile that you can use to request temporary credentials. You must use the
aws sso login command to actually request and retrieve the temporary credentials needed to run
commands. For instructions, see Using an AWS SSO enabled named profile (p. 66).
Note
You can also run an AWS CLI command using the specified profile. If you are not currently
logged in to the AWS SSO portal, it starts the login process for you automatically, just as if you
had manually ran the command aws sso login command.

Manual configuration
To manually add AWS SSO support to a named profile, you must add the following keys and values to
the profile definition in the file ~/.aws/config (Linux or macOS) or %USERPROFILE%/.aws/config
(Windows).

sso_start_url

The URL that points to the organization's AWS SSO user portal.

sso_start_url = https://my-sso-portal.awsapps.com/start

sso_region

The AWS Region that contains the AWS SSO portal host. This is separate from, and can be a diﬀerent
region than the default CLI region parameter.

sso_region = us-west-2

sso_account_id

The AWS account ID that contains the IAM role that you want to use with this proﬁle.

sso_account_id = 123456789011

sso_role_name

The name of the IAM role that deﬁnes the user's permissions when using this proﬁle.

sso_role_name = ReadAccess

The presence of these keys identify this proﬁle as one that uses AWS SSO to authenticate the user.

You can also include any other keys and values that are valid in the .aws/config ﬁle, such as region,
output, or s3. However, you can't include any credential related values, such as role_arn (p. 56) or
aws_secret_access_key (p. 52). If you do, the AWS CLI produces an error.

So a typical AWS SSO proﬁle in .aws/config might look similar to the following example.

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At this point, you have a profile that you can use to request temporary credentials. However, you can't
yet run an AWS CLI service command. You must first use the aws sso login command to actually
request and retrieve the temporary credentials needed to run commands. For instructions, see the next
section, Using an AWS SSO enabled named profile (p. 66).

Using an AWS SSO enabled named proﬁle

This section describes how to use the AWS SSO proﬁle you created in the previous section.

Signing in and getting temporary credentials

After you conﬁgure a named proﬁle automatically or manually, you can invoke it to request temporary
credentials from AWS. Before you can run an AWS CLI service command, you must retrieve and cache a
set of temporary credentials. To get these temporary credentials, run the following command.

$ aws sso login --profile my-dev-profile

The AWS CLI opens your default browser and veriﬁes your AWS SSO log in.

SSO authorization page has automatically been opened in your default browser.
Follow the instructions in the browser to complete this authorization request.
Successully logged into Start URL: https://my-sso-portal.awsapps.com/start

If you are not currently signed in to your AWS SSO account, you must provide your AWS SSO user name
and password.

If the AWS CLI can't open your browser, it prompts you to open it yourself and enter the speciﬁed code.

$ aws sso login --profile my-dev-profile

Using a browser, open the following URL:

https://my-sso-portal.awsapps.com/verify

and enter the following code:

QCFK-N451

The AWS CLI opens your default browser (or you manually open the browser of your choice) to the
speciﬁed page, and enter the provided code. The webpage then prompts you for your AWS SSO
credentials.

Your AWS SSO session credentials are cached and include an expiration timestamp. When the credentials
expire, the AWS CLI requests you to sign in to AWS SSO again.

If your AWS SSO credentials are valid, the AWS CLI uses them to securely retrieve AWS temporary
credentials for the IAM role speciﬁed in the proﬁle.

Welcome, you have successfully signed-in to the AWS-CLI.

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Running a command with your AWS SSO enabled proﬁle

You can use these temporary credentials to invoke an AWS CLI command with the associated named
proﬁle. The following example shows that the command was run under an assumed role that is part of
the speciﬁed account.

$ aws sts get-caller-identity --profile my-dev-profile

{
"UserId": "AROA12345678901234567:[email protected]",
"Account": "123456789011",
"Arn": "arn:aws:sts::123456789011:assumed-role/AWSPeregrine_readOnly_12321abc454d123/
[email protected]"
}

As long as you signed in to AWS SSO and those cached credentials are not expired, the AWS CLI
automatically renews expired AWS temporary credentials when needed. However, if your AWS SSO
credentials expire, you must explicitly renew them by logging in to your AWS SSO account again.

$ aws s3 ls --profile my-sso-profile

Your short-term credentials have expired. Please sign-in to renew your credentials
SSO authorization page has automatically been opened in your default browser.
Follow the instructions in the browser to complete this authorization request.

You can create multiple AWS SSO enabled named profiles that each point to a different AWS account
or role. You can also use the aws sso login command on more than one profile at a time. If any of them
share the same AWS SSO user account, you must log in to that AWS SSO user account only once and
then they all share a single set of AWS SSO cached credentials.

# The following command retrieves temporary credentials for the AWS account and role
# specified in one named profile. If you are not yet signed in to AWS SSO or your
# cached credentials have expired, it opens your browser and prompts you for your
# AWS SSO user name and password. It then retrieves AWS temporary credentials for
# the IAM role associated with this profile.
$ aws sso login --profile my-first-sso-profile

# The next command retrieves a different set of temporary credentials for the AWS
# account and role specified in the second named profile. It does not overwrite or
# in any way compromise the first profile's credentials. If this profile specifies the
# same AWS SSO portal, then it uses the SSO credentials that you retrieved in the
# previous command. The AWS CLI then retrieves AWS temporary credentials for the
# IAM role associated with the second profile. You don't have to sign in to
# AWS SSO again.
$ aws sso login --profile my-second-sso-profile

# The following command lists the Amazon EC2 instances accessible to the role
# identified in the first profile.
$ aws ec2 describe-instances --profile my-first-sso-profile

# The following command lists the Amazon EC2 instances accessible to the role
# identified in the second profile.
$ aws ec2 describe-instances --profile my-second-sso-profile

Signing out of your AWS SSO sessions

When you are done using your AWS SSO enabled proﬁles, you can choose to do nothing and let the
AWS temporary credentials and your AWS SSO credentials expire. However, you can also choose to
run the following command to immediately delete all cached credentials in the SSO credential cache
folder and all AWS temporary credentials that were based on the AWS SSO credentials. This makes those
credentials unavailable to be used for any future command.

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Environment Variables

$ aws sso logout

Successfully signed out of all SSO profiles.

If you later want to run commands with one of your AWS SSO enabled proﬁles, you must again run the
aws sso login command (see the previous section) and specify the proﬁle to use.

Environment variables to conﬁgure the AWS CLI

Environment variables provide another way to specify configuration options and credentials, and can be
useful for scripting or temporarily setting a named profile as the default.
Note
You can't specify AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO) authentication by using environment variables.
Instead, you must use a named profile in the shared configuration file .aws/config. For more
information, see Configuring the AWS CLI to use AWS Single Sign-On (p. 62).

Precedence of options

• If you specify an option by using one of the environment variables described in this topic, it overrides
any value loaded from a profile in the configuration file.
• If you specify an option by using a parameter on the CLI command line, it overrides any value from
either the corresponding environment variable or a profile in the configuration file.

For more information about precedence and how the AWS CLI determines which credentials to use, see
Conﬁguration settings and precedence (p. 48).

Topics
• How to set environment variables (p. 68)
• AWS CLI supported environment variables (p. 69)

How to set environment variables

The following examples show how you can conﬁgure environment variables for the default user.

Linux or macOS

$ export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
$ export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY
$ export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-west-2

Setting the environment variable changes the value used until the end of your shell session, or until
you set the variable to a diﬀerent value. You can make the variables persistent across future sessions
by setting them in your shell's startup script.
Windows Command Prompt

C:\> setx AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE

C:\> setx AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY
C:\> setx AWS_DEFAULT_REGION us-west-2

Using set to set an environment variable changes the value used until the end of the current
command prompt session, or until you set the variable to a diﬀerent value. Using setx to set an

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environment variable changes the value used in both the current command prompt session and
all command prompt sessions that you create after running the command. It does not aﬀect other
command shells that are already running at the time you run the command.
PowerShell

PS C:\> $Env:AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE"
PS C:\> $Env:AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY"
PS C:\> $Env:AWS_DEFAULT_REGION="us-west-2"

If you set an environment variable at the PowerShell prompt as shown in the previous examples,
it saves the value for only the duration of the current session. To make the environment variable
setting persistent across all PowerShell and Command Prompt sessions, store it by using the System
application in Control Panel. Alternatively, you can set the variable for all future PowerShell sessions
by adding it to your PowerShell proﬁle. See the PowerShell documentation for more information
about storing environment variables or persisting them across sessions.

AWS CLI supported environment variables

The AWS CLI supports the following environment variables.

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID

Speciﬁes an AWS access key associated with an IAM user or role.

If deﬁned, this environment variable overrides the value for the proﬁle setting
aws_access_key_id. You can't specify the access key ID by using a command line option.
AWS_CA_BUNDLE

Specifies the path to a certificate bundle to use for HTTPS certificate validation.

If deﬁned, this environment variable overrides the value for the proﬁle setting ca_bundle. You can
override this environment variable by using the --ca-bundle command line parameter.
AWS_CLI_AUTO_PROMPT
This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you
run AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating,
and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

aws_cli_auto_prompt=on

• on-partial uses partial auto-prompt mode. If a command is incomplete or cannot be run due
to client-side validation errors, auto-prompt is used. This mode is particular useful if you have
pre-existing scripts, runbooks, or you only want to be auto-prompted for commands you are
unfamiliar with rather than prompted on every command.

aws_cli_auto_prompt=on-partial

If deﬁned, this environment variable overrides the value for the cli_auto_prompt (p. 52)
proﬁle setting. You can override this environment variable by using the --cli-auto-
prompt (p. 72) and --no-cli-auto-prompt (p. 73) command line parameters.

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For information on the AWS CLI version 2 auto-prompt feature, see Having the AWS CLI prompt you
for commands (p. 114).
AWS_CLI_FILE_ENCODING

AWS CLI version 2 only. Specifies the encoding used for text files. By default encoding matches
your locale. To set encoding different from the locale, use the aws_cli_file_encoding
environment variable. For example, if you use Windows with default encoding CP1252, setting
aws_cli_file_encoding=UTF-8 sets the CLI to open text files using UTF-8.
AWS_CONFIG_FILE

Specifies the location of the file that the AWS CLI uses to store configuration profiles. The default
path is ~/.aws/config.

You can't specify this value in a named proﬁle setting or by using a command line parameter.
AWS_DEFAULT_OUTPUT (p. 47)

Speciﬁes the output format (p. 117) to use.

If deﬁned, this environment variable overrides the value for the proﬁle setting output. You can
override this environment variable by using the --output command line parameter.
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION (p. 47)

Speciﬁes the AWS Region to send the request to.

If deﬁned, this environment variable overrides the value for the proﬁle setting region. You can
override this environment variable by using the --region command line parameter.
AWS_EC2_METADATA_DISABLED

Disables the use of the Amazon EC2 instance metadata service (IMDS).

If set to false, user credentials or conﬁguration (like the region) are not requested from IMDS.
AWS_MAX_ATTEMPTS (p. 55)

Speciﬁes a value of maximum retry attempts the AWS CLI retry handler uses, where the initial
call counts toward the value that you provide. For more information on retries, see AWS CLI
retries (p. 78).

If deﬁned, this environment variable overrides the value for the proﬁles setting max_attempts.
AWS_PAGER (p. 54)

Speciﬁes the pager program used for output. By default, AWS CLI version 2 returns all output
through your operating system’s default pager program.

To disable all use of an external paging program, set the variable to an empty string.

If deﬁned, this environment variable overrides the value for the proﬁle setting cli_pager.
AWS_PROFILE (p. 61)

Specifies the name of the CLI profile with the credentials and options to use. This can be the name
of a profile stored in a credentials or config file, or the value default to use the default
profile.

If defined, this environment variable overrides the behavior of using the profile named [default]
in the configuration file. You can override this environment variable by using the --profile
command line parameter.
AWS_RETRY_MODE (p. 56)

Speciﬁes which retry mode AWS CLI uses. There are three retry modes available: legacy (default),
standard, and adaptive. For more information on retries, see AWS CLI retries (p. 78).

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If deﬁned, this environment variable overrides the value for the proﬁles setting retry_mode.
AWS_ROLE_SESSION_NAME (p. 89)

Speciﬁes a name to associate with the role session. This value appears in CloudTrail logs for
commands performed by the user of this proﬁle.

If deﬁned, this environment variable overrides the value for the proﬁle setting
role_session_name. You can't specify a role session name as a command line parameter.
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

Speciﬁes the secret key associated with the access key. This is essentially the "password" for the
access key.

If deﬁned, this environment variable overrides the value for the proﬁle setting
aws_secret_access_key. You can't specify the secret access key ID as a command line option.
AWS_SESSION_TOKEN

Speciﬁes the session token value that is required if you are using temporary security credentials that
you retrieved directly from AWS STS operations. For more information, see the Output section of the
assume-role command in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

If deﬁned, this environment variable overrides the value for the proﬁle setting
aws_session_token. You can't specify the session token as a command line option.
AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE

Speciﬁes the location of the ﬁle that the AWS CLI uses to store access keys. The default path is
~/.aws/credentials.

You can't specify this value in a named proﬁle setting or by using a command line parameter.
AWS_STS_REGIONAL_ENDPOINTS (p. 57)

Speciﬁes how the AWS CLI determines the AWS service endpoint that the AWS CLI client uses to talk
to the AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS).
• The default value for AWS CLI version 1 is legacy.
• The default value for AWS CLI version 2 is regional.

You can specify one of two values:

Command line options

You can use the following command line options to override the default configuration settings, any
corresponding profile setting, or environment variable setting for that single command. You can't use
command line options to directly specify credentials, although you can specify which profile to use.
Each option that takes an argument requires a space or equals sign (=) separating the argument from
the option name. If the argument value is a string that contains a space, you must use quotation marks
around the argument.

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Command line options

The argument types (for example, string, Boolean) for each command line option are described in detail
in Specifying parameter values for the AWS CLI (p. 98).

--ca-bundle <string>

Specifies the certificate authority (CA) certificate bundle to use when verifying SSL certificates.
--cli-auto-prompt
This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you
run AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating,
and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

Enables auto-prompt mode for a single command. As the following examples show, you can specify
it at any point.

$ aws --cli-auto-prompt
$ aws dynamodb --cli-auto-prompt
$ aws dynamodb describe-table --cli-auto-prompt

This option overrides the aws_cli_auto_prompt (p. 69) environment variable and the
cli_auto_prompt (p. 52) proﬁle setting.

For information on the AWS CLI version 2 auto-prompt feature, see Having the AWS CLI prompt you
for commands (p. 114).
--cli-connect-timeout <integer>

Speciﬁes the maximum socket connect time in seconds. If the value is set to zero (0), the socket
connect waits indeﬁnitely (is blocking) and doesn't timeout.
--cli-read-timeout <integer>

Speciﬁes the maximum socket read time in seconds. If the value is set to zero (0) the socket read
waits indeﬁnitely (is blocking) and doesn't timeout.
--color <string>

Speciﬁes support for color output. Valid values are on, off, and auto. The default value is auto.
--debug

A Boolean switch that enables debug logging. The AWS CLI by default provides cleaned
up information regarding any successes or failures regarding command outcomes in the
command output. The --debug option provides the full Python logs. This includes additional
stderr diagnostic information about the operation of the command that can be useful when
troubleshooting why a command provides unexpected results. To easily view debug logs, we suggest
sending the logs to a ﬁle to more easily search the information. You can do this by using one of the
following.

To send only the stderr diagnostic information, append 2> debug.txt where debug.txt is the
name you want to use for your debug ﬁle:

$ aws servicename commandname options --debug 2> debug.txt

To send both the output and stderr diagnostic information, append &> debug.txt where
debug.txt is the name you want to use for your debug ﬁle:

$ aws servicename commandname options --debug &> debug.txt

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Command line options

--endpoint-url <string>

Specifies the URL to send the request to. For most commands, the AWS CLI automatically
determines the URL based on the selected service and the specified AWS Region. However, some
commands require that you specify an account-specific URL. You can also configure some AWS
services to host an endpoint directly within your private VPC, which might then need to be specified.

For a list of the standard service endpoints available in each Region, see AWS Regions and Endpoints
in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.
--no-cli-auto-prompt
This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you
run AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating,
and uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

Disables auto-prompt mode for a single command.

$ aws dynamodb describe-table --table-name Table1 --no-cli-auto-prompt

This option overrides the aws_cli_auto_prompt (p. 69) environment variable and the
cli_auto_prompt (p. 52) proﬁle setting.

For information on the AWS CLI version 2 auto-prompt feature, see Having the AWS CLI prompt you
for commands (p. 114).
--no-cli-pager

A Boolean switch that disables using a pager for the output of the command.
--no-paginate

A Boolean switch that disables the multiple calls the automatically AWS CLI makes to receive all
command results that creates pagination of the output. This means only the ﬁrst page of your
output is displayed.
--no-sign-request

A Boolean switch that disables signing the HTTP requests to the AWS service endpoint. This prevents
credentials from being loaded.
--output <string>

Speciﬁes the output format to use for this command. You can specify any of the following values:
• json (p. 118) – The output is formatted as a JSON string.
• yaml (p. 119) – The output is formatted as a YAML string. (Available in the AWS CLI version 2
only.)
• yaml-stream (p. 119) – The output is streamed and formatted as a YAML string. Streaming
allows for faster handling of large data types. (Available in the AWS CLI version 2 only.)
• text (p. 120) – The output is formatted as multiple lines of tab-separated string values. This can
be useful to pass the output to a text processor, like grep, sed, or awk.
• table (p. 123) – The output is formatted as a table using the characters +|- to form the cell
borders. It typically presents the information in a "human-friendly" format that is much easier to
read than the others, but not as programmatically useful.
--proﬁle <string>

Specifies the named profile (p. 61) to use for this command. To set up additional named profiles,
you can use the aws configure command with the --profile option.

$ aws configure --profile <profilename>

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Command completion

--query <string>

Speciﬁes a JMESPath query to use in ﬁltering the response data. For more information, see Filtering
AWS CLI output (p. 128).
--region <string>

Speciﬁes which AWS Region to send this command's AWS request to. For a list of all of the Regions
that you can specify, see AWS Regions and Endpoints in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.
--version

A Boolean switch that displays the current version of the AWS CLI program that is running.

Common uses for command line options include checking your resources in multiple AWS Regions, and
changing the output format for legibility or ease of use when scripting. For example, if you're not sure
which Region your instance is running in, you can run the describe-instances command against each
Region until you ﬁnd it, as follows.

$ aws ec2 describe-instances --output table --region us-east-1

-------------------
|DescribeInstances|
+-----------------+
$ aws ec2 describe-instances --output table --region us-west-1
-------------------
|DescribeInstances|
+-----------------+
$ aws ec2 describe-instances --output table --region us-west-2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| DescribeInstances |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|| Reservations ||
|+-------------------------------------+------------------------------------+|
|| OwnerId | 012345678901 ||
|| ReservationId | r-abcdefgh ||
|+-------------------------------------+------------------------------------+|
||| Instances |||
||+------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+||
||| AmiLaunchIndex | 0 |||
||| Architecture | x86_64 |||
...

The argument types (for example, string, Boolean) for each command line option are described in detail
in Specifying parameter values for the AWS CLI (p. 98).

Command completion
The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) includes a bash-compatible command-completion feature
that enables you to use the Tab key to complete a partially entered command. On most systems you
need to conﬁgure this manually.

For information on the AWS CLI version 2 auto-prompt feature instead, see Having the AWS CLI prompt
you for commands (p. 114).

Topics
• How it works (p. 75)
• Conﬁguring command completion on Linux or macOS (p. 75)
• Conﬁguring command completion on Windows (p. 77)

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How it works

• Verify command completion (p. 78)

How it works
When you partially enter a command, parameter, or option, the command-completion feature either
automatically completes your command or displays a suggested list of commands. To prompt command
completion, you partially enter in a command and press Tab.

The following examples show diﬀerent ways that you can use command completion:

• Partially enter a command and press Tab to display a suggested list of commands.

$ aws dynamodb dTAB

delete-backup describe-global-table
delete-item describe-global-table-settings
delete-table describe-limits
describe-backup describe-table
describe-continuous-backups describe-table-replica-auto-scaling
describe-contributor-insights describe-time-to-live
describe-endpoints

• Partially enter a parameter and press Tab to display a suggested list of parameters.

$ aws dynamodb delete-table --TAB

--ca-bundle --endpoint-url --profile
--cli-connect-timeout --generate-cli-skeleton --query
--cli-input-json --no-paginate --region
--cli-read-timeout --no-sign-request --table-name
--color --no-verify-ssl --version
--debug --output

• Enter a parameter and press Tab to display a suggested list of resource values. This feature is available
only in the AWS CLI version 2.

$ aws dynamodb db delete-table --table-name TAB

Table 1 Table 2 Table 3

Conﬁguring command completion on Linux or macOS

To conﬁgure command completion on Linux or macOS, you must know the name of the shell you're
using and the location of the aws_completer script.
Note
Command completion is automatically conﬁgured and enabled by default on Amazon EC2
instances that run Amazon Linux.

Topics
• Conﬁrm the completer's folder is in your path (p. 75)
• Enable command completion (p. 77)

Conﬁrm the completer's folder is in your path

For the AWS completer to work successfully, the aws_completer needs to be in your shell's path. The
which command can check if the completer is in your path.

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$ which aws_completer
/usr/local/bin/aws_completer

If the which command can't ﬁnd the completer, then use the following steps to add the completer's
folder to your path.

Step 1: Locate the AWS completer

The location of the AWS completer can vary depending on the installation method used.

• Package Manager - Programs such as pip, yum, brew, and apt-get typically install the AWS
completer (or a symlink to it) to a standard path location.
• If you used pip without the --user parameter, the default path is /usr/local/bin/
aws_completer.
• If you used pip with the --user parameter the default path is /home/username/.local/bin/
aws_completer.
• Bundled Installer - If you used the bundled installer, the default path is /usr/local/bin/
aws_completer.

If all else fails, you can use the find command to search your ﬁle system for the AWS completer.

$ find / -name aws_completer

/usr/local/bin/aws_completer

Step 2: Identify your shell

To identify which shell you're using, you can use one of the following commands.

• echo $SHELL – Displays the shell's program ﬁle name. This usually matches the name of the in-use
shell, unless you launched a diﬀerent shell after logging in.

$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash

• ps – Displays the processes running for the current user. One of them is the shell.

$ ps
PID TTY TIME CMD
2148 pts/1 00:00:00 bash
8756 pts/1 00:00:00 ps

Step 3: Add the completer to your path

1. Find your shell's proﬁle script in your user folder.

$ ls -a ~/
. .. .bash_logout .bash_profile .bashrc Desktop Documents Downloads

• Bash– .bash_profile, .profile, or .bash_login

• Zsh– .zshrc
• Tcsh– .tcshrc, .cshrc, or .login
2. Add an export command at the end of your proﬁle script that's similar to the following example.
Replace /usr/local/aws/bin with the folder that you discovered in the previous section.

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export PATH=/usr/local/aws/bin:$PATH

3. Reload the profile into the current session to put those changes into effect. Replace .bash_profile
with the name of the shell script you discovered in the first section.

$ source ~/.bash_profile

Enable command completion

After confirming the completer is in your path, enable command completion by running the appropriate
command for the shell that you're using. You can add the command to your shell's profile to run it each
time you open a new shell. In each command, replace the /usr/local/aws/bin path with the one
found on your system in Confirm the completer's folder is in your path (p. 75).

• bash – Use the built-in command complete.

$ complete -C '/usr/local/aws/bin/aws_completer' aws

Add the command to ~/.bashrc to run it each time you open a new shell. Your ~/.bash_profile
should source ~/.bashrc to ensure that the command is also run in login shells.
• zsh – To run command completion, you need to run bashcompinit by adding the following autoload
line at the end of your ~/.zshrc proﬁle script.

$ autoload bashcompinit && bashcompinit

$ autoload -Uz compinit && compinit
$ compinit

To enable command completion, use the built-in command complete.

$ complete -C '/usr/local/aws/bin/aws_completer' aws

Add the command to ~/.zshrc to run it each time you open a new shell.
• tcsh – Complete for tcsh takes a word type and pattern to deﬁne the completion behavior.

> complete aws 'p/*/`aws_completer`/'

Add the command to ~/.tschrc to run it each time you open a new shell.

After you've enabled command completion, Verify command completion (p. 78) is working.

Conﬁguring command completion on Windows

To enable command completion for PowerShell on Windows, complete the following steps in
PowerShell.

1. Open your $PROFILE with the following command.

PS C:\> Notepad $PROFILE

If you do not have a $PROFILE, create a user proﬁle using the following command.

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PS C:\> if (!(Test-Path -Path $PROFILE ))

{ New-Item -Type File -Path $PROFILE -Force }

For more information on PowerShell profiles, see How to Use Profiles in Windows PowerShell ISE on
the Microsoft Docs website.
2. To enable command completion, add the following code block to your profile, save, and then close the
file.

Register-ArgumentCompleter -Native -CommandName aws -ScriptBlock {

param($commandName, $wordToComplete, $cursorPosition)
$env:COMP_LINE=$wordToComplete
$env:COMP_POINT=$cursorPosition
aws_completer.exe | ForEach-Object {
[System.Management.Automation.CompletionResult]::new($_, $_,
'ParameterValue', $_)
}
Remove-Item Env:\COMP_LINE
Remove-Item Env:\COMP_POINT
}

3. Verify command completion (p. 78) is working.

Verify command completion

After enabling command completion, reload your shell, enter a partial command, and press Tab to see
the available commands.

$ aws sTAB
s3 ses sqs sts swf
s3api sns storagegateway support

AWS CLI retries

This topic describes how the AWS CLI might see calls to AWS services fail due to unexpected issues.
These issues can occur on the server side or might fail due to rate limiting from the AWS service
you're attempting to call. These kinds of failures usually don’t require special handling and the call is
automatically made again, often after a brief waiting period. The AWS CLI provides many features to
assist in retrying client calls to AWS services when these kinds of errors or exceptions are experienced.

Topics
• Available retry modes (p. 78)
• Conﬁguring a retry mode (p. 80)
• Viewing logs of retry attempts (p. 81)

Available retry modes

The AWS CLI has multiple modes to choose from depending on your version:
• Legacy retry mode (p. 79)
• Standard retry mode (p. 79)
• Adaptive retry mode (p. 80)

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Available retry modes

Legacy retry mode

Legacy mode is the default mode used by the AWS CLI version 1. Legacy mode uses an older retry
handler that has limited functionality which includes:

• A default value of 4 for maximum retry attempts, making a total of 5 call attempts. This value can be
overwritten through the max_attempts conﬁguration parameter.
• Retry attempts for the following limited number of errors/exceptions:
• General socket/connection errors:
• ConnectionError
• ConnectionClosedError
• ReadTimeoutError
• EndpointConnectionError
• Service-side throttling/limit errors and exceptions:
• Throttling
• ThrottlingException
• ThrottledException
• RequestThrottledException
• ProvisionedThroughputExceededException
• Retry attempts on several HTTP status codes, including 429, 500, 502, 503, 504, and 509.
• Any retry attempt will include an exponential backoﬀ by a base factor of 2.

Standard retry mode

Standard mode is a standard set of retry rules across the AWS SDKs with more functionality than legacy.
This mode is the default for AWS CLI version 2. Standard mode was created for the AWS CLI version 2
and is backported to AWS CLI version 1. Standard mode’s functionality includes:

• A default value of 2 for maximum retry attempts, making a total of 3 call attempts. This value can be
overwritten through the max_attempts conﬁguration parameter.
• Retry attempts for the following expanded list of errors/exceptions:
• Transient errors/exceptions
• RequestTimeout
• RequestTimeoutException
• PriorRequestNotComplete
• ConnectionError
• HTTPClientError
• Service-side throttling/limit errors and exceptions:
• Throttling
• ThrottlingException
• ThrottledException
• RequestThrottledException
• TooManyRequestsException
• ProvisionedThroughputExceededException
• TransactionInProgressException
• RequestLimitExceeded
• BandwidthLimitExceeded
• LimitExceededException

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Conﬁguring a retry mode

• RequestThrottled
• SlowDown
• EC2ThrottledException

• Retry attempts on nondescriptive, transient error codes. Specifically, these HTTP status codes: 500,
502, 503, 504.
• Any retry attempt will include an exponential backoff by a base factor of 2 for a maximum backoff
time of 20 seconds.

Adaptive retry mode

Warning
Adaptive mode is an experimental mode and is subject to change, both in features and behavior.

Adaptive retry mode is an experimental retry mode that includes all the features of standard mode. In
addition to the standard mode features, adaptive mode also introduces client-side rate limiting through
the use of a token bucket and rate-limit variables that are dynamically updated with each retry attempt.
This mode oﬀers ﬂexibility in client-side retries that adapts to the error/exception state response from
an AWS service.

With each new retry attempt, adaptive mode modiﬁes the rate-limit variables based on the error,
exception, or HTTP status code presented in the response from the AWS service. These rate-limit
variables are then used to calculate a new call rate for the client. Each exception/error or non-success
HTTP response (provided in the list above) from an AWS service updates the rate-limit variables as retries
occur until success is reached, the token bucket is exhausted, or the conﬁgured maximum attempts value
is reached.

Conﬁguring a retry mode

The AWS CLI includes a variety of both retry conﬁgurations as well as conﬁguration methods to consider
when creating your client object.

Available conﬁguration methods

In the AWS CLI, users can conﬁgure retries in the following ways:

• Environment variables
• AWS CLI conﬁguration ﬁle

Users can customize the following retry options:

• Retry mode - Speciﬁes which retry mode the AWS CLI uses. As described previously, there are three
retry modes available: legacy, standard, and adaptive. The default value for AWS CLI version 1 is legacy
and for AWS CLI version 2 is standard.
• Max attempts - Speciﬁes the value of maximum retry attempts the AWS CLI retry handler uses, where
the initial call counts toward the value that you provide. The default value is 5.

Deﬁning a retry conﬁguration in your environment variables

To deﬁne your retry conﬁguration for the AWS CLI, update your operating system's environment
variables.

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Viewing logs of retry attempts

The retry environment variables are:

• AWS_RETRY_MODE
• AWS_MAX_ATTEMPTS

For more information on environment variables, see Environment variables to conﬁgure the AWS
CLI (p. 68).

Defining a retry configuration in your AWS configuration file

This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you run
AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating, and
uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

To change your retry configuration, update your global AWS configuration file. The default location for
your AWS config file is ~/.aws/config.

The following is an example of an AWS conﬁg ﬁle:

[default]
retry_mode = standard
max_attempts = 6

For more information on configuration files, see Configuration and credential file settings (p. 48).

Viewing logs of retry attempts

The AWS CLI uses Boto3's retry methodology and logging. You can use the --debug option on
any command to receive debug logs. For more information on how to use the --debug option, see
Command line options (p. 71).

If you search for "retry" in your debug logs, you'll ﬁnd the retry information you need. The client log
entries for retry attempts depend on which retry mode you’ve enabled.

Legacy mode:

Retry messages are generated by botocore.retryhandler. You’ll see one of three messages:

• No retry needed
• Retry needed, action of: <action_name>
• Reached the maximum number of retry attempts: <attempt_number>

Standard or adaptive mode:

Retry messages are generated by botocore.retries.standard. You’ll see one of three messages:

• No retrying request
• Retry needed, retrying request after delay of: <delay_value>
• Retry needed but retry quota reached, not retrying request

For the full deﬁnition ﬁle of botocore retries, see _retry.json on the botocore GitHub Repository.

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Sourcing credentials with an external process

Sourcing credentials with an external process

Warning
This topic discusses sourcing credentials from an external process. This could be a security risk
if the command to generate the credentials becomes accessible by non-approved processes
or users. We recommend that you use the supported, secure alternatives provided by the AWS
CLI and AWS to reduce the risk of compromising your credentials. Ensure that you secure the
config ﬁle and any supporting ﬁles and tools to prevent disclosure.
Ensure that your custom credential tool does not write any secret information to StdErr
because the SDKs and CLI can capture and log such information, potentially exposing it to
unauthorized users.

If you have a method to generate or look up credentials that isn't directly supported by the AWS CLI, you
can configure the CLI to use it by configuring the credential_process setting in the config file.

For example, you might include an entry similar to the following in the config ﬁle.

[profile developer]
credential_process = /opt/bin/awscreds-custom --username helen

Syntax

To create this string in a way that is compatible with any operating system, follow these rules:

• If the path or file name contains a space, surround the complete path and file name with double-
quotation marks (" "). The path and file name can consist of only the characters: A-Z a-z 0-9 - _ . space
• If a parameter name or a parameter value contains a space, surround that element with double-
quotation marks (" "). Surround only the name or value, not the pair.
• Do not include any environment variables in the strings. For example, you can't include $HOME or
%USERPROFILE%.
• Do not specify the home folder as ~. You must specify the full path.

Example for Windows

credential_process = "C:\Path\To\credentials.cmd" parameterWithoutSpaces "parameter with

spaces"

Example for Linux or macOS

credential_process = "/Users/Dave/path/to/credentials.sh" parameterWithoutSpaces "parameter

with spaces"

Expected output from the Credentials program

The AWS CLI runs the command as speciﬁed in the proﬁle and then reads data from STDOUT. The
command you specify must generate JSON output on STDOUT that matches the following syntax.

{
"Version": 1,
"AccessKeyId": "an AWS access key",
"SecretAccessKey": "your AWS secret access key",
"SessionToken": "the AWS session token for temporary credentials",
"Expiration": "ISO8601 timestamp when the credentials expire"
}

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Using credentials for Amazon EC2 instance metadata

Note
As of this writing, the Version key must be set to 1. This might increment over time as the
structure evolves.

The Expiration key is an ISO8601 formatted timestamp. If the Expiration key is not present in
the tool's output, the CLI assumes that the credentials are long-term credentials that do not refresh.
Otherwise the credentials are considered temporary credentials and are refreshed automatically by
rerunning the credential_process command before they expire.
Note
The AWS CLI does not cache external process credentials the way it does assume-role
credentials. If caching is required, you must implement it in the external process.

The external process can return a non-zero return code to indicate that an error occurred while retrieving
the credentials.

Using credentials for Amazon EC2 instance

metadata
When you run the AWS CLI from within an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance, you
can simplify providing credentials to your commands. Each Amazon EC2 instance contains metadata that
the AWS CLI can directly query for temporary credentials. When an IAM role is attached to the instance,
the AWS CLI automatically and securely retrieves the credentials from the instance metadata.

To disable this service, use the AWS_EC2_METADATA_DISABLED (p. 70) environment variable.

Prerequisites
To use Amazon EC2 credentials with the AWS CLI, you need to complete the following:

• Launch the Amazon EC2 instance and confirm the AWS CLI is already installed. If the AWS CLI is not
installed, install the AWS CLI. For more information, see Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS
CLI (p. 6).
• You understand configuration files. For more information, see Configuration and credential file
settings (p. 48).
• You understand named profiles. For more information, see Named profiles (p. 61).
• You've created an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role that has access to the resources
needed, and attached that role to the Amazon EC2 instance when you launch it. For more information,
see IAM policies for Amazon EC2 in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances and Granting
Applications That Run on Amazon EC2 Instances Access to AWS Resources in the IAM User Guide.

Conﬁguring a proﬁle for Amazon EC2 metadata

To specify that you want to use the credentials available in the hosting Amazon EC2 instance profile, use
the following syntax in the in a named profile in your configuration file. See the following steps for more
instructions.

[profile profilename]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/rolename
credential_source = Ec2InstanceMetadata
region = region

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Using an HTTP proxy

1. Create a profile in your configuration file.

[profile profilename]

2. Add your IAM arn role that has access to the resources needed.

role_arn = arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/rolename

3. Specify Ec2InstanceMetadata as your credential source.

credential_source = Ec2InstanceMetadata

4. Set your region.

region = region

Example

The following example assumes the marketingadminrole role and uses the us-west-2 region in an
Amazon EC2 instance proﬁle named marketingadmin.

[profile marketingadmin]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/marketingadminrole
credential_source = Ec2InstanceMetadata
region = us-west-2

Using an HTTP proxy

To access AWS through proxy servers, you can conﬁgure the HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY
environment variables with either the DNS domain names or IP addresses and port numbers that your
proxy servers use.
Note
The following examples show the environment variable name in all uppercase letters. However,
if you specify a variable twice—once with uppercase letters and once with lowercase letters—
the one with lowercase letters wins. We recommend that you deﬁne each variable only once to
avoid confusion and unexpected behavior.

The following examples show how you can use either the explicit IP address of your proxy or a DNS name
that resolves to the IP address of your proxy. Either can be followed by a colon and the port number to
which queries should be sent.

Linux or macOS

$ export HTTP_PROXY=http://10.15.20.25:1234
$ export HTTP_PROXY=http://proxy.example.com:1234
$ export HTTPS_PROXY=http://10.15.20.25:5678
$ export HTTPS_PROXY=http://proxy.example.com:5678

Windows

C:\> setx HTTP_PROXY http://10.15.20.25:1234

C:\> setx HTTP_PROXY http://proxy.example.com:1234
C:\> setx HTTPS_PROXY http://10.15.20.25:5678

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C:\> setx HTTPS_PROXY http://proxy.example.com:5678

Authenticating to a proxy
The AWS CLI supports HTTP Basic authentication. Specify the user name and password in the proxy URL,
as follows.

Linux or macOS

$ export HTTP_PROXY=http://username:[email protected]:1234
$ export HTTPS_PROXY=http://username:[email protected]:5678

Windows

C:\> setx HTTP_PROXY http://username:[email protected]:1234

C:\> setx HTTPS_PROXY http://username:[email protected]:5678

Note
The AWS CLI doesn't support NTLM proxies. If you use an NTLM or Kerberos protocol proxy, you
might be able to connect through an authentication proxy like Cntlm.

Using a proxy on Amazon EC2 instances

If you conﬁgure a proxy on an Amazon EC2 instance launched with an attached IAM role, ensure that you
exempt the address used to access the instance metadata. To do this, set the NO_PROXY environment
variable to the IP address of the instance metadata service, 169.254.169.254. This address does not vary.

Linux or macOS

$ export NO_PROXY=169.254.169.254

Windows

C:\> setx NO_PROXY 169.254.169.254

Using an IAM role in the AWS CLI

An AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role is an authorization tool that lets an IAM user gain
additional (or diﬀerent) permissions, or get permissions to perform actions in a diﬀerent AWS account.

You can configure the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to use an IAM role by defining a profile
for the role in the ~/.aws/config file.

The following example shows a role profile named marketingadmin. If you run commands with --
profile marketingadmin (or specify it with the AWS_PROFILE environment variable (p. 68)),
the CLI uses the credentials defined in a separate profile user1 to assume the role with the Amazon
Resource Name (ARN) arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/marketingadminrole. You can run any
operations that are allowed by the permissions assigned to that role.

[profile marketingadmin]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/marketingadminrole
source_profile = user1

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You can then specify a source_profile that points to a separate named profile that contains IAM user
credentials with permission to use the role. In the previous example, the marketingadmin profile uses
the credentials in the user1 profile. When you specify that an AWS CLI command is to use the profile
marketingadmin, the CLI automatically looks up the credentials for the linked user1 profile and
uses them to request temporary credentials for the specified IAM role. The CLI uses the sts:AssumeRole
operation in the background to accomplish this. Those temporary credentials are then used to run the
requested CLI command. The specified role must have attached IAM permission policies that allow the
requested CLI command to run.

To run a CLI command from within an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance or an
Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) container, you can use an IAM role attached to the
instance profile or the container. If you specify no profile or set no environment variables, that role
is used directly. This enables you to avoid storing long-lived access keys on your instances. You can
also use those instance or container roles only to get credentials for another role. To do this, you
use credential_source (instead of source_profile) to specify how to find the credentials. The
credential_source attribute supports the following values:

• Environment – Retrieves the source credentials from environment variables.

• Ec2InstanceMetadata – Uses the IAM role attached to the Amazon EC2 instance proﬁle.
• EcsContainer – Uses the IAM role attached to the Amazon ECS container.

The following example shows the same marketingadminrole role used by referencing an Amazon EC2
instance proﬁle.

[profile marketingadmin]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/marketingadminrole
credential_source = Ec2InstanceMetadata

When you invoke a role, you have additional options that you can require, such as the use of multi-factor
authentication and an External ID (used by third-party companies to access their clients' resources). You
can also specify unique role session names that can be more easily audited in AWS CloudTrail logs.

Sections
• Conﬁguring and using a role (p. 86)
• Using multi-factor authentication (p. 88)
• Cross-account roles and external ID (p. 89)
• Specifying a role session name for easier auditing (p. 89)
• Assume role with web identity (p. 90)
• Clearing cached credentials (p. 90)

Conﬁguring and using a role

When you run commands using a profile that specifies an IAM role, the AWS CLI uses the source profile's
credentials to call AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS) and request temporary credentials for the
specified role. The user in the source profile must have permission to call sts:assume-role for the role
in the specified profile. The role must have a trust relationship that allows the user in the source profile
to use the role. The process of retrieving and then using temporary credentials for a role is often referred
to as assuming the role.

You can create a role in IAM with the permissions that you want users to assume by following the
procedure under Creating a Role to Delegate Permissions to an IAM User in the AWS Identity and Access
Management User Guide. If the role and the source proﬁle's IAM user are in the same account, you can
enter your own account ID when conﬁguring the role's trust relationship.

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After creating the role, modify the trust relationship to allow the IAM user (or the users in the AWS
account) to assume it.

The following example shows a trust policy that you could attach to a role. This policy allows the role to
be assumed by any IAM user in the account 123456789012, if the administrator of that account explicitly
grants the sts:assumerole permission to the user.

{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Principal": {
"AWS": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:root"
},
"Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
}
]
}

The trust policy doesn't actually grant permissions. The administrator of the account must delegate the
permission to assume the role to individual users by attaching a policy with the appropriate permissions.
The following example shows a policy that you can attach to an IAM user that allows the user to assume
only the marketingadminrole role. For more information about granting a user access to assume a
role, see Granting a User Permission to Switch Roles in the IAM User Guide.

{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
"Resource": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/marketingadminrole"
}
]
}

The IAM user doesn't need to have additional permissions to run the CLI commands using the role
proﬁle. Instead, the permissions to run the command come from those attached to the role. You attach
permission policies to the role to specify which actions can be performed against which AWS resources.
For more information about attaching permissions to a role (which works identically to an IAM user), see
Changing Permissions for an IAM User in the IAM User Guide.

Now that you have the role profile, role permissions, role trust relationship, and user permissions
correctly configured, you can use the role at the command line by invoking the --profile option.
For example, the following calls the Amazon S3 ls command using the permissions attached to the
marketingadmin role as defined by the example at the beginning of this topic.

$ aws s3 ls --profile marketingadmin

To use the role for several calls, you can set the AWS_PROFILE environment variable for the current
session from the command line. While that environment variable is deﬁned, you don't have to specify the
--profile option on each command.

Linux or macOS

$ export AWS_PROFILE=marketingadmin

Windows

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C:\> setx AWS_PROFILE marketingadmin

For more information about conﬁguring IAM users and roles, see Users and Groups and Roles in the IAM
User Guide.

Using multi-factor authentication

For additional security, you can require that users provide a one-time key generated from a multi-factor
authentication (MFA) device, a U2F device, or mobile app when they attempt to make a call using the
role proﬁle.

First, you can choose to modify the trust relationship on the IAM role to require MFA. This prevents
anyone from using the role without ﬁrst authenticating by using MFA. For an example, see the
Condition line in the following example. This policy allows the IAM user named anika to assume the
role the policy is attached to, but only if they authenticate by using MFA.

{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Sid": "",
"Effect": "Allow",
"Principal": { "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/anika" },
"Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
"Condition": { "Bool": { "aws:multifactorAuthPresent": true } }
}
]
}

Next, add a line to the role profile that specifies the ARN of the user's MFA device. The following sample
config file entries show two role profiles that both use the access keys for the IAM user anika to
request temporary credentials for the role cli-role. The user anika has permissions to assume the
role, granted by the role's trust policy.

[profile role-without-mfa]
region = us-west-2
role_arn= arn:aws:iam::128716708097:role/cli-role
source_profile=cli-user

[profile role-with-mfa]
region = us-west-2
role_arn= arn:aws:iam::128716708097:role/cli-role
source_profile = cli-user
mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::128716708097:mfa/cli-user

[profile anika]
region = us-west-2
output = json

The mfa_serial setting can take an ARN, as shown, or the serial number of a hardware MFA token.

The first profile, role-without-mfa, doesn't require MFA. However, because the previous example trust
policy attached to the role requires MFA, any attempt to run a command with this profile fails.

$ aws iam list-users --profile role-without-mfa

An error occurred (AccessDenied) when calling the AssumeRole operation: Access denied

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Cross-account roles and external ID

The second profile entry, role-with-mfa, identifies an MFA device to use. When the user attempts to
run a CLI command with this profile, the CLI prompts the user to enter the one-time password (OTP)
that the MFA device provides. If the MFA authentication succeeds, the command performs the requested
operation. The OTP is not displayed on the screen.

$ aws iam list-users --profile role-with-mfa

Enter MFA code for arn:aws:iam::123456789012:mfa/cli-user:
{
"Users": [
{
...

Cross-account roles and external ID

You can enable IAM users to use roles that belong to different accounts by configuring the role as
a cross-account role. During role creation, set the role type to Another AWS account, as described
in Creating a Role to Delegate Permissions to an IAM user. Optionally, select Require MFA. Require
MFA configures the appropriate condition in the trust relationship, as described in Using multi-factor
authentication (p. 88).

If you use an external ID to provide additional control over who can use a role across accounts, you must
also add the external_id parameter to the role proﬁle. You typically use this only when the other
account is controlled by someone outside your company or organization.

[profile crossaccountrole]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::234567890123:role/SomeRole
source_profile = default
mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::123456789012:mfa/saanvi
external_id = 123456

Specifying a role session name for easier auditing

When many individuals share a role, auditing becomes more of a challenge. You want to associate each
operation invoked with the individual who invoked the action. However, when the individual uses a role,
the assumption of the role by the individual is a separate action from the invoking of an operation, and
you must manually correlate the two.

You can simplify this by specifying unique role session names when users assume a role. You do this by
adding a role_session_name parameter to each named profile in the config file that specifies a role.
The role_session_name value is passed to the AssumeRole operation and becomes part of the ARN
for the role session. It is also included in the AWS CloudTrail logs for all logged operations.

For example, you could create a role-based proﬁle as follows.

[profile namedsessionrole]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::234567890123:role/SomeRole
source_profile = default
role_session_name = Session_Maria_Garcia

This results in the role session having the following ARN.

arn:aws:iam::234567890123:assumed-role/SomeRole/Session_Maria_Garcia

Also, all AWS CloudTrail logs include the role session name in the information captured for each
operation.

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Assume role with web identity

Assume role with web identity

You can configure a profile to indicate that the AWS CLI should assume a role using web identity
federation and Open ID Connect (OIDC). When you specify this in a profile, the AWS CLI automatically
makes the corresponding AWS STS AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity call for you.
Note
When you specify a profile that uses an IAM role, the AWS CLI makes the appropriate calls
to retrieve temporary credentials. These credentials are stored in ~/.aws/cli/cache.
Subsequent AWS CLI commands that specify the same profile use the cached temporary
credentials until they expire. At that point, the AWS CLI automatically refreshes the credentials.

To retrieve and use temporary credentials using web identity federation, you can specify the following
conﬁguration values in a shared proﬁle.

role_arn (p. 85)

Speciﬁes the ARN of the role to assume.

web_identity_token_ﬁle

Specifies the path to a file which contains an OAuth 2.0 access token or OpenID Connect ID token
that is provided by the identity provider. The AWS CLI loads this file and passes its content as the
WebIdentityToken argument of the AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity operation.
role_session_name (p. 89)

Speciﬁes an optional name applied to this assume-role session.

The following is an example of the minimal amount of configuration needed to configure an assume role
with web identity profile.

# In ~/.aws/config

[profile web-identity]
role_arn=arn:aws:iam:123456789012:role/RoleNameToAssume
web_identity_token_file=/path/to/a/token

You can also provide this conﬁguration by using environment variables (p. 68).

AWS_ROLE_ARN

The ARN of the role to assume.

AWS_WEB_IDENTITY_TOKEN_FILE

The path to the web identity token ﬁle.

AWS_ROLE_SESSION_NAME

The name applied to this assume-role session.

Note
These environment variables currently apply only to the assume role with web identity provider.
They don't apply to the general assume role provider conﬁguration.

Clearing cached credentials

When you use a role, the AWS CLI caches the temporary credentials locally until they expire. The next
time you try to use them, the AWS CLI attempts to renew them on your behalf.

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If your role's temporary credentials are revoked, they are not renewed automatically, and attempts to use
them fail. However, you can delete the cache to force the AWS CLI to retrieve new credentials.

Linux or macOS

$ rm -r ~/.aws/cli/cache

Windows

C:\> del /s /q %UserProfile%\.aws\cli\cache

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Using the AWS CLI

This section introduces you to many of the common features and options available in the AWS Command
Line Interface (AWS CLI). For a list of commands, see the AWS CLI version 1 reference guide and AWS CLI
version 2 reference guide.
Note
By default, the AWS CLI sends requests to AWS services by using HTTPS on TCP port 443. To use
the AWS CLI successfully, you must be able to make outbound connections on TCP port 443.

Topics in this guide

• Getting help with the AWS CLI (p. 92)
• Command structure in the AWS CLI (p. 96)
• Specifying parameter values for the AWS CLI (p. 98)
• Having the AWS CLI prompt you for commands (p. 114)
• Controlling command output from the AWS CLI (p. 117)
• Understanding return codes from the AWS CLI (p. 144)
• Using the AWS CLI wizards (p. 145)
• Creating and using AWS CLI aliases (p. 146)

Getting help with the AWS CLI

You can get help with any command when using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). To do so,
simply type help at the end of a command name.

For example, the following command displays help for the general AWS CLI options and the available
top-level commands.

$ aws help

The following command displays the available Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) speciﬁc
commands.

$ aws ec2 help

The following example displays detailed help for the Amazon EC2 DescribeInstances operation. The
help includes descriptions of its input parameters, available ﬁlters, and what is included as output. It also
includes examples showing how to type common variations of the command.

$ aws ec2 describe-instances help

The help for each command is divided into six sections:

Name

The name of the command.

NAME
describe-instances -

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Description

A description of the API operation that the command invokes.

DESCRIPTION
Describes one or more of your instances.

If you specify one or more instance IDs, Amazon EC2 returns information
for those instances. If you do not specify instance IDs, Amazon EC2
returns information for all relevant instances. If you specify an
instance ID that is not valid, an error is returned. If you specify an
instance that you do not own, it is not included in the returned
results.
...

Synopsis

The basic syntax for using the command and its options. If an option is shown in square brackets, it's
optional, has a default value, or has an alternative option that you can use.

SYNOPSIS
describe-instances
[--dry-run | --no-dry-run]
[--instance-ids <value>]
[--filters <value>]
[--cli-input-json <value>]
[--starting-token <value>]
[--page-size <value>]
[--max-items <value>]
[--generate-cli-skeleton]

For example, describe-instances has a default behavior that describes all instances in the
current account and AWS Region. You can optionally specify a list of instance-ids to describe one
or more instances; dry-run is an optional Boolean ﬂag that doesn't take a value. To use a Boolean
ﬂag, specify either shown value, in this case --dry-run or --no-dry-run. Likewise, --generate-
cli-skeleton doesn't take a value. If there are conditions on an option's use, they are described in
the OPTIONS section, or shown in the examples.
Options

A description of each of the options shown in the synopsis.

OPTIONS
--dry-run | --no-dry-run (boolean)
Checks whether you have the required permissions for the action,
without actually making the request, and provides an error response.
If you have the required permissions, the error response is DryRun-
Operation . Otherwise, it is UnauthorizedOperation .

--instance-ids (list)
One or more instance IDs.

Default: Describes all your instances.

...

Examples

Examples showing the usage of the command and its options. If no example is available for a
command or use case that you need, request one using the feedback link on this page, or in the AWS
CLI command reference on the help page for the command.

EXAMPLES

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To describe an Amazon EC2 instance

Command:

aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids i-5203422c

To describe all instances with the instance type m1.small

Command:

aws ec2 describe-instances --filters "Name=instance-type,Values=m1.small"

To describe all instances with an Owner tag

Command:

aws ec2 describe-instances --filters "Name=tag-key,Values=Owner"

...

Output

Descriptions of each of the ﬁelds and data types included in the response from AWS.

For describe-instances, the output is a list of reservation objects, each of which contains several
ﬁelds and objects that contain information about the instances associated with it. This information
comes from the API documentation for the reservation data type used by Amazon EC2.

OUTPUT
Reservations -> (list)
One or more reservations.

(structure)
Describes a reservation.

ReservationId -> (string)

The ID of the reservation.

OwnerId -> (string)

The ID of the AWS account that owns the reservation.

RequesterId -> (string)

The ID of the requester that launched the instances on your
behalf (for example, AWS Management Console or Auto Scaling).

Groups -> (list)

One or more security groups.

(structure)
Describes a security group.

GroupName -> (string)

The name of the security group.

GroupId -> (string)

The ID of the security group.

Instances -> (list)

One or more instances.

(structure)
Describes an instance.

InstanceId -> (string)

The ID of the instance.

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ImageId -> (string)

The ID of the AMI used to launch the instance.

State -> (structure)

The current state of the instance.

Code -> (integer)

The low byte represents the state. The high byte
is an opaque internal value and should be ignored.
...

When the AWS CLI renders the output into JSON, it becomes an array of reservation objects, similar
to the following example.

{
"Reservations": [
{
"OwnerId": "012345678901",
"ReservationId": "r-4c58f8a0",
"Groups": [],
"RequesterId": "012345678901",
"Instances": [
{
"Monitoring": {
"State": "disabled"
},
"PublicDnsName": "ec2-52-74-16-12.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com",
"State": {
"Code": 16,
"Name": "running"
},
...

Each reservation object contains fields describing the reservation and an array of instance objects,
each with its own fields (for example, PublicDnsName) and objects (for example, State) that
describe it.
Windows users
You can pipe (|) the output of the help command to the more command to view the help file
one page at a time. Press the space bar or PgDn to view more of the document, and q to
quit.

C:\> aws ec2 describe-instances help | more

AWS CLI documentation

The AWS CLI Command Reference also contains the help content for all AWS CLI commands. The
descriptions are presented for easy navigation and viewing on mobile, tablet, or desktop screens.
Note
The help ﬁles contain links that cannot be viewed or navigated to from the command line. You
can view and interact with these links by using the online AWS CLI Command Reference.

API documentation
All commands in the AWS CLI correspond to requests made to an AWS service's public API. Each service
with a public API has an API reference that can be found on the service's home page on the AWS
Documentation website. The content for an API reference varies based on how the API is constructed and

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Command Structure

which protocol is used. Typically, an API reference contains detailed information about the operations
supported by the API, the data sent to and from the service, and any error conditions that the service can
report.

API Documentation Sections

• Actions – Detailed information on each operation and its parameters (including constraints on length
or content, and default values). It lists the errors that can occur for this operation. Each operation
corresponds to a subcommand in the AWS CLI.
• Data Types – Detailed information about structures that a command might require as a parameter, or
return in response to a request.
• Common Parameters – Detailed information about the parameters that are shared by all of action for
the service.
• Common Errors – Detailed information about errors that can be returned by any of the service's
operations.

The name and availability of each section can vary, depending on the service.
Service-specific CLIs
Some services have a separate CLI that dates from before a single AWS CLI was created to work
with all services. These service-specific CLIs have separate documentation that is linked from
the service's documentation page. Documentation for service-specific CLIs does not apply to the
AWS CLI.

Command structure in the AWS CLI

This topic covers how AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) command is structured, and how to use
wait commands.

Topics
• Command structure (p. 96)
• Wait commands (p. 97)

Command structure
The AWS CLI uses a multipart structure on the command line that must be speciﬁed in this order:

1. The base call to the aws program.

2. The top-level command, which typically corresponds to an AWS service supported by the AWS CLI.
3. The subcommand that specifies which operation to perform.
4. General CLI options or parameters required by the operation. You can specify these in any order as
long as they follow the first three parts. If an exclusive parameter is specified multiple times, only the
last value applies.

$ aws <command> <subcommand> [options and parameters]

Parameters can take various types of input values, such as numbers, strings, lists, maps, and JSON
structures. What is supported is dependent upon the command and subcommand you specify.

Examples
Amazon S3

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The following example lists all of your Amazon S3 buckets.

$ aws s3 ls
2018-12-11 17:08:50 my-bucket
2018-12-14 14:55:44 my-bucket2

For more information on the Amazon S3 commands, see aws s3 in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

aws s3

AWS CloudFormation

The following change-set-create-complete command example changes the cloudformation stack

name to my-change-set.

$ aws cloudformation change-set-create-complete --stack-name my-stack --change-set-name my-

change-set

For more information on the AWS CloudFormation commands, see aws cloudformation in the AWS
CLI Command Reference.

Wait commands
Some AWS services have wait commands available. Any command that uses aws wait usually waits
until a command is complete before it moves on to the next step. This is especially useful for multipart
commands or scripting, as you can use a wait command to to prevent moving to subsequent steps if the
wait command fails.

The AWS CLI uses a multipart structure on the command line for the wait command that must be
speciﬁed in this order:

1. The base call to the aws program.

2. The top-level command, which typically corresponds to an AWS service supported by the AWS CLI.
3. The wait command.
4. The subcommand that specifies which operation to perform.
5. General CLI options or parameters required by the operation. You can specify these in any order as
long as they follow the first three parts. If an exclusive parameter is specified multiple times, only the
last value applies.

$ aws <command> wait <subcommand> [options and parameters]

Parameters can take various types of input values, such as numbers, strings, lists, maps, and JSON
structures. What is supported is dependent upon the command and subcommand you specify.
Note
Not every AWS service supports wait commands. See the AWS CLI reference guide to see if your
service supports wait commands.

Examples
AWS CloudFormation

The following wait change-set-create-complete command examples pauses and resumes only
after it can conﬁrm that the my-change-set change set in the my-stack stack is ready to run.

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$ aws cloudformation wait change-set-create-complete --stack-name my-stack --change-set-

name my-change-set

For more information on the AWS CloudFormation wait commands, see wait in the AWS CLI Command
Reference.

AWS CodeDeploy

The following wait deployment-successful command examples pauses until the d-A1B2C3111
deployment completes successfully.

$ aws deploy wait deployment-successful --deployment-id d-A1B2C3111

For more information on the AWS CodeDeploy wait commands, see wait in the AWS CLI Command
Reference.

Specifying parameter values for the AWS CLI

Many parameters used in the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) are simple string or numeric
values, such as the key-pair name my-key-pair in the following example.

$ aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name my-key-pair

You can surround strings that do not contain any space characters with quotation marks or not. However,
you must use quotation marks around strings that include one or more space characters. For more
information about using quotation marks around complex parameters, see Using quotation marks with
strings in the AWS CLI (p. 100).

Parameter topics
• Common AWS CLI parameter types (p. 98)
• Using quotation marks with strings in the AWS CLI (p. 100)
• Loading AWS CLI parameters from a ﬁle (p. 102)
• Generating AWS CLI skeleton and input parameters from a JSON or YAML input ﬁle (p. 104)
• Using shorthand syntax with the AWS CLI (p. 112)

Common AWS CLI parameter types

This section describes some of the common parameter types and the typical required format. If you are
having trouble formatting a parameter for a speciﬁc command, check the help by entering help after
the command name, as shown.

$ aws ec2 describe-spot-price-history help

The help for each subcommand describes its function, options, output, and examples. The options
section includes the name and description of each option with the option's parameter type in
parentheses.

String
String parameters can contain alphanumeric characters, symbols, and white space from the ASCII
character set. Strings that contain white space must be surrounded by quotation marks. We recommend

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that you don't use symbols or white space other than the standard space character because it can cause
unexpected results.

Some string parameters can accept binary data from a ﬁle. See Binary ﬁles (p. 103) for an example.

Timestamp
Timestamps are formatted according to the ISO 8601 standard. These are sometimes referred to as
"DateTime" or "Date" parameters.

$ aws ec2 describe-spot-price-history --start-time 2014-10-13T19:00:00Z

Acceptable formats include:

• YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sssTZD (UTC), for example, 2014-10-01T20:30:00.000Z

• YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sssTZD (with offset), for example, 2014-10-01T12:30:00.000-08:00
• YYYY-MM-DD, for example, 2014-10-01
• Unix time in seconds, for example, 1412195400. This is sometimes referred to as Unix Epoch time and
represents the number of seconds since midnight, January 1, 1970 UTC.

(Available in the AWS CLI version 2 only.) By default, the AWS CLI version 2 translates all response
DateTime values to ISO 8601 format.

List
One or more strings separated by spaces. If any of the string items contain a space, you must put
quotation marks around that item.

$ aws ec2 describe-spot-price-history --instance-types m1.xlarge m1.medium

Boolean
Binary flag that turns an option on or off. For example, ec2 describe-spot-price-history has
a Boolean --dry-run parameter that, when specified, validates the query with the service without
actually running the query.

$ aws ec2 describe-spot-price-history --dry-run

The output indicates whether the command was well formed. This command also includes a --no-dry-
run version of the parameter that you can use to explicitly indicate that the command should be run
normally. Including it isn't necessary because this is the default behavior.

Integer
An unsigned, whole number.

$ aws ec2 describe-spot-price-history --max-items 5

Binary/Blob (binary large object)

In the AWS CLI version 1, to pass a value to a parameter with type blob, you must specify a path to
a local file that contains the binary data. The path should not contain any protocol identifier, such
as http:// or file://. The specified path is interpreted as being relative to the current working
directory. For example, the --body parameter for aws s3api put-object is a blob.

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$ aws s3api put-object --bucket my-bucket --key testimage.png --body /tmp/image.png

(Available in the AWS CLI version 2 only.) In the AWS CLI version 2, you can pass a binary value as a
base64-encoded string directly on the command line. Also, by default in the AWS CLI version 2, ﬁles
referenced with the file:// preﬁx are treated as base64-encoded text.

You can revert the AWS CLI version 2 to be compatible with AWS CLI version 1 by setting the cli-
binary-format (p. 53) setting:

• If the setting's value is raw-in-base64-out, files referenced using the file:// prefix are treated as
raw unencoded binary.
• If the setting's value is base64 (the default value), files referenced using the file:// prefix are
treated as base64-encoded text.

Files referenced using the fileb:// preﬁx are always treated as raw unencoded binary, regardless of
the cli_binary_format setting.

For more information, see the setting cli-binary-format (p. 53).

Map
A set of key-value pairs speciﬁed in JSON or by using the CLI's shorthand syntax (p. 112). The following
JSON example reads an item from an Amazon DynamoDB table named my-table with a map parameter,
--key. The parameter speciﬁes the primary key named id with a number value of 1 in a nested JSON
structure.

For more advanced JSON usage in a command line, consider using a command line JSON processor, like
jq, to create JSON strings. For more information on jq, see the jq repository on GitHub.

$ aws dynamodb get-item --table-name my-table --key '{"id": {"N":"1"}}'

{
"Item": {
"name": {
"S": "John"
},
"id": {
"N": "1"
}
}
}

Using quotation marks with strings in the AWS CLI

There are primarily two ways single and double quotes are used in the AWS CLI.

• Using quotation marks around strings that contain white spaces (p. 100)
• Using quotation marks inside strings (p. 101)

Using quotation marks around strings that contain white spaces

Parameter names and their values are separated by spaces on the command line. If a string value
contains an embedded space, then you must surround the entire string with quotation marks to prevent
the AWS CLI from misinterpreting the space as a divider between the value and the next parameter
name. Which type of quotation mark you use depends on the operating system you are running the AWS
CLI on.

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Linux and macOS

Use single quotation marks ' '

$ aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name 'my key pair'

For more information on using quotes, see the user documentation for your preferred shell.
PowerShell

Use single quotation marks ' ' or double quotation marks " " .

PS C:\> aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name 'my key pair'

PS C:\> aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name "my key pair"

For more information on using quotes, see About Quoting Rules in the Microsoft PowerShell Docs.
Windows command prompt

Use double quotation marks " " .

C:\> aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name "my key pair"

Optionally, you can separate the parameter name from the value with an equals sign = instead of a
space. This is typically necessary only if the value of the parameter starts with a hyphen.

$ aws ec2 delete-key-pair --key-name=-mykey

Using quotation marks inside strings

Strings may contain quotation marks, and your shell may require escaping quotations for them to work
properly. One of the common parameter value types is a JSON string. This is complex since it includes
spaces and double quotation marks " " around each element name and value in the JSON structure. The
way you enter JSON-formatted parameters on the command line diﬀers depending on your operating
system.

Linux and macOS

For Linux and macOS to interpret strings literally use single quotation marks ' ' to enclose the
JSON data structure, as in the following example. You do not need to escape double quotation
marks embedded in the JSON string, as they are being treated literally. Since the JSON is enclosed
in single quotation marks, any single quotation marks in the string will need to be escaped, this is
usually accomplished using a backslash before the single quote \'.

$ aws ec2 run-instances \

--image-id ami-12345678 \
--block-device-mappings '[{"DeviceName":"/dev/sdb","Ebs":
{"VolumeSize":20,"DeleteOnTermination":false,"VolumeType":"standard"}}]'

For more information on using quotes, see the user documentation for your preferred shell.
PowerShell

Use single quotation marks ' ' or double quotation marks " ".

Single quotations (recommended)

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Since JSON data structures include double quotes, we suggest single quotation marks ' ' to
enclose it. If you use single quotation marks, you do not need to escape double quotation marks
embedded in the JSON string. However, you need to escape each single quotation mark with a
backtick ` within the JSON structure.

PS C:\> aws ec2 run-instances `

--image-id ami-12345678 `
--block-device-mappings '[{"DeviceName":"/dev/sdb","Ebs":
{"VolumeSize":20,"DeleteOnTermination":false,"VolumeType":"standard"}}]'

Double quotations

If you use double quotation marks, you do not need to escape single quotation marks embedded in
the JSON string. However, you need to escape each double quotation mark with a backtick ` within
the JSON structure, as with the following example.

PS C:\> aws ec2 run-instances `

--image-id ami-12345678 `
--block-device-mappings "[{`"DeviceName`":`"/dev/sdb`",`"Ebs`":
{`"VolumeSize`":20,`"DeleteOnTermination`":false,`"VolumeType`":`"standard`"}}]"

For more information on using quotes, see About Quoting Rules in the Microsoft PowerShell Docs.
Windows command prompt

The Windows command prompt requires double quotation marks " " to enclose the JSON data
structure. Also, to prevent the command processor from misinterpreting the double quotation marks
embedded in the JSON, you must also escape (precede with a backslash \ character) each double
quotation mark " within the JSON data structure itself, as in the following example.

C:\> aws ec2 run-instances ^

--image-id ami-12345678 ^
--block-device-mappings "[{\"DeviceName\":\"/dev/sdb\",\"Ebs\":
{\"VolumeSize\":20,\"DeleteOnTermination\":false,\"VolumeType\":\"standard\"}}]"

Only the outermost double quotation marks are not escaped.

For more advanced JSON usage in a command line, consider using a command line JSON processor, like
jq, to create JSON strings. For more information on jq, see the jq repository on GitHub.

Loading AWS CLI parameters from a ﬁle

Some parameters expect file names as arguments, from which the AWS CLI loads the data. Other
parameters enable you to specify the parameter value as either text typed on the command line or read
from a file. Whether a file is required or optional, you must encode the file correctly so that the AWS CLI
can understand it. The file's encoding must match the reading system's default locale. You can determine
this by using the Python locale.getpreferredencoding() method.
Note
By default, Windows PowerShell outputs text as UTF-16, which conflicts with the UTF-8
encoding used by many Linux systems. We recommend that you use -Encoding ascii with
your PowerShell Out-File commands to ensure the AWS CLI can read the resulting file.

Sometimes it's convenient to load a parameter value from a file instead of trying to type it all as a
command line parameter value, such as when the parameter is a complex JSON string. To specify a file
that contains the value, specify a file URL in the following format.

file://complete/path/to/file

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The ﬁrst two slash '/' characters are part of the speciﬁcation. If the required path begins with a '/', the
result is three slash characters: file:///folder/file.

The URL provides the path to the file that contains the actual parameter content.
Note
This behavior is disabled automatically for parameters that already expect a URL, such as
parameter that identifies a AWS CloudFormation template URL.
You can also disable this behavior by adding the following line to your CLI configuration file.

cli_follow_urlparam = false

The ﬁle paths in the following examples are interpreted to be relative to the current working directory.

Linux or macOS

// Read from a file in the current directory

$ aws ec2 describe-instances --filters file://filter.json

// Read from a file in /tmp

$ aws ec2 describe-instances --filters file:///tmp/filter.json

Windows

// Read from a file in C:\temp

C:\> aws ec2 describe-instances --filters file://C:\temp\filter.json

The file:// preﬁx option supports Unix-style expansions, including "~/", "./", and "../". On Windows,
the "~/" expression expands to your user directory, stored in the %USERPROFILE% environment variable.
For example, on Windows 10 you would typically have a user directory under C:\Users\User Name\.

You must still escape JSON documents that are embedded as the value of another JSON document.

$ aws sqs create-queue --queue-name my-queue --attributes file://attributes.json

attributes.json

{
"RedrivePolicy": "{\"deadLetterTargetArn\":\"arn:aws:sqs:us-
west-2:0123456789012:deadletter\", \"maxReceiveCount\":\"5\"}"
}

Binary ﬁles
For commands that take binary data as a parameter, specify that the data is binary content by using the
fileb:// preﬁx. Commands that accept binary data include:

• aws ec2 run-instances – --user-data parameter.

• aws s3api put-object – --sse-customer-key parameter.
• aws kms decrypt – --ciphertext-blob parameter.

The following example generates a binary 256-bit AES key using a Linux command line tool, and then
provides it to Amazon S3 to encrypt an uploaded ﬁle server-side.

$ dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1 count=32 > sse.key

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32+0 records in
32+0 records out
32 bytes (32 B) copied, 0.000164441 s, 195 kB/s
$ aws s3api put-object --bucket my-bucket --key test.txt --body test.txt --sse-customer-key
fileb://sse.key --sse-customer-algorithm AES256
{
"SSECustomerKeyMD5": "iVg8oWa8sy714+FjtesrJg==",
"SSECustomerAlgorithm": "AES256",
"ETag": "\"a6118e84b76cf98bf04bbe14b6045c6c\""
}

Remote files
The AWS CLI also supports loading parameters from a file hosted on the internet with an http:// or
https:// URL. The following example references a file stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. This allows you
to access parameter files from any computer, but it does require that the container is publicly accessible.

$ aws ec2 run-instances --image-id ami-12345678 --block-device-mappings http://my-

bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/filename.json

The preceding example assumes that the ﬁle filename.json contains the following JSON data.

[
{
"DeviceName": "/dev/sdb",
"Ebs": {
"VolumeSize": 20,
"DeleteOnTermination": false,
"VolumeType": "standard"
}
}
]

For another example referencing a ﬁle containing JSON-formatted parameters, see Attaching an IAM
managed policy to an IAM user (p. 184).

Generating AWS CLI skeleton and input parameters

from a JSON or YAML input ﬁle
Important
You can create and consume YAML input skeleton templates only with version 2 of the
AWS CLI. If you use AWS CLI version 1, you can create and consume only JSON input skeleton
templates.

Most of the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) commands support the ability to accept all of the
parameter input from a ﬁle using the --cli-input-json and --cli-input-yaml parameters.

Those same commands helpfully provide the --generate-cli-skeleton parameter to generate a file
in either JSON or YAML format with all of the parameters that you can edit and fill in. Then you can run
the command with the relevant --cli-input-json or --cli-input-yaml parameter and point to
the filled-in file.
Important
Several AWS CLI commands don't map directly to individual AWS API operations, such as the
aws s3 commands. Such commands don't support either the --generate-cli-skeleton or
--cli-input-json and --cli-input-yaml parameters described in this topic. If you don't
know whether a specific command supports these parameters, run the following command,
replacing the service and command names with the ones you're interested in.

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$ aws service command help

The output includes a Synopsis section that shows the parameters that the speciﬁed command
supports.

$ aws iam list-users help

...
SYNOPSIS
list-users
...
[--cli-input-json | --cli-input-yaml]
...
[--generate-cli-skeleton <value>]
...

The --generate-cli-skeleton parameter causes the command not to run, but instead to generate
and display a parameter template that you can customize and use as input on a later command. The
generated template includes all of the parameters that the command supports.

The --generate-cli-skeleton parameter accepts one of the following values:

• input – The generated template includes all input parameters formatted as JSON. This is the default
value.
• yaml-input – The generated template includes all input parameters formatted as YAML.
• output – The generated template includes all output parameters formatted as JSON. You can't
currently request the output parameters as YAML.

Because the AWS CLI is essentially a "wrapper" around the service's API, the skeleton ﬁle expects you
to reference all parameters by their underlying API parameter names. This is likely diﬀerent from the
AWS CLI parameter name. For example, an AWS CLI parameter named user-name might map to the
AWS service's API parameter named UserName (notice the altered capitalization and missing dash). We
recommend that you use the --generate-cli-skeleton option to generate the template with the
"correct" parameter names to avoid errors. You can also reference the API Reference Guide for the service
to see the expected parameter names. You can delete any parameters from the template that are not
required and for which you don't want to supply a value.

For example, if you run the following command, it generates the parameter template for the Amazon
Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) command run-instances.

JSON

The following example shows how to generate a template formatted in JSON by using the default
value (input) for the --generate-cli-skeleton parameter.

$ aws ec2 run-instances --generate-cli-skeleton

{
"DryRun": true,
"ImageId": "",
"MinCount": 0,
"MaxCount": 0,
"KeyName": "",
"SecurityGroups": [
""
],
"SecurityGroupIds": [
""
],

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"UserData": "",
"InstanceType": "",
"Placement": {
"AvailabilityZone": "",
"GroupName": "",
"Tenancy": ""
},
"KernelId": "",
"RamdiskId": "",
"BlockDeviceMappings": [
{
"VirtualName": "",
"DeviceName": "",
"Ebs": {
"SnapshotId": "",
"VolumeSize": 0,
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"VolumeType": "",
"Iops": 0,
"Encrypted": true
},
"NoDevice": ""
}
],
"Monitoring": {
"Enabled": true
},
"SubnetId": "",
"DisableApiTermination": true,
"InstanceInitiatedShutdownBehavior": "",
"PrivateIpAddress": "",
"ClientToken": "",
"AdditionalInfo": "",
"NetworkInterfaces": [
{
"NetworkInterfaceId": "",
"DeviceIndex": 0,
"SubnetId": "",
"Description": "",
"PrivateIpAddress": "",
"Groups": [
""
],
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"PrivateIpAddresses": [
{
"PrivateIpAddress": "",
"Primary": true
}
],
"SecondaryPrivateIpAddressCount": 0,
"AssociatePublicIpAddress": true
}
],
"IamInstanceProfile": {
"Arn": "",
"Name": ""
},
"EbsOptimized": true
}

YAML

The following example shows how to generate a template formatted in YAML by using the value
yaml-input for the --generate-cli-skeleton parameter.

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$ aws ec2 run-instances --generate-cli-skeleton yaml-input

BlockDeviceMappings: # The block device mapping entries.

- DeviceName: '' # The device name (for example, /dev/sdh or xvdh).
VirtualName: '' # The virtual device name (ephemeralN).
Ebs: # Parameters used to automatically set up Amazon EBS volumes when the instance
is launched.
DeleteOnTermination: true # Indicates whether the EBS volume is deleted on
instance termination.
Iops: 0 # The number of I/O operations per second (IOPS) that the volume supports.
SnapshotId: '' # The ID of the snapshot.
VolumeSize: 0 # The size of the volume, in GiB.
VolumeType: st1 # The volume type. Valid values are: standard, io1, gp2, sc1, st1.
Encrypted: true # Indicates whether the encryption state of an EBS volume is
changed while being restored from a backing snapshot.
KmsKeyId: '' # Identifier (key ID, key alias, ID ARN, or alias ARN) for a customer
managed CMK under which the EBS volume is encrypted.
NoDevice: '' # Suppresses the specified device included in the block device mapping
of the AMI.
ImageId: '' # The ID of the AMI.
InstanceType: c4.4xlarge # The instance type. Valid values are: t1.micro, t2.nano,
t2.micro, t2.small, t2.medium, t2.large, t2.xlarge, t2.2xlarge, t3.nano, t3.micro,
t3.small, t3.medium, t3.large, t3.xlarge, t3.2xlarge, t3a.nano, t3a.micro, t3a.small,
t3a.medium, t3a.large, t3a.xlarge, t3a.2xlarge, m1.small, m1.medium, m1.large,
m1.xlarge, m3.medium, m3.large, m3.xlarge, m3.2xlarge, m4.large, m4.xlarge,
m4.2xlarge, m4.4xlarge, m4.10xlarge, m4.16xlarge, m2.xlarge, m2.2xlarge, m2.4xlarge,
cr1.8xlarge, r3.large, r3.xlarge, r3.2xlarge, r3.4xlarge, r3.8xlarge, r4.large,
r4.xlarge, r4.2xlarge, r4.4xlarge, r4.8xlarge, r4.16xlarge, r5.large, r5.xlarge,
r5.2xlarge, r5.4xlarge, r5.8xlarge, r5.12xlarge, r5.16xlarge, r5.24xlarge, r5.metal,
r5a.large, r5a.xlarge, r5a.2xlarge, r5a.4xlarge, r5a.8xlarge, r5a.12xlarge,
r5a.16xlarge, r5a.24xlarge, r5d.large, r5d.xlarge, r5d.2xlarge, r5d.4xlarge,
r5d.8xlarge, r5d.12xlarge, r5d.16xlarge, r5d.24xlarge, r5d.metal, r5ad.large,
r5ad.xlarge, r5ad.2xlarge, r5ad.4xlarge, r5ad.8xlarge, r5ad.12xlarge, r5ad.16xlarge,
r5ad.24xlarge, x1.16xlarge, x1.32xlarge, x1e.xlarge, x1e.2xlarge, x1e.4xlarge,
x1e.8xlarge, x1e.16xlarge, x1e.32xlarge, i2.xlarge, i2.2xlarge, i2.4xlarge,
i2.8xlarge, i3.large, i3.xlarge, i3.2xlarge, i3.4xlarge, i3.8xlarge, i3.16xlarge,
i3.metal, i3en.large, i3en.xlarge, i3en.2xlarge, i3en.3xlarge, i3en.6xlarge,
i3en.12xlarge, i3en.24xlarge, i3en.metal, hi1.4xlarge, hs1.8xlarge, c1.medium,
c1.xlarge, c3.large, c3.xlarge, c3.2xlarge, c3.4xlarge, c3.8xlarge, c4.large,
c4.xlarge, c4.2xlarge, c4.4xlarge, c4.8xlarge, c5.large, c5.xlarge, c5.2xlarge,
c5.4xlarge, c5.9xlarge, c5.12xlarge, c5.18xlarge, c5.24xlarge, c5.metal, c5d.large,
c5d.xlarge, c5d.2xlarge, c5d.4xlarge, c5d.9xlarge, c5d.18xlarge, c5n.large,
c5n.xlarge, c5n.2xlarge, c5n.4xlarge, c5n.9xlarge, c5n.18xlarge, cc1.4xlarge,
cc2.8xlarge, g2.2xlarge, g2.8xlarge, g3.4xlarge, g3.8xlarge, g3.16xlarge, g3s.xlarge,
g4dn.xlarge, g4dn.2xlarge, g4dn.4xlarge, g4dn.8xlarge, g4dn.12xlarge, g4dn.16xlarge,
cg1.4xlarge, p2.xlarge, p2.8xlarge, p2.16xlarge, p3.2xlarge, p3.8xlarge, p3.16xlarge,
p3dn.24xlarge, d2.xlarge, d2.2xlarge, d2.4xlarge, d2.8xlarge, f1.2xlarge, f1.4xlarge,
f1.16xlarge, m5.large, m5.xlarge, m5.2xlarge, m5.4xlarge, m5.8xlarge, m5.12xlarge,
m5.16xlarge, m5.24xlarge, m5.metal, m5a.large, m5a.xlarge, m5a.2xlarge, m5a.4xlarge,
m5a.8xlarge, m5a.12xlarge, m5a.16xlarge, m5a.24xlarge, m5d.large, m5d.xlarge,
m5d.2xlarge, m5d.4xlarge, m5d.8xlarge, m5d.12xlarge, m5d.16xlarge, m5d.24xlarge,
m5d.metal, m5ad.large, m5ad.xlarge, m5ad.2xlarge, m5ad.4xlarge, m5ad.8xlarge,
m5ad.12xlarge, m5ad.16xlarge, m5ad.24xlarge, h1.2xlarge, h1.4xlarge, h1.8xlarge,
h1.16xlarge, z1d.large, z1d.xlarge, z1d.2xlarge, z1d.3xlarge, z1d.6xlarge,
z1d.12xlarge, z1d.metal, u-6tb1.metal, u-9tb1.metal, u-12tb1.metal, u-18tb1.metal,
u-24tb1.metal, a1.medium, a1.large, a1.xlarge, a1.2xlarge, a1.4xlarge, a1.metal,
m5dn.large, m5dn.xlarge, m5dn.2xlarge, m5dn.4xlarge, m5dn.8xlarge, m5dn.12xlarge,
m5dn.16xlarge, m5dn.24xlarge, m5n.large, m5n.xlarge, m5n.2xlarge, m5n.4xlarge,
m5n.8xlarge, m5n.12xlarge, m5n.16xlarge, m5n.24xlarge, r5dn.large, r5dn.xlarge,
r5dn.2xlarge, r5dn.4xlarge, r5dn.8xlarge, r5dn.12xlarge, r5dn.16xlarge, r5dn.24xlarge,
r5n.large, r5n.xlarge, r5n.2xlarge, r5n.4xlarge, r5n.8xlarge, r5n.12xlarge,
r5n.16xlarge, r5n.24xlarge.
Ipv6AddressCount: 0 # [EC2-VPC] The number of IPv6 addresses to associate with the
primary network interface.

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Ipv6Addresses: # [EC2-VPC] The IPv6 addresses from the range of the subnet to associate
with the primary network interface.
- Ipv6Address: '' # The IPv6 address.
KernelId: '' # The ID of the kernel.
KeyName: '' # The name of the key pair.
MaxCount: 0 # [REQUIRED] The maximum number of instances to launch.
MinCount: 0 # [REQUIRED] The minimum number of instances to launch.
Monitoring: # Specifies whether detailed monitoring is enabled for the instance.
Enabled: true # [REQUIRED] Indicates whether detailed monitoring is enabled.
Placement: # The placement for the instance.
AvailabilityZone: '' # The Availability Zone of the instance.
Affinity: '' # The affinity setting for the instance on the Dedicated Host.
GroupName: '' # The name of the placement group the instance is in.
PartitionNumber: 0 # The number of the partition the instance is in.
HostId: '' # The ID of the Dedicated Host on which the instance resides.
Tenancy: dedicated # The tenancy of the instance (if the instance is running in a
VPC). Valid values are: default, dedicated, host.
SpreadDomain: '' # Reserved for future use.
RamdiskId: '' # The ID of the RAM disk to select.
SecurityGroupIds: # The IDs of the security groups.
- ''
SecurityGroups: # [EC2-Classic, default VPC] The names of the security groups.
- ''
SubnetId: '' # [EC2-VPC] The ID of the subnet to launch the instance into.
UserData: '' # The user data to make available to the instance.
AdditionalInfo: '' # Reserved.
ClientToken: '' # Unique, case-sensitive identifier you provide to ensure the
idempotency of the request.
DisableApiTermination: true # If you set this parameter to true, you can't terminate
the instance using the Amazon EC2 console, CLI, or API; otherwise, you can.
DryRun: true # Checks whether you have the required permissions for the action, without
actually making the request, and provides an error response.
EbsOptimized: true # Indicates whether the instance is optimized for Amazon EBS I/O.
IamInstanceProfile: # The IAM instance profile.
Arn: '' # The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the instance profile.
Name: '' # The name of the instance profile.
InstanceInitiatedShutdownBehavior: stop # Indicates whether an instance stops or
terminates when you initiate shutdown from the instance (using the operating system
command for system shutdown). Valid values are: stop, terminate.
NetworkInterfaces: # The network interfaces to associate with the instance.
- AssociatePublicIpAddress: true # Indicates whether to assign a public IPv4 address
to an instance you launch in a VPC.
DeleteOnTermination: true # If set to true, the interface is deleted when the
instance is terminated.
Description: '' # The description of the network interface.
DeviceIndex: 0 # The position of the network interface in the attachment order.
Groups: # The IDs of the security groups for the network interface.
- ''
Ipv6AddressCount: 0 # A number of IPv6 addresses to assign to the network interface.
Ipv6Addresses: # One or more IPv6 addresses to assign to the network interface.
- Ipv6Address: '' # The IPv6 address.
NetworkInterfaceId: '' # The ID of the network interface.
PrivateIpAddress: '' # The private IPv4 address of the network interface.
PrivateIpAddresses: # One or more private IPv4 addresses to assign to the network
interface.
- Primary: true # Indicates whether the private IPv4 address is the primary private
IPv4 address.
PrivateIpAddress: '' # The private IPv4 addresses.
SecondaryPrivateIpAddressCount: 0 # The number of secondary private IPv4 addresses.
SubnetId: '' # The ID of the subnet associated with the network interface.
InterfaceType: '' # The type of network interface.
PrivateIpAddress: '' # [EC2-VPC] The primary IPv4 address.
ElasticGpuSpecification: # An elastic GPU to associate with the instance.
- Type: '' # [REQUIRED] The type of Elastic Graphics accelerator.
ElasticInferenceAccelerators: # An elastic inference accelerator to associate with the
instance.

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- Type: '' # [REQUIRED] The type of elastic inference accelerator.

TagSpecifications: # The tags to apply to the resources during launch.
- ResourceType: network-interface # The type of resource to tag. Valid values are:
client-vpn-endpoint, customer-gateway, dedicated-host, dhcp-options, elastic-ip,
fleet, fpga-image, host-reservation, image, instance, internet-gateway, launch-
template, natgateway, network-acl, network-interface, reserved-instances, route-table,
security-group, snapshot, spot-instances-request, subnet, traffic-mirror-filter,
traffic-mirror-session, traffic-mirror-target, transit-gateway, transit-gateway-
attachment, transit-gateway-route-table, volume, vpc, vpc-peering-connection, vpn-
connection, vpn-gateway.
Tags: # The tags to apply to the resource.
- Key: '' # The key of the tag.
Value: '' # The value of the tag.
LaunchTemplate: # The launch template to use to launch the instances.
LaunchTemplateId: '' # The ID of the launch template.
LaunchTemplateName: '' # The name of the launch template.
Version: '' # The version number of the launch template.
InstanceMarketOptions: # The market (purchasing) option for the instances.
MarketType: spot # The market type. Valid values are: spot.
SpotOptions: # The options for Spot Instances.
MaxPrice: '' # The maximum hourly price you're willing to pay for the Spot
Instances.
SpotInstanceType: one-time # The Spot Instance request type. Valid values are: one-
time, persistent.
BlockDurationMinutes: 0 # The required duration for the Spot Instances (also known
as Spot blocks), in minutes.
ValidUntil: 1970-01-01 00:00:00 # The end date of the request.
InstanceInterruptionBehavior: terminate # The behavior when a Spot Instance is
interrupted. Valid values are: hibernate, stop, terminate.
CreditSpecification: # The credit option for CPU usage of the T2 or T3 instance.
CpuCredits: '' # [REQUIRED] The credit option for CPU usage of a T2 or T3 instance.
CpuOptions: # The CPU options for the instance.
CoreCount: 0 # The number of CPU cores for the instance.
ThreadsPerCore: 0 # The number of threads per CPU core.
CapacityReservationSpecification: # Information about the Capacity Reservation
targeting option.
CapacityReservationPreference: none # Indicates the instance's Capacity Reservation
preferences. Valid values are: open, none.
CapacityReservationTarget: # Information about the target Capacity Reservation.
CapacityReservationId: '' # The ID of the Capacity Reservation.
HibernationOptions: # Indicates whether an instance is enabled for hibernation.
Configured: true # If you set this parameter to true, your instance is enabled for
hibernation.
LicenseSpecifications: # The license configurations.
- LicenseConfigurationArn: '' # The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the license
configuration.

To generate and use a parameter skeleton ﬁle

1. Run the command with the --generate-cli-skeleton parameter to produce either JSON or
YAML and direct the output to a ﬁle to save it.

JSON

$ aws ec2 run-instances --generate-cli-skeleton input > ec2runinst.json

YAML

$ aws ec2 run-instances --generate-cli-skeleton yaml-input > ec2runinst.yaml

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2. Open the parameter skeleton ﬁle in your text editor and remove any of the parameters that you
don't need. For example, you might strip the template down to the following. Be sure that the ﬁle is
still valid JSON or YAML after you remove the elements you don't need.

JSON

{
"DryRun": true,
"ImageId": "",
"KeyName": "",
"SecurityGroups": [
""
],
"InstanceType": "",
"Monitoring": {
"Enabled": true
}
}

YAML

DryRun: true
ImageId: ''
KeyName: ''
SecurityGroups:
- ''
InstanceType:
Monitoring:
Enabled: true

In this example, we leave the DryRun parameter set to true to use the Amazon EC2 dry run feature.
This feature lets you safely test the command without actually creating or modifying any resources.
3. Fill in the remaining values with values appropriate for your scenario. In this example, we provide
the instance type, key name, security group, and identifier of the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to
use. This example assumes the default AWS Region. The AMI ami-dfc39aef is a 64-bit Amazon
Linux image hosted in the us-west-2 Region. If you use a different Region, you must find the
correct AMI ID to use.

JSON

{
"DryRun": true,
"ImageId": "ami-dfc39aef",
"KeyName": "mykey",
"SecurityGroups": [
"my-sg"
],
"InstanceType": "t2.micro",
"Monitoring": {
"Enabled": true
}
}

YAML

DryRun: true
ImageId: 'ami-dfc39aef'
KeyName: 'mykey'
SecurityGroups:

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- 'my-sg'
InstanceType: 't2.micro'
Monitoring:
Enabled: true

4. Run the command with the completed parameters by passing the completed template file to either
the --cli-input-json or --cli-input-yaml parameter by using the file:// prefix. The AWS
CLI interprets the path to be relative to your current working directory, so in the following example
that displays only the file name with no path, it looks for the file directly in the current working
directory.

JSON

$ aws ec2 run-instances --cli-input-json file://ec2runinst.json

A client error (DryRunOperation) occurred when calling the RunInstances operation:

Request would have succeeded, but DryRun flag is set.

YAML

$ aws ec2 run-instances --cli-input-yaml file://ec2runinst.yaml

A client error (DryRunOperation) occurred when calling the RunInstances operation:

Request would have succeeded, but DryRun flag is set.

The dry run error indicates that the JSON or YAML is formed correctly and that the parameter values
are valid. If other issues are reported in the output, ﬁx them and repeat the previous step until the
"Request would have succeeded" message is displayed.
5. Now you can set the DryRun parameter to false to disable dry run.

JSON

{
"DryRun": false,
"ImageId": "ami-dfc39aef",
"KeyName": "mykey",
"SecurityGroups": [
"my-sg"
],
"InstanceType": "t2.micro",
"Monitoring": {
"Enabled": true
}
}

YAML

DryRun: false
ImageId: 'ami-dfc39aef'
KeyName: 'mykey'
SecurityGroups:
- 'my-sg'
InstanceType: 't2.micro'
Monitoring:
Enabled: true

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Shorthand Syntax

6. Run the command, and run-instances actually launches an EC2 instance and displays the details
generated by the successful launch. The format of the output is controlled by the --output
parameter, separately from the format of your input parameter template.

JSON

$ aws ec2 run-instances --cli-input-json file://ec2runinst.json --output json

{
"OwnerId": "123456789012",
"ReservationId": "r-d94a2b1",
"Groups": [],
"Instances": [
...

YAML

$ aws ec2 run-instances --cli-input-yaml file://ec2runinst.yaml --output yaml

OwnerId: '123456789012'
ReservationId: 'r-d94a2b1',
Groups":
- ''
Instances:
...

Using shorthand syntax with the AWS CLI

The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) can accept many of its option parameters in JSON format.
However, it can be tedious to enter large JSON lists or structures on the command line. To make this
easier, the AWS CLI also supports a shorthand syntax that enables a simpler representation of your
option parameters than using the full JSON format.

Structure parameters
The shorthand syntax in the AWS CLI makes it easier for users to input parameters that are ﬂat (non-
nested structures). The format is a comma-separated list of key-value pairs.

Linux or macOS

--option key1=value1,key2=value2,key3=value3

PowerShell

--option "key1=value1,key2=value2,key3=value3"

These are both equivalent to the following example, formatted in JSON.

--option '{"key1":"value1","key2":"value2","key3":"value3"}'

There must be no white space between each comma-separated key-value pair. Here is an example of the
Amazon DynamoDB update-table command with the --provisioned-throughput option speciﬁed
in shorthand.

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$ aws dynamodb update-table \

--provisioned-throughput ReadCapacityUnits=15,WriteCapacityUnits=10 \
--table-name MyDDBTable

This is equivalent to the following example formatted in JSON.

$ aws dynamodb update-table \

--provisioned-throughput '{"ReadCapacityUnits":15,"WriteCapacityUnits":10}' \
--table-name MyDDBTable

Using shorthand syntax with the AWS Command Line Interface

You can specify Input parameters in a list form in two ways: JSON or shorthand. The AWS CLI shorthand
syntax is designed to make it easier to pass in lists with number, string, or non-nested structures.

The basic format is shown here, where values in the list are separated by a single space.

--option value1 value2 value3

This is equivalent to the following example, formatted in JSON.

--option '[value1,value2,value3]'

As previously mentioned, you can specify a list of numbers, a list of strings, or a list of non-nested
structures in shorthand. The following is an example of the stop-instances command for Amazon
Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), where the input parameter (list of strings) for the --instance-
ids option is speciﬁed in shorthand.

$ aws ec2 stop-instances \

--instance-ids i-1486157a i-1286157c i-ec3a7e87

This is equivalent to the following example formatted in JSON.

$ aws ec2 stop-instances \

--instance-ids '["i-1486157a","i-1286157c","i-ec3a7e87"]'

The following example shows the Amazon EC2 create-tags command, which takes a list of non-
nested structures for the --tags option. The --resources option speciﬁes the ID of the instance to
tag.

$ aws ec2 create-tags \

--resources i-1286157c \
--tags Key=My1stTag,Value=Value1 Key=My2ndTag,Value=Value2 Key=My3rdTag,Value=Value3

This is equivalent to the following example, formatted in JSON. The JSON parameter is written over
multiple lines for readability.

$ aws ec2 create-tags \

--resources i-1286157c \
--tags '[
{"Key": "My1stTag", "Value": "Value1"},
{"Key": "My2ndTag", "Value": "Value2"},
{"Key": "My3rdTag", "Value": "Value3"}

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Auto-prompt

Having the AWS CLI prompt you for commands

This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you run
AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating, and
uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

You can have the AWS CLI version 2 prompt you commands, parameters, and resources when you run an
aws command.

Topics
• How it works (p. 114)
• Auto-prompt features (p. 114)
• Auto-prompt modes (p. 116)
• Conﬁgure auto-prompt (p. 117)

How it works
If enabled, the auto-prompt enables you to use the ENTER key to complete a partially entered
command. After pressing the ENTER key, commands, parameters, and resources are suggested based on
what you continue to type. The suggestions list the name of the command, parameter, or resource on the
left and a description of it on the right. To select and use a suggestion, use the arrows keys to highlight a
row, and then press the SPACE key. When you've ﬁnished entering in your command, press ENTER to use
the command. The following example demonstrates what a suggested list from auto-prompt looks like.

$ aws
> aws a
accessanalyzer Access Analyzer
acm AWS Certificate Manager
acm-pca AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority
alexaforbusiness Alexa For Business
amplify AWS Amplify

Auto-prompt features
The auto-prompt contains the following useful features:

Documentation panel

Provides the help documentation for the current command. To open the documentation, press the
F3 key.
Command completion

Suggests aws commands to use. To see a list, partially enter the command. The following example is
searching for a service starting with the letter a.

$ aws
> aws a
accessanalyzer Access Analyzer
acm AWS Certificate Manager

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acm-pca AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate

Authority
alexaforbusiness Alexa For Business
amplify AWS Amplify

Parameter completion

After a command is typed, auto-prompt starts to suggest parameters. The descriptions for the
parameters include the value type, and a description of what the parameter is. Required parameters
are listed ﬁrst, and are labeled as required. The following example shows the auto-prompt list of
parameters for aws dynamodb describe-table.

$ aws dynamodb describe-table

> aws dynamodb describe-table
--table-name (required) [string] The name of the table
to describe.
--cli-input-json [string] Reads arguments from
the JSON string provided. The JSON string follows the format provide...
--cli-input-yaml [string] Reads arguments from
the YAML string provided. The YAML string follows the format provide...
--generate-cli-skeleton [string] Prints a JSON skeleton
to standard output without sending an API request. If provided wit...

Resource completion

The auto-prompt makes AWS API calls using available AWS resource properties to suggest resource
values. This allows for auto-prompt to suggest possible resources you own when entering in
parameters. In the following example auto-prompt lists your table names when ﬁlling in the --
table-name parameter for the aws dynamodb describe-table command.

$ aws dynamodb describe-table

> aws dynamodb describe-table --table-name
Table1
Table2
Table3

Shorthand completion

For parameters that use shorthand syntax, auto-prompt suggests values to use. In the following
example, auto-prompt lists shorthand syntax values for the --placement parameter in the aws
ec2 run-stances command.

$ aws ec2 run-instances

> aws ec2 run-instances --placement
AvailabilityZone= [string] The Availability Zone of the instance. If not
specified, an Availability Zone wil...
Affinity= [string] The affinity setting for the instance on the Dedicated
Host. This parameter is no...
GroupName= [string] The name of the placement group the instance is in.
PartitionNumber= [integer] The number of the partition the instance is in. Valid
only if the placement grou...

File completion

When filling out parameters in aws commands, auto-complete suggests local filenames after using
the prefix file:// or fileb://. In the following example, auto-prompt suggests local files after
entering in --item file:// for the aws ec2 run-instances command.

$ aws ec2 run-instances

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> aws ec2 run-instances --item file://

item1.txt
file1.json
file2.json

Region completion

When using the global parameter --region, auto-prompt lists possible regions to select from.
In the following example, auto-prompt suggests regions in alphabetical order after entering in --
region for the aws dynamodb list-tables command.

$ aws dynamodb list-tables

> aws dynamodb list-tables --region
af-south-1
ap-east-1
ap-northeast-1
ap-northeast-2

Proﬁle completion

When using the global parameter --profile, auto-prompt lists your proﬁles. In the following
example, auto-prompt suggests your proﬁles after entering in --profile for the aws dynamodb
list-tables command.

$ aws dynamodb list-tables

> aws dynamodb list-tables --profile
profile1
profile2
profile3

Fuzzy searching

Complete commands and values that contain a speciﬁc set of characters. In the following example,
auto-prompt suggests regions that contain eu after entering in --region eu for the aws
dynamodb list-tables command.

$ aws dynamodb list-tables

> aws dynamodb list-tables --region west
eu-west-1
eu-west-2
eu-west-3
us-west-1

History

To view and run previously used commands in auto-prompt mode, press CTRL + R. History lists
previous commands that you can select by using the arrow keys. In the following example, the auto-
prompt mode history is displayed.

$ aws
> aws
dynamodb list-tables
s3 ls

Auto-prompt modes
Auto-prompt for the AWS CLI version 2 has 2 modes that can be conﬁgured:

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Conﬁgure auto-prompt

• Full mode: Uses auto-prompt each time you attempt to run an aws command, whether you manually
call it using the --cli-auto-prompt parameter or permanently enabled it. This includes pressing
ENTER after both a complete command or incomplete command.
• Partial mode: Uses auto-prompt if a command is incomplete or cannot be run due to client-side
validation errors. This mode is particular useful if you have pre-existing scripts, runbooks, or you only
want to be auto-prompted for commands you are unfamiliar with rather than prompted on every
command.

Conﬁgure auto-prompt
To conﬁgure auto-prompt you can use the following methods in order of precedence:

• Command line options enable or disable auto-prompt for a single command. Use --cli-auto-
prompt (p. 72) to call auto-prompt and --no-cli-auto-prompt (p. 73) to disable auto-
prompt.
• Environment variables use the aws_cli_auto_prompt (p. 69) variable.
• Shared conﬁg ﬁles use the cli_auto_prompt (p. 52) setting.

Controlling command output from the AWS CLI

This section describes the diﬀerent ways to control the output from the AWS Command Line Interface
(AWS CLI).

Topics
• Setting the AWS CLI output format (p. 117)
• Using AWS CLI pagination options (p. 124)
• Filtering AWS CLI output (p. 128)

Setting the AWS CLI output format

This topic describes the diﬀerent output formats for the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). The
AWS CLI supports the following output formats:

• json (p. 118) – The output is formatted as a JSON string.

Topics
• How to select the output format (p. 117)
• JSON output format (p. 118)
• YAML output format (p. 119)

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Output Format

• YAML stream output format (p. 119)

• Text output format (p. 120)
• Table output format (p. 123)

How to select the output format

As explained in the conﬁguration (p. 45) topic, you can specify the output format in three ways:

• Using the output option in a named proﬁle in the config ﬁle – The following example sets the
default output format to text.

[default]
output=text

• Using the AWS_DEFAULT_OUTPUT environment variable – The following output sets the format to
table for the commands in this command line session until the variable is changed or the session
ends. Using this environment variable overrides any value set in the config ﬁle.

$ export AWS_DEFAULT_OUTPUT="table"

• Using the --output option on the command line – The following example sets the output of
only this one command to json. Using this option on the command overrides any currently set
environment variable or the value in the config ﬁle.

$ aws swf list-domains --registration-status REGISTERED --output json

JSON output format

JSON is the default output format of the AWS CLI. Most programming languages can easily decode JSON
strings using built-in functions or with publicly available libraries. You can combine JSON output with the
--query option (p. 128) in powerful ways to ﬁlter and format the AWS CLI JSON-formatted output.

For more advanced filtering that you might not be able to do with --query, you can consider
jq, a command line JSON processor. You can download it and find the official tutorial at http://
stedolan.github.io/jq/.

The following is an example of JSON output.

$ aws iam list-users --output json

{
"Users": [
{
"Path": "/",
"UserName": "Admin",
"UserId": "AIDA1111111111EXAMPLE",
"Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin",
"CreateDate": "2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00",
"PasswordLastUsed": "2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00"
},
{
"Path": "/backup/",
"UserName": "backup-user",
"UserId": "AIDA2222222222EXAMPLE",
"Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup/backup-user",

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"CreateDate": "2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00"
},
{
"Path": "/",
"UserName": "cli-user",
"UserId": "AIDA3333333333EXAMPLE",
"Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-user",
"CreateDate": "2019-09-17T19:11:39+00:00"
}
]
}

YAML output format

This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you run
AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating, and
uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

YAML is a good choice for handling the output programmatically with services and tools that emit or
consume YAML-formatted strings, such as AWS CloudFormation with its support for YAML-formatted
templates.

For more advanced ﬁltering that you might not be able to do with --query, you can consider
yq, a command line YAML processor. You can download it and ﬁnd documentation at https://
mikefarah.gitbook.io/yq/.

The following is an example of YAML output.

$ aws iam list-users --output yaml

Users:
- Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin
CreateDate: '2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00'
PasswordLastUsed: '2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00'
Path: /
UserId: AIDA1111111111EXAMPLE
UserName: Admin
- Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup/backup-user
CreateDate: '2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00'
Path: /backup/
UserId: AIDA2222222222EXAMPLE
UserName: arq-45EFD6D1-CE56-459B-B39F-F9C1F78FBE19
- Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-user
CreateDate: '2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00'
Path: /
UserId: AIDA3333333333EXAMPLE
UserName: cli-user

YAML stream output format

This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you run
AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating, and
uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

The yaml-stream format takes advantage of the YAML format while providing more responsive/faster
viewing of large data sets by streaming the data to you. You can start viewing and using YAML data
before the entire query downloads.

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For more advanced ﬁltering that you might not be able to do with --query, you can consider
yq, a command line YAML processor. You can download it and ﬁnd documentation at http://
mikefarah.github.io/yq/.

The following is an example of yaml-stream output.

$ aws iam list-users --output yaml-stream

- IsTruncated: false
Users:
- Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin
CreateDate: '2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00'
PasswordLastUsed: '2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00'
Path: /
UserId: AIDA1111111111EXAMPLE
UserName: Admin
- Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup/backup-user
CreateDate: '2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00'
Path: /backup/
UserId: AIDA2222222222EXAMPLE
UserName: arq-45EFD6D1-CE56-459B-B39F-F9C1F78FBE19
- Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-user
CreateDate: '2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00'
Path: /
UserId: AIDA3333333333EXAMPLE
UserName: cli-user

The following is an example of yaml-stream output in conjunction with using the --page-size
parameter to paginate the streamed YAML content.

$ aws iam list-users --output yaml-stream --page-size 2

- IsTruncated: true
Marker: ab1234cdef5ghi67jk8lmo9p/
q012rs3t445uv6789w0x1y2z/345a6b78c9d00/1efgh234ij56klmno78pqrstu90vwxyx
Users:
- Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin
CreateDate: '2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00'
PasswordLastUsed: '2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00'
Path: /
UserId: AIDA1111111111EXAMPLE
UserName: Admin
- Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup/backup-user
CreateDate: '2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00'
Path: /backup/
UserId: AIDA2222222222EXAMPLE
UserName: arq-45EFD6D1-CE56-459B-B39F-F9C1F78FBE19
- IsTruncated: false
Users:
- Arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-user
CreateDate: '2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00'
Path: /
UserId: AIDA3333333333EXAMPLE
UserName: cli-user

Text output format

The text format organizes the AWS CLI output into tab-delimited lines. It works well with traditional
Unix text tools such as grep, sed, and awk, and the text processing performed by PowerShell.

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Output Format

The text output format follows the basic structure shown below. The columns are sorted alphabetically
by the corresponding key names of the underlying JSON object.

IDENTIFIER sorted-column1 sorted-column2

IDENTIFIER2 sorted-column1 sorted-column2

The following is an example of text output. Each ﬁeld is tab separated from the others, with an extra
tab where there is an empty ﬁeld.

$ aws iam list-users --output text

USERS arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin 2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00

2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00 / AIDA1111111111EXAMPLE Admin
USERS arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup/backup-user 2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00
/backup/ AIDA2222222222EXAMPLE backup-user
USERS arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-user 2019-09-17T19:11:39+00:00
/ AIDA3333333333EXAMPLE cli-user

The fourth column is the PasswordLastUsed field, and is empty for the last two entries because those
users never sign in to the AWS Management Console.
Important
We strongly recommend that if you specify text output, you also always use the --
query (p. 128) option to ensure consistent behavior.
This is because the text format alphabetically orders output columns by the key name of the
underlying JSON object returned by the AWS service, and similar resources might not have the
same key names. For example, the JSON representation of a Linux-based Amazon EC2 instance
might have elements that are not present in the JSON representation of a Windows-based
instance, or vice versa. Also, resources might have key-value elements added or removed in
future updates, altering the column ordering. This is where --query augments the functionality
of the text output to provide you with complete control over the output format.
In the following example, the command specifies which elements to display and defines the
ordering of the columns with the list notation [key1, key2, ...]. This gives you full
confidence that the correct key values are always displayed in the expected column. Finally,
notice how the AWS CLI outputs None as the value for keys that don't exist.

$ aws iam list-users --output text --query 'Users[*].

[UserName,Arn,CreateDate,PasswordLastUsed,UserId]'

Admin arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin
2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00 2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00 AIDA1111111111EXAMPLE
backup-user arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup-user
2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00 None AIDA2222222222EXAMPLE
cli-user arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-backup
2019-09-17T19:11:39+00:00 None AIDA3333333333EXAMPLE

The following example shows how you can use grep and awk with the text output from the aws ec2
describe-instances command. The ﬁrst command displays the Availability Zone, current state, and
the instance ID of each instance in text output. The second command processes that output to display
only the instance IDs of all running instances in the us-west-2a Availability Zone.

$ aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].

[Placement.AvailabilityZone, State.Name, InstanceId]' --output text

us-west-2a running i-4b41a37c

us-west-2a stopped i-a071c394

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us-west-2b stopped i-97a217a0

us-west-2a running i-3045b007
us-west-2a running i-6fc67758

$ aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].

[Placement.AvailabilityZone, State.Name, InstanceId]' --output text | grep us-west-2a |
grep running | awk '{print $3}'

i-4b41a37c
i-3045b007
i-6fc67758

The following example goes a step further and shows not only how to ﬁlter the output, but how to use
that output to automate changing instance types for each stopped instance.

$ aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].[State.Name,

InstanceId]' --output text |
> grep stopped |
> awk '{print $2}' |
> while read line;
> do aws ec2 modify-instance-attribute --instance-id $line --instance-type '{"Value":
"m1.medium"}';
> done

The text output can also be useful in PowerShell. Because the columns in text output are tab
delimited, you can easily split the output into an array by using PowerShell's `t delimiter. The following
command displays the value of the third column (InstanceId) if the ﬁrst column (AvailabilityZone)
matches the string us-west-2a.

PS C:\>aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].

[Placement.AvailabilityZone, State.Name, InstanceId]' --output text |
%{if ($_.split("`t")[0] -match "us-west-2a") { $_.split("`t")[2]; } }

-4b41a37c
i-a071c394
i-3045b007
i-6fc67758

Notice that although the previous example does show how to use the --query parameter to parse the
underlying JSON objects and pull out the desired column, PowerShell has its own ability to handle JSON,
if cross-platform compatibility isn't a concern. Instead of handling the output as text, as most command
shells require, PowerShell lets you use the ConvertFrom-JSON cmdlet to produce a hierarchically
structured object. You can then directly access the member you want from that object.

(aws ec2 describe-instances --output json | ConvertFrom-

Json).Reservations.Instances.InstanceId

Tip
If you output text, and filter the output to a single field using the --query parameter, the
output is a single line of tab-separated values. To get each value onto a separate line, you can
put the output field in brackets, as shown in the following examples.
Tab separated, single-line output:

$ aws iam list-groups-for-user --user-name susan --output text --query

"Groups[].GroupName"

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HRDepartment Developers SpreadsheetUsers LocalAdmins

Each value on its own line by putting [GroupName] in brackets:

$ aws iam list-groups-for-user --user-name susan --output text --query

"Groups[].[GroupName]"

HRDepartment
Developers
SpreadsheetUsers
LocalAdmins

Table output format

The table format produces human-readable representations of complex AWS CLI output in a tabular
form.

$ aws iam list-users --output table

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| ListUsers
|
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
|| Users
||
|+----------------------------------------------------+---------------------------
+---------------------------+----------+-----------------------+-------------+|
|| Arn | CreateDate |
PasswordLastUsed | Path | UserId | UserName ||
|+----------------------------------------------------+---------------------------
+---------------------------+----------+-----------------------+-------------+|
|| arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Admin | 2014-10-16T16:03:09+00:00 |
2016-06-03T18:37:29+00:00 | / | AIDA1111111111EXAMPLE | Admin ||
|| arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/backup/backup-user | 2019-09-17T19:30:40+00:00 |
| /backup/ | AIDA2222222222EXAMPLE | backup-user ||
|| arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/cli-user | 2019-09-17T19:11:39+00:00 |
| / | AIDA3333333333EXAMPLE | cli-user ||
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+

You can combine the --query option with the table format to display a set of elements preselected
from the raw output. Notice the output differences between dictionary and list notations: in the first
example, column names are ordered alphabetically, and in the second example, unnamed columns are
ordered as defined by the user. For more information about the --query option, see Filtering AWS CLI
output (p. 128).

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes --query 'Volumes[*].

{ID:VolumeId,InstanceId:Attachments[0].InstanceId,AZ:AvailabilityZone,Size:Size}' --output
table

------------------------------------------------------
| DescribeVolumes |
+------------+----------------+--------------+-------+
| AZ | ID | InstanceId | Size |
+------------+----------------+--------------+-------+

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| us-west-2a| vol-e11a5288 | i-a071c394 | 30 |

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes --query 'Volumes[*].

[VolumeId,Attachments[0].InstanceId,AvailabilityZone,Size]' --output table

----------------------------------------------------
| DescribeVolumes |
+--------------+--------------+--------------+-----+
| vol-e11a5288| i-a071c394 | us-west-2a | 30 |
| vol-2e410a47| i-4b41a37c | us-west-2a | 8 |
+--------------+--------------+--------------+-----+

Using AWS CLI pagination options

This topic describes the diﬀerent ways to paginate output from the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS
CLI). There are primarily two ways to control pagination from the AWS CLI.

• Using server-side pagination parameters. (p. 124)

• Using your default output client-side paging program (p. 126).

Server-side pagination parameters process ﬁrst and any output is sent to client-side pagination.

Server-side pagination
For commands that can return a large list of items, the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) has
multiple options to control the number of items included in the output when the AWS CLI calls a
service's API to populate the list.

• --no-paginate
• --page-size
• --max-items
• --starting-token

By default, the AWS CLI uses a page size of 1000 and retrieves all available items. For example, if you
run aws s3api list-objects on an Amazon S3 bucket that contains 3,500 objects, the AWS CLI
automatically makes four calls to Amazon S3, handling the service-speciﬁc pagination logic for you in
the background and returning all 3,500 objects in the ﬁnal output.

How to use the --no-paginate parameter

To disable pagination and return only the ﬁrst page of results, use the --no-paginate option. When
using a command, by default the AWS CLI automatically makes multiple calls to return all possible
results to create pagination. One call for each page. Disabling pagination has the AWS CLI only call once
for the ﬁrst page of command results.

For example, if you run aws s3api list-objects on an Amazon S3 bucket that contains 3,500
objects, the AWS CLI only makes the first call to Amazon S3, returning only the first 1,000 objects in the
final output.

$ aws s3api list-objects \

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--bucket my-bucket \
--no-paginate
{
"Contents": [
...

How to use the --page-size parameter

If you see issues when running list commands on a large number of resources, the default page size of
1000 might be too high. This can cause calls to AWS services to exceed the maximum allowed time and
generate a "timed out" error. You can use the --page-size option to specify that the AWS CLI request
a smaller number of items from each call to the AWS service. The CLI still retrieves the full list, but
performs a larger number of service API calls in the background and retrieves a smaller number of items
with each call. This gives the individual calls a better chance of succeeding without a timeout. Changing
the page size doesn't aﬀect the output; it aﬀects only the number of API calls that need to be made to
generate the output.

$ aws s3api list-objects \

--bucket my-bucket \
--page-size 100
{
"Contents": [
...

How to use the --max-items parameter

To include fewer items at a time in the AWS CLI output, use the --max-items option. The AWS CLI still
handles pagination with the service as described previously, but prints out only the number of items at a
time that you specify.

$ aws s3api list-objects \

--bucket my-bucket \
--max-items 100
{
"NextToken": "eyJNYXJrZXIiOiBudWxsLCAiYm90b190cnVuY2F0ZV9hbW91bnQiOiAxfQ==",
"Contents": [
...

How to use the --starting-token parameter

If the number of items output (--max-items) is fewer than the total number of items returned by the
underlying API calls, the output includes a NextToken that you can pass to a subsequent command to
retrieve the next set of items. The following example shows how to use the NextToken value returned
by the previous example, and enables you to retrieve the second 100 items.
Note
The parameter --starting-token cannot be null or empty. If the previous command does not
return a NextToken value, there are no more items to return and you do not need to call the
command again.

$ aws s3api list-objects \

--bucket my-bucket \
--max-items 100 \
--starting-token eyJNYXJrZXIiOiBudWxsLCAiYm90b190cnVuY2F0ZV9hbW91bnQiOiAxfQ==
{
"Contents": [
...

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The speciﬁed AWS service might not return items in the same order each time you call. If you specify
diﬀerent values for --page-size and --max-items, you can get unexpected results with missing or
duplicated items. To prevent this, use the same number for --page-size and --max-items to sync
the AWS CLI pagination with the pagination of the underlying service. You can also retrieve the whole list
and perform any necessary paging operations locally.

Client-side pager
This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you run
AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating, and
uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

AWS CLI version 2 provides the use of a client-side pager program for output. By default, this feature
returns all output through your operating system’s default pager program.

In order of precedence, you can specify the output pager in the following ways:

• Using the cli_pager setting in the config ﬁle in a named proﬁle.

• Using the AWS_PAGER environment variable.
• Using the cli_pager setting in the config ﬁle in default proﬁle.
• Using the PAGER environment variable.

In order of precedence, you can disable all use of an external paging program in the following ways:

• Use the --no-cli-pager command line option to disable the pager for a single command use.
• Set the cli_pager setting or AWS_PAGER variable to an empty string.

How to use the cli_pager setting

You can save your frequently used configuration settings and credentials in files that are maintained by
the AWS CLI. Settings in a name profile take precedence over settings in the default profile. For more
information on configuration settings, see Configuration and credential file settings (p. 48).

The following example sets the default output pager to the less program.

[default]
cli_pager=less

The following example sets the default to disable the use of a pager.

[default]
cli_pager=

How to use the AWS_PAGER environment variable

The following example sets the default output pager to the less program. For more information on
environment variables, seeEnvironment variables to conﬁgure the AWS CLI (p. 68).

Linux and macOS

$ export AWS_PAGER="less"

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Windows

C:\> setx AWS_PAGER "less"

The following example disables the use of a pager.

Linux and macOS

$ export AWS_PAGER=""

Windows

C:\> setx AWS_PAGER ""

How to use the --no-cli-pager option

To disable the use of a pager on a single command, use the --no-cli-pager option. For more
information on command line options, see Command line options (p. 71).

$ aws s3api list-objects \

--bucket my-bucket \
--no-cli-pager
{
"Contents": [
...

How to use pager ﬂags

You can specify ﬂags to use automatically with your paging program. Flags are dependent on the paging
program you use. The below examples are for the typical defaults of less and more.

Linux and macOS

If you do not specify otherwise, the pager AWS CLI version 2 uses by default is less. If you don't
have the LESS environment variable set, the AWS CLI version 2 uses the FRX ﬂags. You can combine
ﬂags by specifying them when setting the AWS CLI pager.

The following example uses the S flag. This flag then combines with the default FRX flags to create a
final FRXS flag.

$ export AWS_PAGER="less -S"

If you don't want any of the FRX flags, you can negate them. The following example negates the F
flag to create a final RX flag.

$ export AWS_PAGER="less -+F"

For more information on less ﬂags see less on manpages.org.

Windows

If you do not specify otherwise, the pager AWS CLI version 2 uses by default is more with no
additional ﬂags.

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The following example uses the /c parameter.

C:\> setx AWS_PAGER "more /c"

For more information on more ﬂags see more on Microsoft Docs.

Filtering AWS CLI output

The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) has both server-side and client-side filtering that you can
use individually or together to filter your AWS CLI output. Server-side filtering is processed first and
returns your output for client-side filtering.

• Server-side filtering is supported by the API, and you usually implement it with a --filter
parameter. The service only returns matching results which can speed up HTTP response times for
large data sets.
• Client-side filtering is supported by the AWS CLI client using the --query parameter. This parameter
has capabilities the server-side filtering may not have.

Topics
• Server-side filtering (p. 128)
• Client-side filtering (p. 128)
• Combining server-side and client-side filtering (p. 143)
• Additional resources (p. 143)

Server-side filtering
Server-side filtering in the AWS CLI is provided by the AWS service API. The AWS service only returns the
records in the HTTP response that match your filter, which can speed up HTTP response times for large
data sets. Since server-side filtering is defined by the service API, the parameter names and functions
vary between services. Some common parameter names used for filtering are:

• --filter such as ses and ce.

• --filters such as ec2, autoscaling, and rds.
• Names starting with the word filter, for example --filter-expression for the aws dynamodb
scan command.

For information about whether a specific command has server-side filtering and the filtering rules, see
the AWS CLI Command Reference.

Client-side filtering
The AWS CLI provides built-in JSON-based client-side filtering capabilities with the --query parameter.
The --query parameter is a powerful tool you can use to customize the content and style of your
output. The --query parameter takes the HTTP response that comes back from the server and filters
the results before displaying them. Since the entire HTTP response is sent to the client before filtering,
client-side filtering can be slower than server-side filtering for large data-sets.

Querying uses JMESPath syntax to create expressions for ﬁltering your output. To learn JMESPath syntax,
see Tutorial on the JMESPath website.
Important
The output type you specify changes how the --query option operates:

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• If you specify --output text, the output is paginated before the --query filter is applied,
and the AWS CLI runs the query once on each page of the output. Due to this, the query
includes the first matching element on each page which can result in unexpected extra
output. To work around this extra output, you can specify --no-paginate to apply the filter
only to the complete set of results, but may result in long output. To additionally filter the
output, you can use other command line tools such as head or tail.
• If you specify --output json, --output yaml, or --output yaml-stream the output
is completely processed as a single, native structure before the --query filter is applied. The
AWS CLI runs the query only once against the entire structure, producing a filtered result that
is then output.

Client-side ﬁltering topics

• Before you start (p. 129)
• Identifiers (p. 130)
• Selecting from a list (p. 131)
• Filtering nested data (p. 135)
• Flattening results (p. 136)
• Filtering for specific values (p. 136)
• Piping expressions (p. 137)
• Filtering for multiple identifier values (p. 138)
• Adding labels to identifier values (p. 139)
• Functions (p. 140)
• Advanced --query examples (p. 141)

Before you start

When using ﬁlter expressions used in these examples, be sure to use the correct quoting rules for your
terminal shell. For more information, see the section called “Quotes with Strings” (p. 100).

The following JSON output shows an example of what the --query parameter can produce. The output
describes three Amazon EBS volumes attached to separate Amazon EC2 instances.

Example output

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes

{
"Volumes": [
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-a071c394",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-f23ec1c8",
"CreateTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",

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"Size": 30
},
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2013-09-18T20:26:16.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-4b41a37c",
"VolumeId": "vol-2e410a47",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-2e410a47",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-708e8348",
"CreateTime": "2013-09-18T20:26:15.000Z",
"Size": 8
},
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2020-11-20T19:54:06.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-1jd73kv8",
"VolumeId": "vol-a1b3c7nd",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-a1b3c7nd",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-234087fb",
"CreateTime": "2020-11-20T19:54:05.000Z",
"Size": 15
}
]
}

Identifiers
Identifier are the labels for output values. When creating filters, you use identifiers to narrow down your
query results. In the following output example, all identifiers such as Volumes, AvailabilityZone,
and AttachTime are highlighted.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes

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"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-f23ec1c8",
"CreateTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",
"Size": 30
},
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2013-09-18T20:26:16.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-4b41a37c",
"VolumeId": "vol-2e410a47",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-2e410a47",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-708e8348",
"CreateTime": "2013-09-18T20:26:15.000Z",
"Size": 8
},
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2020-11-20T19:54:06.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-1jd73kv8",
"VolumeId": "vol-a1b3c7nd",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-a1b3c7nd",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-234087fb",
"CreateTime": "2020-11-20T19:54:05.000Z",
"Size": 15
}
]
}

For more information, see Identiﬁers on the JMESPath website.

Selecting from a list

A list or array is an identiﬁer that is followed by a square bracket "[" such as Volumes and Attachments
in the the section called “Before you start” (p. 129).

Syntax

<listName>[ ]

To ﬁlter through all output from an array, you can use the wildcard notation. Wildcard expressions are
expressions used to return elements using the * notation.

The following example queries all Volumes content.

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$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[*]'
[
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-a071c394",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-f23ec1c8",
"CreateTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",
"Size": 30
},
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2020-11-20T19:54:06.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-1jd73kv8",
"VolumeId": "vol-a1b3c7nd",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-a1b3c7nd",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-234087fb",
"CreateTime": "2020-11-20T19:54:05.000Z",
"Size": 15
}
]

To view a speciﬁc volume in the array by index, you call the array index. For example, the ﬁrst item in the
Volumes array has an index of 0, resulting in the Volumes[0] query. For more information about array
indexes, see index expressions on the JMESPath website.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[0]'
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-a071c394",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "in-use",

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"SnapshotId": "snap-f23ec1c8",
"CreateTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",
"Size": 30
}

To view a speciﬁc range of volumes by index, use slice with the following syntax, where start is the
starting array index, stop is the index where the ﬁlter stops processing, and step is the skip interval.

Syntax

<arrayName>[<start>:<stop>:<step>]

If any of these are omitted from the slice expression, they use the following default values:

• Start – The ﬁrst index in the list, 0.

• Stop – The last index in the list.
• Step – No step skipping, where the value is 1.

To return only the ﬁrst two volumes, you use a start value of 0, a stop value of 2, and a step value of 1 as
shown in the following example.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[0:2:1]'
[
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-a071c394",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-f23ec1c8",
"CreateTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",
"Size": 30
},
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2013-09-18T20:26:16.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-4b41a37c",
"VolumeId": "vol-2e410a47",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-2e410a47",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-708e8348",
"CreateTime": "2013-09-18T20:26:15.000Z",
"Size": 8

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}
]

Since this example contains default values, you can shorten the slice from Volumes[0:2:1] to
Volumes[:2].

The following example omits default values and returns every two volumes in the entire array.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[::2]'
[
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-a071c394",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-f23ec1c8",
"CreateTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",
"Size": 30
},
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2020-11-20T19:54:06.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-1jd73kv8",
"VolumeId": "vol-a1b3c7nd",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-a1b3c7nd",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-234087fb",
"CreateTime": "2020-11-20T19:54:05.000Z",
"Size": 15
}
]

Steps can also use negative numbers to ﬁlter in the reverse order of an array as shown in the following
example.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[::-2]'
[
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2020-11-20T19:54:06.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-1jd73kv8",

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"VolumeId": "vol-a1b3c7nd",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-a1b3c7nd",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-234087fb",
"CreateTime": "2020-11-20T19:54:05.000Z",
"Size": 15
},
{
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
"Attachments": [
{
"AttachTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-a071c394",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
"VolumeType": "standard",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "in-use",
"SnapshotId": "snap-f23ec1c8",
"CreateTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",
"Size": 30
}
]

For more information, see Slices on the JMESPath website.

Filtering nested data

To narrow the ﬁltering of the Volumes[*] for nested values, you use subexpressions by appending a
period and your ﬁlter criteria.

Syntax

The following example shows all Attachments information for all volumes.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[*].Attachments'
[
[
{
"AttachTime": "2013-09-17T00:55:03.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-a071c394",
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
[
{

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"AttachTime": "2013-09-18T20:26:16.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-4b41a37c",
"VolumeId": "vol-2e410a47",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
],
[
{
"AttachTime": "2020-11-20T19:54:06.000Z",
"InstanceId": "i-1jd73kv8",
"VolumeId": "vol-a1b3c7nd",
"State": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"Device": "/dev/sda1"
}
]
]

To ﬁlter further into the nested values, append the expression for each nested indentiﬁer. The following
example lists the State for all Volumes.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[*].Attachments[*].State'
[
[
"attached"
],
[
"attached"
],
[
"attached"
]
]

Flattening results
For more information, see SubExpressions on the JMESPath website.

You can ﬂatten the results for Volumes[*].Attachments[*].State by removing the wildcard
notation resulting in the Volumes[*].Attachments[].State query. Flattening often is useful to
improve the readablity of results.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[*].Attachments[].State'
[
"attached",
"attached",
"attached"
]

For more information, see Flatten on the JMESPath website.

Filtering for speciﬁc values

To filter for specific values in a list, you use a filter expression as shown in the following syntax.

Syntax

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? <expression> <comparator> <expression>]

Expression comparators include ==, !=, <, <=, >, and >= . The following example ﬁlters for the
VolumeIds for all Volumes in an AttachedState.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[*].Attachments[?State=='attached'].VolumeId'
[
[
"vol-e11a5288"
],
[
"vol-2e410a47"
],
[
"vol-a1b3c7nd"
]
]

This can then be ﬂattened resulting in the following example.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[*].Attachments[?State=='attached'].VolumeId[]'
[
"vol-e11a5288",
"vol-2e410a47",
"vol-a1b3c7nd"
]

The following example ﬁlters for the VolumeIds of all Volumes that have a size less than 20.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[?Size < 20].VolumeId'
[
"vol-2e410a47",
"vol-a1b3c7nd"
]

For more information, see Filter Expressions on the JMESPath website.

Piping expressions
You can pipe results of a ﬁlter to a new list, and then ﬁlter the result with another expression using the
following syntax:

Syntax

<expression> | <expression>]

The following example takes the ﬁlter results of the Volumes[*].Attachments[].InstanceId

expression and outputs the ﬁrst result in the array.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[*].Attachments[].InstanceId | [0]'
"i-a071c394"

This example does this by ﬁrst creating the array from the following expression.

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$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[*].Attachments[].InstanceId'
"i-a071c394",
"i-4b41a37c",
"i-1jd73kv8"

And then returns the ﬁrst element in that array.

"i-a071c394"

For more information, see Pipe Expressions on the JMESPath website.

Filtering for multiple identiﬁer values

To ﬁlter for multiple identiﬁers, you use a multiselect list by using the following syntax:

Syntax

<listName>[].[<expression>, <expression>]

In the following example, VolumeId and VolumeType are ﬁltered in the Volumes list resulting in the
following expression.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[].[VolumeId, VolumeType]'
[
[
"vol-e11a5288",
"standard"
],
[
"vol-2e410a47",
"standard"
],
[
"vol-a1b3c7nd",
"standard"
]
]

To add nested data to the list, you add another multiselect list. The following example expands on the
previous example by also ﬁltering for InstanceId and State in the nested Attachments list. This
results in the following expression.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[].[VolumeId, VolumeType, Attachments[].[InstanceId, State]]'
[
[
"vol-e11a5288",
"standard",
[
[
"i-a071c394",
"attached"
]
]
],
[
"vol-2e410a47",

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"standard",
[
[
"i-4b41a37c",
"attached"
]
]
],
[
"vol-a1b3c7nd",
"standard",
[
[
"i-1jd73kv8",
"attached"
]
]
]
]

To be more readable, ﬂatten out the expression as shown in the following example.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[].[VolumeId, VolumeType, Attachments[].[InstanceId, VolumeId][]][]'
[
"vol-e11a5288",
"standard",
[
"i-a071c394",
"attached"
],
"vol-2e410a47",
"standard",
[
"i-4b41a37c",
"attached"
],
"vol-a1b3c7nd",
"standard",
[
"i-1jd73kv8",
"attached"
]
]

For more information, see Multiselect list on the JMESPath website.

Adding labels to identiﬁer values

To make this output easier to read, use a multiselect hash with the following syntax.

Syntax

<listName>[].{<label>: <expression>, <label>: <expression>}

Your identiﬁer label does not need to be the same as the name of the identiﬁer. The following example
uses the label Type for the VolumeType values.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[].{VolumeType: VolumeType}'
[

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{
"Type": "standard",
},
{
"Type": "standard",
},
{
"Type": "standard",
}
]

For simplicity, the following example keeps the identiﬁer names for each label and displays the
VolumeId, VolumeType, InstanceId, and State for all volumes:

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[].{VolumeId: VolumeId, VolumeType: VolumeType, InstanceId:
Attachments[0].InstanceId, State: Attachments[0].State}'
[
{
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"VolumeType": "standard",
"InstanceId": "i-a071c394",
"State": "attached"
},
{
"VolumeId": "vol-2e410a47",
"VolumeType": "standard",
"InstanceId": "i-4b41a37c",
"State": "attached"
},
{
"VolumeId": "vol-a1b3c7nd",
"VolumeType": "standard",
"InstanceId": "i-1jd73kv8",
"State": "attached"
}
]

For more information, see Multiselect hash on the JMESPath website.

Functions
The JMESPath syntax contains many functions that you can use for your queries. For information on
JMESPath functions, see Built-in Functions on the JMESPath website.

To demonstrate how you can incorporate a function into your queries, the following example uses the
sort_by function. The sort_by function sorts an array using an expression as the sort key using the
following syntax:

Syntax

sort_by(<listName>, <sort expression>)[].<expression>

The following example uses the previous multiselect hash example (p. 139) and sorts the output by
VolumeId.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'sort_by(Volumes, &VolumeId)[].{VolumeId: VolumeId, VolumeType: VolumeType,
InstanceId: Attachments[0].InstanceId, State: Attachments[0].State}'
[
{

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"VolumeId": "vol-2e410a47",
"VolumeType": "standard",
"InstanceId": "i-4b41a37c",
"State": "attached"
},
{
"VolumeId": "vol-a1b3c7nd",
"VolumeType": "standard",
"InstanceId": "i-1jd73kv8",
"State": "attached"
},
{
"VolumeId": "vol-e11a5288",
"VolumeType": "standard",
"InstanceId": "i-a071c394",
"State": "attached"
}
]

For more information, see sort_by on the JMESPath website.

Advanced --query examples

To extract information from a speciﬁc item

The following example uses the --query parameter to find a specific item in a list and then extracts
information from that item. The example lists all of the AvailabilityZones associated with the
specified service endpoint. It extracts the item from the ServiceDetails list that has the specified
ServiceName, then outputs the AvailabilityZones field from that selected item.

$ aws --region us-east-1 ec2 describe-vpc-endpoint-services \

--query 'ServiceDetails[?ServiceName==`com.amazonaws.us-east-1.ecs`].AvailabilityZones'
[
[
"us-east-1a",
"us-east-1b",
"us-east-1c",
"us-east-1d",
"us-east-1e",
"us-east-1f"
]
]

To show snapshots after the speciﬁed creation date

The following example shows how to list all of your snapshots that were created after a speciﬁed date,
including only a few of the available ﬁelds in the output.

$ aws ec2 describe-snapshots --owner self \

--output json \
--query 'Snapshots[?StartTime>=`2018-02-07`].
{Id:SnapshotId,VId:VolumeId,Size:VolumeSize}' \
[
{
"id": "snap-0effb42b7a1b2c3d4",
"vid": "vol-0be9bb0bf12345678",
"Size": 8
}
]

To show the most recent AMIs

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The following example lists the ﬁve most recent Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that you created, sorted
from most recent to oldest.

$ aws ec2 describe-images \

--owners self \
--query 'reverse(sort_by(Images,&CreationDate))[:5].{id:ImageId,date:CreationDate}'
[
{
"id": "ami-0a1b2c3d4e5f60001",
"date": "2018-11-28T17:16:38.000Z"
},
{
"id": "ami-0a1b2c3d4e5f60002",
"date": "2018-09-15T13:51:22.000Z"
},
{
"id": "ami-0a1b2c3d4e5f60003",
"date": "2018-08-19T10:22:45.000Z"
},
{
"id": "ami-0a1b2c3d4e5f60004",
"date": "2018-05-03T12:04:02.000Z"
},
{
"id": "ami-0a1b2c3d4e5f60005",
"date": "2017-12-13T17:16:38.000Z"
}
]

To show unhealthy Auto Scaling instances

The following example shows only the InstanceId for any unhealthy instances in the speciﬁed Auto
Scaling group.

$ aws autoscaling describe-auto-scaling-groups \

--auto-scaling-group-name My-AutoScaling-Group-Name \
--output text \
--query 'AutoScalingGroups[*].Instances[?HealthStatus==`Unhealthy`].InstanceId'

To exclude volumes with the speciﬁed tag

The following example describes all instances without a test tag. Using a simple ?Value != `test`
expression does not work for excluding a volume as volumes can have multiple tags. As long as there is
another tag beside test attached to the volume, the volume is still returned in the results.

To exclude all volumes with the test tag, start with the below expression to return all tags with the
test tag in an array. Any tags that are not the test tag contain a null value.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes.Tags[?Value == `test`]'

Then ﬁlter out all the positive test results using the not_null function.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--query 'Volumes[?not_null(Tags[?Value == `test`].Value)]'

Pipe the results to ﬂatten out the results resulting in the following query.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

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--query 'Volumes[?not_null(Tags[?Value == `test`].Value)] | []'

Combining server-side and client-side ﬁltering

You can use server-side and client-side filtering together. Server-side filtering is completed first, which
sends the data to the client that the --query parameter then filters. If you're using large data sets,
using server-side filtering first can lower the amount of data sent to the client for each AWS CLI call,
while still keeping the powerful customization that client-side filtering provides.

The following example lists Amazon EC2 volumes using both server-side and client-side filtering.
The service filters a list of all attached volumes in the us-west-2a Availability Zone. The --query
parameter further limits the output to only those volumes with a Size value that is larger than 50, and
shows only the specified fields with user-defined names.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--filters "Name=availability-zone,Values=us-west-2a" "Name=status,Values=attached" \
--query 'Volumes[?Size > `50`].{Id:VolumeId,Size:Size,Type:VolumeType}'
[
{
"Id": "vol-0be9bb0bf12345678",
"Size": 80,
"Type": "gp2"
}
]

The following example retrieves a list of images that meet several criteria. It then uses the --query
parameter to sort the output by CreationDate, selecting only the most recent. Finally, it displays the
ImageId of that one image.

$ aws ec2 describe-images \

--owners amazon \
--filters "Name=name,Values=amzn*gp2" "Name=virtualization-type,Values=hvm" "Name=root-
device-type,Values=ebs" \
--query "sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1].ImageId" \
--output text
ami-00ced3122871a4921

The following example displays the number of available volumes that are more than 1000 IOPS by using
length to count how many are in a list.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes \

--filters "Name=status,Values=available" \
--query 'length(Volumes[?Iops > `1000`])'
3

Additional resources
AWS CLI autoprompt

When beginning to use ﬁlter expressions, you can use the auto-prompt feature in the AWS CLI
version 2. The auto-prompt feature provides a preview when you press the F5 key. For more
information, see the section called “Auto-prompt” (p. 114).
JMESPath Terminal

JMESPath Terminal is an interactive terminal command to experiment with JMESPath expressions

that are used for client-side ﬁltering. Using the jpterm command, the terminal shows immediate

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query results as you're typing. You can directly pipe AWS CLI output to the terminal, enabling
advanced querying experimentation.

The following example pipes aws ec2 describe-volumes output directly to JMESPath Terminal.

$ aws ec2 describe-volumes | jpterm

For more information on JMESPath Terminal and installation instructions, see JMESPath Terminal on
GitHub.
jq utility

The jq utility provides you a way to transform your output on the client-side to an output format
you desire. For more information on jq and installation instructions, see jq on GitHub.

Understanding return codes from the AWS CLI

The return code is usually a hidden code sent after running a AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI)
command which describes the status of the command. You can use the echo command to display
the code sent from the last AWS CLI command and use these codes to determine if a command was
successful or if it failed, and why a command may have an error. In addition to the return codes, you
can view more details about a failure by running your commands with the --debug switch. This switch
produces a detailed report of the steps the AWS CLI uses to process the command, and what the result of
each step was.

To determine the return code of an AWS CLI command, run one of the following commands immediately
after running the CLI command.

Linux and macOS

$ echo $?
0

Windows PowerShell

PS> echo $lastexitcode

Windows Command Prompt

C:\> echo %errorlevel%

The following are the return code values that can be returned at the end of running an AWS Command
Line Interface (AWS CLI) command.

Code Meaning

0 The command completed successfully. There were no errors generated by the AWS CLI and
AWS service the request was sent to.

1 One or more Amazon S3 transfer operations failed. Limited to S3 commands.

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Code Meaning

2 The meaning of this return code depends on the command:

• Applicable to all CLI commands – the command entered couldn't be parsed. Parsing failures
can be caused by, but aren't limited to, missing required subcommands or arguments, or
using unknown commands or arguments.
• Limited to S3 commands – One or more files marked for transfer were skipped during the
transfer process. However, all other files marked for transfer were successfully transferred.
Files that are skipped during the transfer process include: files that don't exist; files that are
character special devices, block special device, FIFO queues, or sockets; and files that the user
doesn't have read permissions to.

130 The command was interrupted by a SIGINT. This is the signal sent by you to cancel a command
with Ctrl+C.

252 Command syntax was invalid, an unknown parameter was provided, or a parameter value was
incorrect and prevented the command from running.

253 The system environment or conﬁguration was invalid. While the command provided may be
syntactically valid, missing conﬁguration or credentials prevented the command from running.

254 The command successfully parsed and a request made to the speciﬁed service but the service
returned an error. This will generally indicate incorrect API usage or other service speciﬁc issues.

255 The command failed. There were errors generated by the AWS CLI or by the AWS service to
which the request was sent.

Using the AWS CLI wizards

This feature is available only with AWS CLI version 2.
The following feature is available only if you use AWS CLI version 2. It isn't available if you run
AWS CLI version 1. For information on how to install version 2, see Installing, updating, and
uninstalling the AWS CLI version 2 (p. 6).

The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) provides the ability to use a wizard for some commands. To
contribute or view the full list of available AWS CLI wizards, see the AWS CLI wizards folder on GitHub.

How it works
Similar to the AWS console, the AWS CLI has a UI wizard that guides you through managing your AWS
resources. To use the wizard, you call the wizard subcommand and the wizard name after the service
name in a command. The command structure is as follows:

Syntax:

$ aws <command> wizard <wizardName>

The following example is calling the wizard to create a new dynamodb table.

$ aws dynamodb wizard new-table

aws configure is the only wizard that does not have a wizard name. When running the wizard, run the
aws configure wizard command as the following example demonstrates:

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$ aws configure wizard

After calling a wizard, a form in the shell is displayed. For each parameter, you are either provided a
list of options to select from or prompted to enter in a string. To select from a list, use your up and
down arrow keys and press ENTER. To view details on an option, press the right arrow key. When you've
ﬁnished ﬁlling out a parameter, press ENTER.

$ aws configure wizard

What would you like to configure
> Static Credentials
Assume Role
Process Provider
Additional CLI configuration
Enter the name of the profile:
Enter your Access Key Id:
Enter your Secret Access Key:

To edit previous prompts, use SHIFT + TAB. For some wizards, after ﬁlling in all prompts, you can
preview an AWS CloudFormation template or the AWS CLI command ﬁlled with your information. This
preview mode is useful to learn the AWS CLI, service APIs, and creating templates for scripts.

Press ENTER after previewing or the last prompt to run the ﬁnal command.

$ aws configure wizard

What would you like to configure
Enter the name of the profile: testWizard
Enter your Access Key Id: AB1C2D3EF4GH5I678J90K
Enter your Secret Access Key: ab1c2def34gh5i67j8k90l1mnop2qr3s45tu678v90
<ENTER>

Creating and using AWS CLI aliases

Aliases are shortcuts you can create in the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to shorten commands
or scripts that you frequently use. You create aliases in the alias ﬁle located in your conﬁguration
folder.

Topics
• Prerequisites (p. 146)
• Step 1: Creating the alias ﬁle (p. 147)
• Step 2: Creating an alias (p. 147)
• Step 3: Calling an alias (p. 149)
• Alias repository examples (p. 150)
• Resources (p. 151)

Prerequisites
To use alias commands, you need to complete the following:

• Install and conﬁgure the AWS CLI. For more information, see Installing, updating, and uninstalling the
AWS CLI (p. 6) and Conﬁguration basics (p. 45).
• Use a minimum AWS CLI version of 1.11.24 or 2.0.0.
• (Optional) To use AWS CLI alias bash scripts, you must use a bash-compatible terminal.

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Step 1: Creating the alias ﬁle

Step 1: Creating the alias ﬁle

To create the alias file, you can use your file navigation and a text editor, or use your preferred terminal
by using the step-by-step procedure. To quickly create your alias file, use the following command block.

Linux and macOS

$ mkdir -p ~/.aws/cli
$ echo '[toplevel]' > ~/.aws/cli/alias

Windows

C:\> md %USERPROFILE%\.aws\cli
C:\> echo [toplevel] > %USERPROFILE%/.aws/cli/alias

To create the alias ﬁle

1. Create a folder named cli in your AWS CLI configuration folder. By default the configuration folder
is ~/.aws/ on Linux or macOS and %USERPROFILE%\.aws\ on Windows. You can create this
through your file navigation or by using the following command.

Linux and macOS

$ mkdir -p ~/.aws/cli

Windows

C:\> md %USERPROFILE%\.aws\cli

The resulting cli folder default path is ~/.aws/cli/ on Linux or macOS and %USERPROFILE%
\.aws\cli on Windows.
2. In the cli folder, create a text file named alias with no extension and add [toplevel] to the
first line. You can create this file through your preferred text editor or use the following command.

Linux and macOS

$ echo '[toplevel]' > ~/.aws/cli/alias

Windows

$ echo [toplevel] > %USERPROFILE%/.aws/cli/alias

Step 2: Creating an alias

You can create an alias using basic commands or bash scripting.

Creating a basic command alias

You can create your alias by adding a command using the following syntax in the alias ﬁle you created
in the previous step.

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Syntax

aliasname = command [--options]

The aliasname is what you call your alias. The command is the command you want to call, which can
include other aliases. You can include options or parameters in your alias, or add them when calling your
alias.

The following example creates an alias named aws whoami using the aws sts get-caller-
identity command. Since this alias calls an existing AWS CLI command, you can write the command
without the aws preﬁx.

whoami = sts get-caller-identity

The following example takes the previous whoami example and adds the Account ﬁlter and text
output options.

whoami2 = sts get-caller-identity --query AccountName --output text

Creating a bash scripting alias

Warning
To use AWS CLI alias bash scripts, you must use a bash-compatible terminal

You can create an alias using bash scripts for more advanced processes using the following syntax.

Syntax

aliasname =
!f() {
script content
}; f

The aliasname is what you call your alias and script content is the script you want to run when you
call the alias.

The following example uses opendns to output your current IP address. Since you can use aliases in
other aliases, the following myip alias is useful to allow or revoke access for your IP address from within
other aliases.

myip =
!f() {
dig +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com
}; f

The following script example calls the previous aws myip alias to authorize your IP address for an
Amazon EC2 security group ingress.

authorize-my-ip =
!f() {
ip=$(aws myip)
aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-id ${1} --cidr $ip/32 --protocol tcp
--port 22
}; f

When you call aliases that use bash scripting, the variables are always passed in the order that you
entered them. In bash scripting, the variable names are not taken into consideration, only the order they

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Step 3: Calling an alias

appear. In the following textalert alias example, the variable for the --message option is ﬁrst and --
phone-number option is second.

textalert =
!f() {
aws sns publish --message "${1}" --phone-number ${2}
}; f

Step 3: Calling an alias

To run the alias you created in your alias ﬁle use the following syntax. You can add additional options
when you call your alias.

Syntax

$ aws aliasname

The following example uses the aws whoami alias.

$ aws
whoami
{
"UserId": "A12BCD34E5FGHI6JKLM",
"Account": "1234567890987",
"Arn": "arn:aws:iam::1234567890987:user/userName"
}

The following example uses the aws whoami alias with additional options to only return the Account
number in text output.

$ aws whoami --query Account --output

text
1234567890987

Calling an alias using bash scripting variables

When you call aliases that use bash scripting, variables are passed in the order they are entered. In bash
scripting, the name of the variables are not taken into consideration, only the order they appear. For
example, in the following textalert alias, the variable for the option --message is ﬁrst and --phone-
number is second.

textalert =
!f() {
aws sns publish --message "${1}" --phone-number ${2}
}; f

When you call the textalert alias, you need to pass variables in the same order as they are run in the
alias. In the following example we use the variables $message and $phone. The $message variable is
passed as ${1} for the --message option and the $phone variable is passed as ${2} for the --phone-
number option. This results in successfully calling the textalert alias to send a message.

$ aws textalert $message

$phone
{
"MessageId": "1ab2cd3e4-fg56-7h89-i01j-2klmn34567"

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Alias repository examples

In the following example, the order is switched when calling the alias to $phone and $message. The
$phone variable is passed as ${1} for the --message option and the $message variable is passed as
${2} for the --phone-number option. Since the variables are out of order, the alias passes the variables
incorrectly. This causes an error because the contents of $message do not match the phone number
formatting requirements for the --phone-number option.

$ aws textalert $phone

$message
usage: aws [options] <command> <subcommand> [<subcommand> ...] [parameters]
To see help text, you can run:

aws help
aws <command> help
aws <command> <subcommand> help

Unknown options: text

Alias repository examples

The AWS CLI alias repository on GitHub contains AWS CLI alias examples created by the AWS CLI
developer team and community. You can use the entire alias file example or take individual aliases for
your own use.
Warning
Running the commands in this section deletes your existing alias file. To avoid overwriting
your existing alias file, change your download location.

To use aliases from the repository

1. Install Git. For installation instructions, see Getting Started - Installing Git in the Git Documentation.
2. Install the jp command. The jp command is used in the tostring alias. For installation
instructions, see the JMESPath (jp) README.md on GitHub.
3. Install the jq command. The jq command is used in the tostring-with-jq alias. For installation
instructions, see the JSON processor (jq) on GitHub.
4. Download the alias ﬁle by doing one of the following:

• Run the following commands that downloads from the repository and copies the alias ﬁle to
your conﬁguration folder.
Linux and macOS

$ git clone https://github.com/awslabs/awscli-aliases.git

$ mkdir -p ~/.aws/cli
$ cp awscli-aliases/alias ~/.aws/cli/alias

Windows

C:\> git clone https://github.com/awslabs/awscli-aliases.git

C:\> md %USERPROFILE%\.aws\cli
C:\> copy awscli-aliases\alias %USERPROFILE%\.aws\cli

• Download directly from the repository and save to the cli folder in your AWS CLI conﬁguration
folder. By default the conﬁguration folder is ~/.aws/ on Linux or macOS and %USERPROFILE%
\.aws\ on Windows.
5. To verify the aliases are working, run the following alias.

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$ aws whoami

This displays the same response as the aws sts get-caller-identity command:

{
"Account": "012345678901",
"UserId": "AIUAINBADX2VEG2TC6HD6",
"Arn": "arn:aws:iam::012345678901:user/myuser"
}

Resources
• The AWS CLI alias repository on GitHub contains AWS CLI alias examples created by the AWS CLI
developer team and the contribution of the AWS CLI community.
• The alias feature announcement from AWS re:Invent 2016: The Eﬀective AWS CLI User on YouTube.
• aws sts get-caller-identity
• aws ec2 describe-instances
• aws sns publish

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Using the AWS CLI to work with AWS

Services
This section provides examples that show how to use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to
access various AWS services.

For a complete reference of all the available commands for each service, see the AWS CLI Command
Reference, or use the built-in command line help. For more information, see Getting help with the AWS
CLI (p. 92).

Services
• Using Amazon DynamoDB with the AWS CLI (p. 152)
• Using Amazon EC2 with the AWS CLI (p. 155)
• Using Amazon S3 Glacier with the AWS CLI (p. 179)
• Using AWS Identity and Access Management from the AWS CLI (p. 182)
• Using Amazon S3 with the AWS CLI (p. 186)
• Using Amazon SNS with the AWS CLI (p. 205)
• Using Amazon Simple Workﬂow Service with the AWS CLI (p. 207)

Using Amazon DynamoDB with the AWS CLI

What is Amazon DynamoDB?

The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) provides support for all of the AWS database services,
including Amazon DynamoDB. You can use the AWS CLI for ad hoc operations, such as creating a table.
You can also use it to embed DynamoDB operations within utility scripts.

For more information about using the AWS CLI with DynamoDB, see DynamoDB in the AWS CLI
Command Reference.

To list the AWS CLI commands for DynamoDB, use the following command.

$ aws dynamodb help

Topics
• Prerequisites (p. 152)
• Creating and using DynamoDB tables (p. 153)
• Using DynamoDB Local (p. 154)
• Resources (p. 154)

Prerequisites
To run the dynamodb commands, you need to:

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Creating and using DynamoDB tables

Creating and using DynamoDB tables

The command line format consists of an DynamoDB command name, followed by the parameters for
that command. The AWS CLI supports the CLI shorthand syntax (p. 112) for the parameter values, and
full JSON.

FThe following example creates a table named MusicCollection.

$ aws dynamodb create-table \

--table-name MusicCollection \
--attribute-definitions AttributeName=Artist,AttributeType=S
AttributeName=SongTitle,AttributeType=S \
--key-schema AttributeName=Artist,KeyType=HASH AttributeName=SongTitle,KeyType=RANGE \
--provisioned-throughput ReadCapacityUnits=1,WriteCapacityUnits=1

You can add new lines to the table with commands similar to those shown in the following example.
These examples use a combination of shorthand syntax and JSON.

$ aws dynamodb put-item \

--table-name MusicCollection \
--item '{
"Artist": {"S": "No One You Know"},
"SongTitle": {"S": "Call Me Today"} ,
"AlbumTitle": {"S": "Somewhat Famous"}
}' \
--return-consumed-capacity TOTAL
{
"ConsumedCapacity": {
"CapacityUnits": 1.0,
"TableName": "MusicCollection"
}
}

$ aws dynamodb put-item \

--table-name MusicCollection \
--item '{
"Artist": {"S": "Acme Band"},
"SongTitle": {"S": "Happy Day"} ,
"AlbumTitle": {"S": "Songs About Life"}
}' \
--return-consumed-capacity TOTAL

{
"ConsumedCapacity": {
"CapacityUnits": 1.0,
"TableName": "MusicCollection"
}
}

It can be difficult to compose valid JSON in a single-line command. To make this easier, the AWS CLI
can read JSON files. For example, consider the following JSON snippet, which is stored in a file named
expression-attributes.json.

{
":v1": {"S": "No One You Know"},

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":v2": {"S": "Call Me Today"}

}

You can use that ﬁle to issue a query request using the AWS CLI. In the following example, the content
of the expression-attributes.json ﬁle is used as the value for the --expression-attribute-
values parameter.

$ aws dynamodb query --table-name MusicCollection \

--key-condition-expression "Artist = :v1 AND SongTitle = :v2" \
--expression-attribute-values file://expression-attributes.json
{
"Count": 1,
"Items": [
{
"AlbumTitle": {
"S": "Somewhat Famous"
},
"SongTitle": {
"S": "Call Me Today"
},
"Artist": {
"S": "No One You Know"
}
}
],
"ScannedCount": 1,
"ConsumedCapacity": null
}

Using DynamoDB Local

In addition to DynamoDB, you can use the AWS CLI with DynamoDB Local. DynamoDB Local is a small
client-side database and server that mimics the DynamoDB service. DynamoDB Local enables you
to write applications that use the DynamoDB API, without manipulating any tables or data in the
DynamoDB web service. Instead, all of the API actions are rerouted to a local database. This lets you save
on provisioned throughput, data storage, and data transfer fees.

For more information about DynamoDB Local and how to use it with the AWS CLI, see the following
sections of the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide:

• DynamoDB Local
• Using the AWS CLI with DynamoDB Local

Resources
AWS CLI reference:

• aws dynamodb
• aws dynamodb create-table
• aws dynamodb put-item
• aws dynamodb query

Service reference:

• DynamoDB Local in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide

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• Using the AWS CLI with DynamoDB Local in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide

Using Amazon EC2 with the AWS CLI

Introduction to Amazon EC2 - Elastic Cloud Server and Hosting with AWS

You can access the features of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) using the AWS Command
Line Interface (AWS CLI). To list the AWS CLI commands for Amazon EC2, use the following command.

aws ec2 help

Before you run any commands, set your default credentials. For more information, see Conﬁguring the
AWS CLI (p. 45).

This topic shows short-form examples of AWS CLI commands that perform common tasks for Amazon
EC2.

For long-form examples of AWS CLI commands, see AWS CLI code examples repository on GitHub.

Topics
• Creating, displaying, and deleting Amazon EC2 key pairs (p. 155)
• Creating, conﬁguring, and deleting security groups for Amazon EC2 (p. 157)
• Launching, listing, and terminating Amazon EC2 instances (p. 161)
• Change an Amazon EC2 instance type using a bash script (p. 167)

Creating, displaying, and deleting Amazon EC2 key

pairs
You can use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to create, display, and delete your key pairs for
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). You use key pairs to connect to an Amazon EC2 instance.

You must provide the key pair to Amazon EC2 when you create the instance, and then use that key pair
to authenticate when you connect to the instance.

Topics
• Prerequisites (p. 155)
• Create a key pair (p. 156)
• Display your key pair (p. 156)
• Delete your key pair (p. 157)

Prerequisites
To run the ec2 commands, you need to:

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Create a key pair

To create a key pair, use the create-key-pair command with the --query option, and the --output
text option to pipe your private key directly into a ﬁle.

$ aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name MyKeyPair --query 'KeyMaterial' --output text

> MyKeyPair.pem

For PowerShell, the > file redirection defaults to UTF-8 encoding, which cannot be used with some
SSH clients. So, you must convert the output by piping it to the out-file command and explicitly set
the encoding to ascii.

PS C:\>aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name MyKeyPair --query 'KeyMaterial' --output text |

out-file -encoding ascii -filepath MyKeyPair.pem

The resulting MyKeyPair.pem ﬁle looks similar to the following.

Your private key isn't stored in AWS and can be retrieved only when it's created. You can't recover it later.
Instead, if you lose the private key, you must create a new key pair.

If you're connecting to your instance from a Linux computer, we recommend that you use the following
command to set the permissions of your private key ﬁle so that only you can read it.

$ chmod 400 MyKeyPair.pem

Display your key pair

A "ﬁngerprint" is generated from your key pair, and you can use it to verify that the private key that you
have on your local machine matches the public key that's stored in AWS.

The ﬁngerprint is an SHA1 hash taken from a DER-encoded copy of the private key. This value is captured
when the key pair is created, and is stored in AWS with the public key. You can view the ﬁngerprint in the
Amazon EC2 console or by running the AWS CLI command aws ec2 describe-key-pairs.

The following example displays the ﬁngerprint for MyKeyPair.

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$ aws ec2 describe-key-pairs --key-name MyKeyPair

{
"KeyPairs": [
{
"KeyName": "MyKeyPair",
"KeyFingerprint": "1f:51:ae:28:bf:89:e9:d8:1f:25:5d:37:2d:7d:b8:ca:9f:f5:f1:6f"
}
]
}

For more information about keys and ﬁngerprints, see Amazon EC2 Key Pairs in the Amazon EC2 User
Guide for Linux Instances.

Delete your key pair

To delete a key pair, run the following command, substituting MyKeyPair with the name of the pair to
delete.

$ aws ec2 delete-key-pair --key-name MyKeyPair

Creating, conﬁguring, and deleting security groups

for Amazon EC2
You can create a security group for your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances that
essentially operates as a ﬁrewall, with rules that determine what network traﬃc can enter and leave.

You can create security groups to use in a virtual private cloud (VPC), or in the EC2-Classic shared ﬂat
network. For more information about the diﬀerences between EC2-Classic and EC2-VPC, see Supported
Platforms in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.

Use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to create a security group, add rules to existing security
groups, and delete security groups.

Topics
• Prerequisites (p. 157)
• Create a security group (p. 157)
• Add rules to your security group (p. 159)
• Delete your security group (p. 161)

Prerequisites
To run the ec2 commands, you need to:

Create a security group

You can create security groups associated with VPCs or for EC2-Classic.

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EC2-VPC
The following example shows how to create a security group for a speciﬁed VPC.

$ aws ec2 create-security-group --group-name my-sg --description "My security group" --vpc-
id vpc-1a2b3c4d
{
"GroupId": "sg-903004f8"
}

To view the initial information for a security group, run the describe-security-groups command. You can
reference an EC2-VPC security group only by its vpc-id, not its name.

$ aws ec2 describe-security-groups --group-ids sg-903004f8

{
"SecurityGroups": [
{
"IpPermissionsEgress": [
{
"IpProtocol": "-1",
"IpRanges": [
{
"CidrIp": "0.0.0.0/0"
}
],
"UserIdGroupPairs": []
}
],
"Description": "My security group"
"IpPermissions": [],
"GroupName": "my-sg",
"VpcId": "vpc-1a2b3c4d",
"OwnerId": "123456789012",
"GroupId": "sg-903004f8"
}
]
}

EC2-Classic
The following example shows how to create a security group for EC2-Classic.

$ aws ec2 create-security-group --group-name my-sg --description "My security group"

{
"GroupId": "sg-903004f8"
}

To view the initial information for my-sg, run the describe-security-groups command. For an EC2-Classic
security group, you can reference it by its name.

$ aws ec2 describe-security-groups --group-names my-sg

{
"SecurityGroups": [
{
"IpPermissionsEgress": [],
"Description": "My security group"
"IpPermissions": [],
"GroupName": "my-sg",
"OwnerId": "123456789012",

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"GroupId": "sg-903004f8"
}
]
}

Add rules to your security group

When you run an Amazon EC2 instance, you must enable rules in the security group to allow incoming
network traﬃc for your means of connecting to the image.

For example, if you're launching a Windows instance, you typically add a rule to allow inbound traﬃc
on TCP port 3389 to support Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). If you're launching a Linux instance, you
typically add a rule to allow inbound traﬃc on TCP port 22 to support SSH connections.

Use the authorize-security-group-ingress command to add a rule to your security group. A

required parameter of this command is the public IP address of your computer, or the network (in the
form of an address range) that your computer is attached to, in CIDR notation.
Note
We provide the following service, https://checkip.amazonaws.com/, to enable you to determine
your public IP address. To find other services that can help you identify your IP address, use
your browser to search for "what is my IP address". If you connect through an ISP or from behind
your firewall using a dynamic IP address (through a NAT gateway from a private network), your
address can change periodically. In that case, you must find out the range of IP addresses used
by client computers.

EC2-VPC
The following example shows how to add a rule for RDP (TCP port 3389) to an EC2-VPC security group
with the ID sg-903004f8. This example assumes the client computer has an address somewhere in the
CIDR range 203.0.113.0/24.

You can start by conﬁrming that your public address shows as included in the CIDR range
203.0.113.0/24.

$ curl https://checkip.amazonaws.com
203.0.113.57

With that information conﬁrmed, you can add the range to your security group by running the
authorize-security-group-ingress command.

$ aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-id sg-903004f8 --protocol tcp --port

3389 --cidr 203.0.113.0/24

The following command adds another rule to enable SSH to instances in the same security group.

$ aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-id sg-903004f8 --protocol tcp --port 22

--cidr 203.0.113.0/24

To view the changes to the security group, run the describe-security-groups command.

$ aws ec2 describe-security-groups --group-ids sg-903004f8

{
"SecurityGroups": [
{

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"IpPermissionsEgress": [
{
"IpProtocol": "-1",
"IpRanges": [
{
"CidrIp": "0.0.0.0/0"
}
],
"UserIdGroupPairs": []
}
],
"Description": "My security group"
"IpPermissions": [
{
"ToPort": 22,
"IpProtocol": "tcp",
"IpRanges": [
{
"CidrIp": "203.0.113.0/24"
}
]
"UserIdGroupPairs": [],
"FromPort": 22
}
],
"GroupName": "my-sg",
"OwnerId": "123456789012",
"GroupId": "sg-903004f8"
}
]
}

EC2-Classic
The following command adds a rule for RDP to the EC2-Classic security group named my-sg.

$ aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-name my-sg --protocol tcp --port 3389 --

cidr 203.0.113.0/24

The following command adds another rule for SSH to the same security group.

$ aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-name my-sg --protocol tcp --port 22 --

cidr 203.0.113.0/24

To view the changes to your security group, run the describe-security-groups command.

$ aws ec2 describe-security-groups --group-names my-sg

{
"SecurityGroups": [
{
"IpPermissionsEgress": [],
"Description": "My security group"
"IpPermissions": [
{
"ToPort": 22,
"IpProtocol": "tcp",
"IpRanges": [
{
"CidrIp": "203.0.113.0/24"
}
]

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"UserIdGroupPairs": [],
"FromPort": 22
}
],
"GroupName": "my-sg",
"OwnerId": "123456789012",
"GroupId": "sg-903004f8"
}
]
}

Delete your security group

To delete a security group, run the delete-security-group command.
Note
You can't delete a security group if it's currently attached to an environment.

EC2-VPC
The following command deletes an EC2-VPC security group.

$ aws ec2 delete-security-group --group-id sg-903004f8

EC2-Classic
The following command deletes the EC2-Classic security group named my-sg.

$ aws ec2 delete-security-group --group-name my-sg

Launching, listing, and terminating Amazon EC2

instances
You can use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to launch, list, and terminate Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. If you launch an instance that isn't within the AWS Free Tier,
you are billed after you launch the instance and charged for the time that the instance is running, even if
it remains idle.

Topics
• Prerequisites (p. 161)
• Launch your instance (p. 162)
• Add a block device to your instance (p. 165)
• Add a tag to your instance (p. 166)
• Connect to your instance (p. 166)
• List your instances (p. 166)
• Terminate your instance (p. 166)

Prerequisites
To run the ec2 commands in this topic, you need to:

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• Install and conﬁgure the AWS CLI. For more information, see Installing, updating, and uninstalling the
AWS CLI (p. 6) and Conﬁguration basics (p. 45).
• Set your IAM permissions to allow for Amazon EC2 access. For more information about IAM
permissions for Amazon EC2, see IAM policies for Amazon EC2 in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux
Instances.
• Create a key pair (p. 155) and a security group (p. 157).
• Select an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) and note the AMI ID. For more information, see Finding a
Suitable AMI in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.

Launch your instance

To launch an Amazon EC2 instance using the AMI you selected, use the run-instances command. You can
launch the instance into a virtual private cloud (VPC), or if your account supports it, into EC2-Classic.

Initially, your instance appears in the pending state, but changes to the running state after a few
minutes.

EC2-VPC
The following example shows how to launch a t2.micro instance in the speciﬁed subnet of a VPC.
Replace the italicized parameter values with your own.

$ aws ec2 run-instances --image-id ami-xxxxxxxx --count 1 --instance-type t2.micro --key-

name MyKeyPair --security-group-ids sg-903004f8 --subnet-id subnet-6e7f829e
{
"OwnerId": "123456789012",
"ReservationId": "r-5875ca20",
"Groups": [
{
"GroupName": "my-sg",
"GroupId": "sg-903004f8"
}
],
"Instances": [
{
"Monitoring": {
"State": "disabled"
},
"PublicDnsName": null,
"Platform": "windows",
"State": {
"Code": 0,
"Name": "pending"
},
"EbsOptimized": false,
"LaunchTime": "2013-07-19T02:42:39.000Z",
"PrivateIpAddress": "10.0.1.114",
"ProductCodes": [],
"VpcId": "vpc-1a2b3c4d",
"InstanceId": "i-5203422c",
"ImageId": "ami-173d747e",
"PrivateDnsName": ip-10-0-1-114.ec2.internal,
"KeyName": "MyKeyPair",
"SecurityGroups": [
{
"GroupName": "my-sg",
"GroupId": "sg-903004f8"
}
],
"ClientToken": null,

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"SubnetId": "subnet-6e7f829e",
"InstanceType": "t2.micro",
"NetworkInterfaces": [
{
"Status": "in-use",
"SourceDestCheck": true,
"VpcId": "vpc-1a2b3c4d",
"Description": "Primary network interface",
"NetworkInterfaceId": "eni-a7edb1c9",
"PrivateIpAddresses": [
{
"PrivateDnsName": "ip-10-0-1-114.ec2.internal",
"Primary": true,
"PrivateIpAddress": "10.0.1.114"
}
],
"PrivateDnsName": "ip-10-0-1-114.ec2.internal",
"Attachment": {
"Status": "attached",
"DeviceIndex": 0,
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"AttachmentId": "eni-attach-52193138",
"AttachTime": "2013-07-19T02:42:39.000Z"
},
"Groups": [
{
"GroupName": "my-sg",
"GroupId": "sg-903004f8"
}
],
"SubnetId": "subnet-6e7f829e",
"OwnerId": "123456789012",
"PrivateIpAddress": "10.0.1.114"
}
],
"SourceDestCheck": true,
"Placement": {
"Tenancy": "default",
"GroupName": null,
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2b"
},
"Hypervisor": "xen",
"BlockDeviceMappings": [
{
"DeviceName": "/dev/sda1",
"Ebs": {
"Status": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"VolumeId": "vol-877166c8",
"AttachTime": "2013-07-19T02:42:39.000Z"
}
}
],
"Architecture": "x86_64",
"StateReason": {
"Message": "pending",
"Code": "pending"
},
"RootDeviceName": "/dev/sda1",
"VirtualizationType": "hvm",
"RootDeviceType": "ebs",
"Tags": [
{
"Value": "MyInstance",
"Key": "Name"
}

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],
"AmiLaunchIndex": 0
}
]
}

EC2-Classic
If your account supports it, you can use the following command to launch a t1.micro instance in EC2-
Classic. Replace the italicized parameter values with your own.

$ aws ec2 run-instances --image-id ami-173d747e --count 1 --instance-type t1.micro --key-

name MyKeyPair --security-groups my-sg
{
"OwnerId": "123456789012",
"ReservationId": "r-5875ca20",
"Groups": [
{
"GroupName": "my-sg",
"GroupId": "sg-903004f8"
}
],
"Instances": [
{
"Monitoring": {
"State": "disabled"
},
"PublicDnsName": null,
"Platform": "windows",
"State": {
"Code": 0,
"Name": "pending"
},
"EbsOptimized": false,
"LaunchTime": "2013-07-19T02:42:39.000Z",
"ProductCodes": [],
"InstanceId": "i-5203422c",
"ImageId": "ami-173d747e",
"PrivateDnsName": null,
"KeyName": "MyKeyPair",
"SecurityGroups": [
{
"GroupName": "my-sg",
"GroupId": "sg-903004f8"
}
],
"ClientToken": null,
"InstanceType": "t1.micro",
"NetworkInterfaces": [],
"Placement": {
"Tenancy": "default",
"GroupName": null,
"AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2b"
},
"Hypervisor": "xen",
"BlockDeviceMappings": [
{
"DeviceName": "/dev/sda1",
"Ebs": {
"Status": "attached",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"VolumeId": "vol-877166c8",
"AttachTime": "2013-07-19T02:42:39.000Z"
}

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}
],
"Architecture": "x86_64",
"StateReason": {
"Message": "pending",
"Code": "pending"
},
"RootDeviceName": "/dev/sda1",
"VirtualizationType": "hvm",
"RootDeviceType": "ebs",
"Tags": [
{
"Value": "MyInstance",
"Key": "Name"
}
],
"AmiLaunchIndex": 0
}
]
}

Add a block device to your instance

Each instance that you launch has an associated root device volume. You can use block device mapping
to specify additional Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes or instance store volumes to
attach to an instance when it's launched.

To add a block device to your instance, specify the --block-device-mappings option when you use
run-instances.

The following example parameter provisions a standard Amazon EBS volume that is 20 GB in size, and
maps it to your instance using the identiﬁer /dev/sdf.

--block-device-mappings "[{\"DeviceName\":\"/dev/sdf\",\"Ebs\":{\"VolumeSize\":20,
\"DeleteOnTermination\":false}}]"

The following example adds an Amazon EBS volume, mapped to /dev/sdf, based on an existing
snapshot. A snapshot represents an image that is loaded onto the volume for you. When you specify a
snapshot, you don't have to specify a volume size; it will be large enough to hold your image. However, if
you do specify a size, it must be greater than or equal to the size of the snapshot.

--block-device-mappings "[{\"DeviceName\":\"/dev/sdf\",\"Ebs\":{\"SnapshotId\":\"snap-
a1b2c3d4\"}}]"

The following example adds two volumes to your instance. The number of volumes available to your
instance depends on its instance type.

--block-device-mappings "[{\"DeviceName\":\"/dev/sdf\",\"VirtualName\":\"ephemeral0\"},
{\"DeviceName\":\"/dev/sdg\",\"VirtualName\":\"ephemeral1\"}]"

The following example creates the mapping (/dev/sdj), but doesn't provision a volume for the
instance.

--block-device-mappings "[{\"DeviceName\":\"/dev/sdj\",\"NoDevice\":\"\"}]"

For more information, see Block Device Mapping in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.

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Add a tag to your instance

A tag is a label that you assign to an AWS resource. It enables you to add metadata to your resources that
you can use for a variety of purposes. For more information, see Tagging Your Resources in the Amazon
EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.

The following example shows how to add a tag with the key name "Name" and the value "MyInstance"
to the speciﬁed instance, by using the create-tags command.

$ aws ec2 create-tags --resources i-5203422c --tags Key=Name,Value=MyInstance

Connect to your instance

When your instance is running, you can connect to it and use it just as you'd use a computer sitting in
front of you. For more information, see Connect to Your Amazon EC2 Instance in the Amazon EC2 User
Guide for Linux Instances.

List your instances

You can use the AWS CLI to list your instances and view information about them. You can list all your
instances, or ﬁlter the results based on the instances that you're interested in.

The following examples show how to use the describe-instances command.

The following command ﬁlters the list to only your t2.micro instances and outputs only the
InstanceId values for each match.

$ aws ec2 describe-instances --filters "Name=instance-type,Values=t2.micro" --query

"Reservations[].Instances[].InstanceId"
[
"i-05e998023d9c69f9a"
]

The following command lists any of your instances that have the tag Name=MyInstance.

$ aws ec2 describe-instances --filters "Name=tag:Name,Values=MyInstance"

The following command lists your instances that were launched using any of the following AMIs: ami-
x0123456, ami-y0123456, and ami-z0123456.

$ aws ec2 describe-instances --filters "Name=image-id,Values=ami-x0123456,ami-y0123456,ami-

z0123456"

Terminate your instance

Terminating an instance deletes it. You can't reconnect to an instance after you've terminated it.

As soon as the state of the instance changes to shutting-down or terminated, you stop incurring
charges for that instance. If you want to reconnect to an instance later, use stop-instances instead of
terminate-instances. For more information, see Terminate Your Instance in the Amazon EC2 User
Guide for Linux Instances.

When you ﬁnish with an instance, you can use the command terminate-instances to delete it.

$ aws ec2 terminate-instances --instance-ids i-5203422c

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{
"TerminatingInstances": [
{
"InstanceId": "i-5203422c",
"CurrentState": {
"Code": 32,
"Name": "shutting-down"
},
"PreviousState": {
"Code": 16,
"Name": "running"
}
}
]
}

Change an Amazon EC2 instance type using a bash

script
This bash scripting example for Amazon EC2 changes the instance type for an Amazon EC2 instance
using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). It stops the instance if it's running, changes the
instance type, and then, if requested, restarts the instance. Shell scripts are programs designed to run in
a command line interface.

Topics
• Before you start (p. 167)
• About this example (p. 167)
• Parameters (p. 168)
• Files (p. 168)
• References (p. 178)

Before you start

Before you can run any of the below examples, the following things need to be completed.

• AWS CLI installed, see Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI (p. 6) for more information.
• AWS CLI configured, see Configuration basics (p. 45) for more information. The profile that you use
must have permissions that allow the AWS operations performed by the examples.
• A running EC2 instance in the account for which you have permission to stop and modify. If you run
the test script, it launches an instance for you, tests changing the type, and then terminates the
instance.
• As an AWS best practice, grant this code least privilege, or only the permissions required to perform a
task. For more information, see Grant Least Privilege in the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
User Guide.
• This code has not been tested in all AWS Regions. Some AWS services are available only in specific
Regions. For more information, see Service Endpoints and Quotas in the AWS General Reference Guide.
• Running this code can result in charges to your AWS account. It is your responsibility to ensure that any
resources created by this script are removed when you are done with them.

About this example

This example is written as a function in the shell script ﬁle change_ec2_instance_type.sh that
you can source from another script or from the command line. Each script ﬁle contains comments

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describing each of the functions. Once the function is in memory, you can invoke it from the command
line. For example, the following commands change the type of the speciﬁed instance to t2.nano:

$ source ./change_ec2_instance_type.sh
$ ./change_ec2_instance_type -i *instance-id* -t new-type

For the full example and downloadable script ﬁles, see Change Amazon EC2 Instance Type in the AWS
Code Examples Repository on GitHub.

Parameters
-i - (string) Speciﬁes the instance ID to modify.

-t - (string) Speciﬁes the EC2 instance type to switch to.

-r - (switch) By default, this is unset. If -r is set, restarts the instance after the type switch.

-f - (switch) By default, the script prompts the user to conﬁrm shutting down the instance before making
the switch. If -f is set, the function doesn't prompt the user before shutting down the instance to make
the type switch

-v - (switch) By default, the script operates silently and displays output only in the event of an error. If -v
is set, the function displays status throughout its operation.

Files
change_ec2_instance_type.sh

The main script file contains the change_ec2_instance_type() function that performs the
following tasks:
• Verifies that the specified EC2 instance exists.
• Unless -f is selected, warns the user before stopping the instance.
• Changes the instance type
• If you set -r, restarts the instance and confirms that the instance is running

Code

###############################################################################
#
# function change_ec2_instance_type
#
# This function changes the instance type of the specified Amazon EC2 instance.
#
# Parameters:
# -i [string, mandatory] The instance ID of the instance whose type you
# want to change.
# -t [string, mandatory] The instance type to switch the instance to.
# -f [switch, optional] If set, the function doesn't pause and ask before
# stopping the instance.
# -r [switch, optional] If set, the function restarts the instance after
# changing the type.
# -h [switch, optional] Displays this help.
#
# Example:
# The following example converts the specified instance to type "t2.micro"
# without pausing to ask permission. It automatically restarts the
# instance after changing the type.
#

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# change-instance-type -i i-123456789012 -f -r
#
# Returns:
# 0 if successful
# 1 if it fails
###############################################################################

# Import the general_purpose functions.

source awsdocs_general.sh

###############################################################################
# function instance-exists
#
# This function checks to see if the specified instance already exists. If it
# does, it sets two global parameters to return the running state and the
# instance type.
#
# Input parameters:
# $1 - The id of the instance to check
#
# Returns:
# 0 if the instance already exists
# 1 if the instance doesn't exist
# AND:
# Sets two global variables:
# EXISTING_STATE - Contains the running/stopped state of the instance.
# EXISTING_TYPE - Contains the current type of the instance.
###############################################################################
function get_instance_info {

# Declare local variables.

local INSTANCE_ID RESPONSE

# This function accepts a single parameter.

INSTANCE_ID=$1

# The following --filters parameter causes server-side filtering to limit

# results to only the records that match the specified ID. The --query
# parameter causes CLI client-side filtering to include only the values of
# the InstanceType and State.Code fields.

RESPONSE=$(aws ec2 describe-instances \

--query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].[State.Name, InstanceType]' \
--filters Name=instance-id,Values="$INSTANCE_ID" \
--output text \
)

if [[ $? -ne 0 ]] || [[ -z "$RESPONSE" ]]; then

# There was no response, so no such instance.
return 1 # 1 in Bash script means error/false
fi

# If we got a response, the instance exists.

# Retrieve the values of interest and set them as global variables.
EXISTING_STATE=$(echo "$RESPONSE" | cut -f 1 )
EXISTING_TYPE=$(echo "$RESPONSE" | cut -f 2 )

return 0 # 0 in Bash script means no error/true

}

######################################
#
# See header at top of this file
#
######################################

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function change_ec2_instance_type {

function usage() (
echo ""
echo "This function changes the instance type of the specified instance."
echo "Parameter:"
echo " -i Specify the instance ID whose type you want to modify."
echo " -t Specify the instance type to convert the instance to."
echo " -d If the instance was originally running, this option prevents"
echo " automatically restarting the instance."
echo " -f If the instance was originally running, this option prevents"
echo " the script from asking permission before stopping the instance."
echo ""
)

local FORCE RESTART REQUESTED_TYPE INSTANCE_ID VERBOSE OPTION RESPONSE ANSWER

local OPTIND OPTARG # Required to use getopts command in a function.

# Set default values.

FORCE=false
RESTART=false
REQUESTED_TYPE=""
INSTANCE_ID=""
VERBOSE=false

# Retrieve the calling parameters.

while getopts "i:t:frvh" OPTION; do
case "${OPTION}"
in
i) INSTANCE_ID="${OPTARG}";;
t) REQUESTED_TYPE="${OPTARG}";;
f) FORCE=true;;
r) RESTART=true;;
v) VERBOSE=true;;
h) usage; return 0;;
\?) echo "Invalid parameter"; usage; return 1;;
esac
done

if [[ -z "$INSTANCE_ID" ]]; then

errecho "ERROR: You must provide an instance ID with the -i parameter."
usage
return 1
fi

if [[ -z "$REQUESTED_TYPE" ]]; then

errecho "ERROR: You must provide an instance type with the -t parameter."
usage
return 1
fi

iecho "Parameters:\n"
iecho " Instance ID: $INSTANCE_ID"
iecho " Requests type: $REQUESTED_TYPE"
iecho " Force stop: $FORCE"
iecho " Restart: $RESTART"
iecho " Verbose: $VERBOSE"
iecho ""

# Check that the specified instance exists.

iecho -n "Confirming that instance $INSTANCE_ID exists..."
get_instance_info "$INSTANCE_ID"
# If the instance doesn't exist, the function returns an error code <> 0.
if [[ ${?} -ne 0 ]]; then
errecho "ERROR: I can't find the instance \"$INSTANCE_ID\" in the current AWS
account."

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return 1
fi
# Function get_instance_info has returned two global values:
# $EXISTING_TYPE -- The instance type of the specified instance
# $EXISTING_STATE -- Whether the specified instance is running

iecho "confirmed $INSTANCE_ID exists."

iecho " Current type: $EXISTING_TYPE"
iecho " Current state code: $EXISTING_STATE"

# Are we trying to change the instance to the same type?

if [[ "$EXISTING_TYPE" == "$REQUESTED_TYPE" ]]; then
errecho "ERROR: Can't change instance type to the same type: $REQUESTED_TYPE."
return 1
fi

# Check if the instance is currently running.

# 16="running"
if [[ "$EXISTING_STATE" == "running" ]]; then
# If it is, we need to stop it.
# Do we have permission to stop it?
# If -f (FORCE) was set, we do.
# If not, we need to ask the user.
if [[ $FORCE == false ]]; then
while true; do
echo ""
echo "The instance $INSTANCE_ID is currently running. It must be stopped to
change the type."
read -r -p "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO STOP THE INSTANCE? (Y or N) " ANSWER
case $ANSWER in
[yY]* )
break;;
[nN]* )
echo "Aborting."
exit;;
* )
echo "Please answer Y or N."
;;
esac
done
else
iecho "Forcing stop of instance without prompt because of -f."
fi

# stop the instance

iecho -n "Attempting to stop instance $INSTANCE_ID..."
RESPONSE=$( aws ec2 stop-instances \
--instance-ids "$INSTANCE_ID" )

if [[ ${?} -ne 0 ]]; then

echo "ERROR - AWS reports that it's unable to stop instance $INSTANCE_ID.\n
$RESPONSE"
return 1
fi
iecho "request accepted."
else
iecho "Instance is not in running state, so not requesting a stop."
fi;

# Wait until stopped.

iecho "Waiting for $INSTANCE_ID to report 'stopped' state..."
aws ec2 wait instance-stopped \
--instance-ids "$INSTANCE_ID"
if [[ ${?} -ne 0 ]]; then
echo "\nERROR - AWS reports that Wait command failed.\n$RESPONSE"
return 1

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fi
iecho "stopped.\n"

# Change the type - command produces no output.

iecho "Attempting to change type from $EXISTING_TYPE to $REQUESTED_TYPE..."
RESPONSE=$(aws ec2 modify-instance-attribute \
--instance-id "$INSTANCE_ID" \
--instance-type "{\"Value\":\"$REQUESTED_TYPE\"}"
)
if [[ ${?} -ne 0 ]]; then
errecho "ERROR - AWS reports that it's unable to change the instance type for
instance $INSTANCE_ID from $EXISTING_TYPE to $REQUESTED_TYPE.\n$RESPONSE"
return 1
fi
iecho "changed.\n"

# Restart if asked
if [[ "$RESTART" == "true" ]]; then

iecho "Requesting to restart instance $INSTANCE_ID..."

RESPONSE=$(aws ec2 start-instances \
--instance-ids "$INSTANCE_ID" \
)
if [[ ${?} -ne 0 ]]; then
errecho "ERROR - AWS reports that it's unable to restart instance $INSTANCE_ID.
\n$RESPONSE"
return 1
fi
iecho "started.\n"
iecho "Waiting for instance $INSTANCE_ID to report 'running' state..."
RESPONSE=$(aws ec2 wait instance-running \
--instance-ids "$INSTANCE_ID" )
if [[ ${?} -ne 0 ]]; then
errecho "ERROR - AWS reports that Wait command failed.\n$RESPONSE"
return 1
fi

iecho "running.\n"

else
iecho "Restart was not requested with -r.\n"
fi

test_change_ec2_instance_type.sh

The ﬁle change_ec2_instance_type_test.sh script tests the various code paths for the
change_ec2_instance_type function. If all steps in the test script work correctly, the test script
removes all resources that it created.

You can run the test script with the following parameters:
• -v - (switch) The each test shows a pass/failure status as they run. By default, the tests runs
silently and the output includes only the ﬁnal overall pass/failure status.
• -i - (switch) The script pauses after each test to enable you to browse the intermediate results
of each step. Enables you to examine the current status of the instance using the Amazon EC2
console. The script proceeds to the next step after you press ENTER at the prompt.

Code

#!/usr/bin/env bash

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###############################################################################
# Copyright Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.
# This file is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License").
#
# You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. A copy of
# the License is located at http://aws.amazon.com/apache2.0/.
#
# This file is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR
# CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the
# specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
###############################################################################

source ./awsdocs_general.sh
source ./change_ec2_instance_type.sh

function usage {
echo "This script tests the change_ec2_instance_type function by calling the"
echo "function in a variety of ways and checking the output. It converts the"
echo "instance between types t2.nano and t2.micro."
echo ""
echo "Parameters:"
echo ""
echo " -v Verbose. Shows diagnostic messages about the tests as they run."
echo " -i Interactive. Pauses the script between steps so you can browse"
echo " the results in the AWS Management Console as they occur."
echo ""
echo "IMPORTANT: Running this test script creates an Amazon EC2 instance in"
echo " your Amazon account that can incur charges. It is your responsibility"
echo " to ensure that no resources are left in your account after the script"
echo " completes. If an error occurs during the operation of the script,this"
echo " instance can remain. Check for the instance and delete it manually to"
echo " avoid charges."
}

# Set default values.

INTERACTIVE=false

# Retrieve the calling parameters.

while getopts "ivh" OPTION; do
case "${OPTION}"
in
i)
INTERACTIVE=true
VERBOSE=true
;;
v)
VERBOSE=true
;;
h)
usage
return 0
;;
\?)
echo "Invalid parameter."
usage
return 1
;;
esac
done

if [ "$VERBOSE" == "true" ]; then iecho "Tests running in verbose mode."; fi

if [ "$INTERACTIVE" == "true" ]; then iecho "Tests running in interactive mode."; fi

iecho ""
iecho "***************SETUP STEPS******************"

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# First, get the AMI ID for the one running the latest Amazon Linix 2.
iecho -n "Retrieving the AMI ID for the latest Amazon Linux 2 AMI..."
AMI_ID=$(aws ec2 describe-images \
--owners 'amazon' \
--filters 'Name=name,Values=amzn2-ami-hvm-2.0.????????-x86_64-gp2'
'Name=state,Values=available' \
--query 'sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1].[ImageId]' \
--output 'text')
if [ ${?} -ne 0 ]; then
echo "ERROR: Unable to retrieve latest Amazon Linux 2 AMI ID: $AMI_ID"
echo "Tests canceled."
return 1
else
iecho "retrieved $AMI_ID."
fi

# Now launch the instance as a t2.micro and capture its instance ID.
# All other instance settings are left to default.
iecho -n "Requesting new Amazon EC2 instance of type t2.micro..."
EC2_INSTANCE_ID=$(aws ec2 run-instances \
--image-id "$AMI_ID" \
--instance-type t2.micro \
--query 'Instances[0].InstanceId' \
--output text)
if [ ${?} -ne 0 ]; then
echo "ERROR: Unable to launch EC2 instance: $EC2_INSTANCE_ID"
echo "Tests canceled."
return 1
else
iecho "launched. ID:$EC2_INSTANCE_ID"
fi

iecho -n "Waiting for instance $EC2_INSTANCE_ID to exist..."

aws ec2 wait instance-exists \
--instance-id "$EC2_INSTANCE_ID"
iecho "confirmed."

iecho "*END OF SETUP***"

iecho ""

run_test "1. Missing mandatory -i parameter" \

"change_ec2_instance_type" \
1 \
"ERROR: You must provide an instance id."

run_test "2. Missing mandatory -t parameter" \

"change_ec2_instance_type -i abc" \
1 \
"ERROR: You must provide an instance type."

run_test "3. Using an instance ID that doesn't exist" \

"change_ec2_instance_type -i abc -t t2.micro" \
1 \
"ERROR: I can't find the instance."

# Test changing to the same type. We can do this while the instance is starting up.
run_test "4. Trying to change to same type" \
"change_ec2_instance_type -v -i $EC2_INSTANCE_ID -t t2.micro" \
1 \
"ERROR: Can't change instance type to the same type."

iecho -n "Waiting for instance $EC2_INSTANCE_ID to reach running state..."

RESPONSE=$(aws ec2 wait instance-running --instance-id "$EC2_INSTANCE_ID")
if [[ ${?} -ne 0 ]]; then
errecho "\nERROR: AWS reports that the Wait command failed.\n$RESPONSE"

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return 1
fi
iecho "running."

# Test changing to t2.micro without -r : should still be in stopped state.

run_test "5. Changing to type t2.nano without restart" \
"change_ec2_instance_type -f -i $EC2_INSTANCE_ID -t t2.nano" \
0

# Validate result was "t2.nano" and that it's in "stopped" state.

get_instance_info "$EC2_INSTANCE_ID"
if [ "$EXISTING_TYPE" != "t2.nano" ]; then
test_failed "Unable to validate change. Should be t2.nano. Found
$EXISTING_TYPE."
fi
if [ "$EXISTING_STATE" != "stopped" ]; then
test_failed "Unable to validate state. Should be stopped. Found
$EXISTING_STATE."
fi

# Test changing back to t2.micro with -r. Should now be in running state
run_test "6. Changing to type t2.micro with restart" \
"change_ec2_instance_type -f -r -i $EC2_INSTANCE_ID -t t2.micro" \
0

# Validate result was "t2.micro" and that it's in "running" state.

get_instance_info "$EC2_INSTANCE_ID"
if [ "$EXISTING_TYPE" != "t2.micro" ]; then
test_failed "Unable to validate change. Should be t2.micro. Found
$EXISTING_TYPE."
fi
if [ "$EXISTING_STATE" != "running" ]; then
test_failed "Unable to validate state. Should be running. Found
$EXISTING_STATE."
fi

iecho ""
iecho "*************TEAR DOWN STEPS****************"
iecho -n "Requesting termination of instance $EC2_INSTANCE_ID..."
# Delete and terminate the instance.
RESPONSE=$(aws ec2 terminate-instances \
--instance-ids "$EC2_INSTANCE_ID"
)
if [ ${?} -ne 0 ]; then
errecho "**** ERROR ****"
errecho "AWS reported a failure to terminate EC2 instance: $EC2_INSTANCE_ID"
errecho "You must terminate the instance using the AWS Management Console"
errecho "or CLI commands. Failure to terminate the instance can result in"
errecho "charges to your AWS account.\n"
else
iecho "request accepted."
fi

iecho -n "Waiting for instance $EC2_INSTANCE_ID to terminate..."

aws ec2 wait instance-terminated \
--instance-id "$EC2_INSTANCE_ID"
iecho "confirmed."
if [[ ${?} -ne 0 ]]; then
errecho "ERROR - AWS reports that Wait command failed."
errecho "You must ensure that the instance terminated successfully yourself using
the"
errecho "AWS Management Console or CLI commands. Failure to terminate the instance
can"
errecho "result in charges to your AWS account.\n"
return 1
fi

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iecho "END OF TEAR DOWN****"

iecho ""

echo "Tests completed successfully."

awsdocs_general.sh

The script ﬁle awsdocs_general.sh holds general purpose functions used across advanced
examples for the AWS CLI.

Code

#!/usr/bin/env bash
###############################################################################
# Copyright Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.
# This file is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License").
#
# You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. A copy of
# the License is located at http://aws.amazon.com/apache2.0/.
#
# This file is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR
# CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the
# specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
###############################################################################
#
# This script contains general-purpose functions that are used throughout
# the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) code examples that are maintained
# in the repo at https://github.com/awsdocs/aws-doc-sdk-examples.
#
# They are intended to abstract functionality that is required for the tests
# to work without cluttering up the code. The intent is to ensure that the
# purpose of the code is clear.

# Set global defaults:

VERBOSE=false

###############################################################################
# function run_test
#
# This function is used to perform a command and compare its output to both
# the expected error code and the expected output string. If there isn't a
# match, then the function invokes the test_failed function.
###############################################################################
function run_test {
local DESCRIPTION COMMAND EXPECTED_ERR_CODE EXPECTED_OUTPUT RESPONSE

DESCRIPTION="$1"
COMMAND="$2"
EXPECTED_ERR_CODE="$3"
if [[ -z "$4" ]]; then EXPECTED_OUTPUT="$4"; else EXPECTED_OUTPUT=""; fi

iecho -n "Running test: $DESCRIPTION..."

RESPONSE="$($COMMAND)"
ERR="${?}"

# Check to see if we got the expected error code.

if [[ "$EXPECTED_ERR_CODE" -ne "$ERR" ]]; then
test_failed "The test \"$DESCRIPTION\" returned an unexpected error code: $ERR"
fi

# Now check the error message, if we provided other than "".

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if [[ -n "$EXPECTED_OUTPUT" ]]; then

MATCH=$(echo "$RESPONSE" | grep "$EXPECTED_OUTPUT")
# If there was no match (it's an empty string), then fail.
if [[ -z "$MATCH" ]]; then
test_failed "The test \"$DESCRIPTION\" returned an unexpected output:
$RESPONSE"
fi
fi

iecho "OK"
ipause
}

###############################################################################
# function test_failed
#
# This function is used to terminate a failed test and to warn the customer
# about possible undeleted resources that could incur costs to their account.
###############################################################################

function test_failed {

errecho ""
errecho "===TEST FAILED==="
errecho "$@"
errecho ""
errecho " One or more of the tests failed to complete successfully. This means that"
errecho " any tests after the one that failed didn't run and might have left
resources"
errecho " still active in your account."
errecho ""
errecho "IMPORTANT:"
errecho " Resources created by this script can incur charges to your AWS account. If
the"
errecho " script didn't complete successfully, then you must review and manually
delete"
errecho " any resources created by this script that were not automatically removed."
errecho ""
exit 1
}

###############################################################################
# function errecho
#
# This function outputs everything sent to it to STDERR (standard error output).
###############################################################################
function errecho {
printf "%s\n" "$*" 2>&1
}

###############################################################################
# function iecho
#
# This function enables the script to display the specified text only if
# the global variable $VERBOSE is set to true.
###############################################################################
function iecho {
if [[ $VERBOSE == true ]]; then
echo "$@"
fi
}

###############################################################################
# function ipause
#

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# This function enables the script to pause after each command if interactive
# mode is set (by including -i on the script invocation command).
###############################################################################
function ipause {
if [[ $INTERACTIVE == true ]]; then
read -r -p "Press ENTER to continue..."
fi
}

# Initialize the shell's RANDOM variable.

RANDOM=$$
###############################################################################
# function generate_random_name
#
# This function generates a random file name with using the specified root,
# followed by 4 groups that each have 4 digits.
# The default root name is "test".
###############################################################################
function generate_random_name {

ROOTNAME="test"
if [[ -n $1 ]]; then
ROOTNAME=$1
fi

# Initialize the FILENAME variable

FILENAME="$ROOTNAME"
# Configure random number generator to issue numbers between 1000 and 9999,
# inclusive.
DIFF=$((9999-1000+1))

for _ in {1..4}
do
rnd=$(($((RANDOM%DIFF))+X))
# Make sure that the number is 4 digits long.
while [ "${#rnd}" -lt 4 ]; do rnd="0$rnd"; done
FILENAME+="-$rnd"
done
echo $FILENAME
}

References
AWS CLI reference:

• aws ec2
• aws ec2 describe-instances
• aws ec2 modify-instance-attribute
• aws ec2 start-instances
• aws ec2 stop-instances
• aws ec2 wait instance-running
• aws ec2 wait instance-stopped

Other reference:

• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Documentation

• To view and contribute to AWS SDK and AWS CLI code examples, see the AWS Code Examples
Repository on GitHub.

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S3 Glacier

Using Amazon S3 Glacier with the AWS CLI

Introduction to Amazon Glacier

You can access the features of Amazon S3 Glacier using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). To
list the AWS CLI commands for S3 Glacier, use the following command.

aws glacier help

This topic shows examples of AWS CLI commands that perform common tasks for S3 Glacier. The
examples demonstrate how to use the AWS CLI to upload a large ﬁle to S3 Glacier by splitting it into
smaller parts and uploading them from the command line.

Before you run any commands, set your default credentials. For more information, see Conﬁguring the
AWS CLI (p. 45).
Note
This tutorial uses several command line tools that typically come preinstalled on Unix-like
operating systems, including Linux and macOS. Windows users can use the same tools by
installing Cygwin and running the commands from the Cygwin terminal. We note Windows
native commands and utilities that perform the same functions where available.

Topics
• Create an Amazon S3 Glacier vault (p. 179)
• Prepare a ﬁle for uploading (p. 179)
• Initiate a multipart upload and upload ﬁles (p. 180)
• Complete the upload (p. 181)

Create an Amazon S3 Glacier vault

Create a vault with the create-vault command.

$ aws glacier create-vault --account-id - --vault-name myvault

{
"location": "/123456789012/vaults/myvault"
}

Note
All S3 Glacier commands require an account ID parameter. Use the hyphen character (--
account-id -) to use the current account.

Prepare a ﬁle for uploading

Create a ﬁle for the test upload. The following commands create a ﬁle named largefile that contains
exactly 3 MiB of random data.

Linux or macOS

$ dd if=/dev/urandom of=largefile bs=3145728 count=1

1+0 records in
1+0 records out
3145728 bytes (3.1 MB) copied, 0.205813 s, 15.3 MB/s

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Initiate a multipart upload and upload ﬁles

dd is a utility that copies a number of bytes from an input file to an output file. The previous example
uses the system device file /dev/urandom as a source of random data. fsutil performs a similar
function in Windows.

Windows

C:\> fsutil file createnew largefile 3145728

File C:\temp\largefile is created

Next, split the ﬁle into 1 MiB (1,048,576 byte) chunks.

$ split -b 1048576 --verbose largefile chunk

creating file `chunkaa'
creating file `chunkab'
creating file `chunkac'

Note
HJ-Split is a free ﬁle splitter for Windows and many other platforms.

Initiate a multipart upload and upload ﬁles

Create a multipart upload in Amazon S3 Glacier by using the initiate-multipart-upload
command.

$ aws glacier initiate-multipart-upload --account-id - --archive-description "multipart

upload test" --part-size 1048576 --vault-name myvault
{
"uploadId": "19gaRezEXAMPLES6Ry5YYdqthHOC_kGRCT03L9yetr220UmPtBYKk-
OssZtLqyFu7sY1_lR7vgFuJV6NtcV5zpsJ",
"location": "/123456789012/vaults/myvault/multipart-
uploads/19gaRezEXAMPLES6Ry5YYdqthHOC_kGRCT03L9yetr220UmPtBYKk-
OssZtLqyFu7sY1_lR7vgFuJV6NtcV5zpsJ"
}

S3 Glacier requires the size of each part in bytes (1 MiB in this example), your vault name, and an account
ID to conﬁgure the multipart upload. The AWS CLI outputs an upload ID when the operation is complete.
Save the upload ID to a shell variable for later use.

Linux or macOS

$ UPLOADID="19gaRezEXAMPLES6Ry5YYdqthHOC_kGRCT03L9yetr220UmPtBYKk-
OssZtLqyFu7sY1_lR7vgFuJV6NtcV5zpsJ"

Windows

C:\> set UPLOADID="19gaRezEXAMPLES6Ry5YYdqthHOC_kGRCT03L9yetr220UmPtBYKk-

OssZtLqyFu7sY1_lR7vgFuJV6NtcV5zpsJ"

Next, use the upload-multipart-part command to upload each of the three parts.

$ aws glacier upload-multipart-part --upload-id $UPLOADID --body chunkaa --range 'bytes

0-1048575/*' --account-id - --vault-name myvault
{
"checksum": "e1f2a7cd6e047fa606fe2f0280350f69b9f8cfa602097a9a026360a7edc1f553"
}
$ aws glacier upload-multipart-part --upload-id $UPLOADID --body chunkab --range 'bytes
1048576-2097151/*' --account-id - --vault-name myvault
{

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Complete the upload

"checksum": "e1f2a7cd6e047fa606fe2f0280350f69b9f8cfa602097a9a026360a7edc1f553"
}
$ aws glacier upload-multipart-part --upload-id $UPLOADID --body chunkac --range 'bytes
2097152-3145727/*' --account-id - --vault-name myvault
{
"checksum": "e1f2a7cd6e047fa606fe2f0280350f69b9f8cfa602097a9a026360a7edc1f553"
}

Note
The previous example uses the dollar sign ($) to reference the contents of the UPLOADID shell
variable on Linux. On the Windows command line, use a percent sign (%) on either side of the
variable name (for example, %UPLOADID%).

You must specify the byte range of each part when you upload it so that S3 Glacier can reassemble it in
the correct order. Each piece is 1,048,576 bytes, so the ﬁrst piece occupies bytes 0-1048575, the second
1048576-2097151, and the third 2097152-3145727.

Complete the upload

Amazon S3 Glacier requires a tree hash of the original ﬁle to conﬁrm that all of the uploaded pieces
reached AWS intact.

To calculate a tree hash, you must split the ﬁle into 1 MiB parts and calculate a binary SHA-256 hash of
each piece. Then you split the list of hashes into pairs, combine the two binary hashes in each pair, and
take hashes of the results. Repeat this process until there is only one hash left. If there is an odd number
of hashes at any level, promote it to the next level without modifying it.

The key to calculating a tree hash correctly when using command line utilities is to store each hash in
binary format and convert to hexadecimal only at the last step. Combining or hashing the hexadecimal
version of any hash in the tree will cause an incorrect result.
Note
Windows users can use the type command in place of cat. OpenSSL is available for Windows at
OpenSSL.org.

To calculate a tree hash

1. If you haven't already, split the original ﬁle into 1 MiB parts.

$ split --bytes=1048576 --verbose largefile chunk

creating file `chunkaa'
creating file `chunkab'
creating file `chunkac'

2. Calculate and store the binary SHA-256 hash of each chunk.

$ openssl dgst -sha256 -binary chunkaa > hash1

$ openssl dgst -sha256 -binary chunkab > hash2
$ openssl dgst -sha256 -binary chunkac > hash3

3. Combine the ﬁrst two hashes and take the binary hash of the result.

$ cat hash1 hash2 > hash12

$ openssl dgst -sha256 -binary hash12 > hash12hash

4. Combine the parent hash of chunks aa and ab with the hash of chunk ac and hash the result, this
time outputting hexadecimal. Store the result in a shell variable.

$ cat hash12hash hash3 > hash123

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IAM

$ openssl dgst -sha256 hash123

SHA256(hash123)= 9628195fcdbcbbe76cdde932d4646fa7de5f219fb39823836d81f0cc0e18aa67
$ TREEHASH=9628195fcdbcbbe76cdde932d4646fa7de5f219fb39823836d81f0cc0e18aa67

Finally, complete the upload with the complete-multipart-upload command. This command takes
the original ﬁle's size in bytes, the ﬁnal tree hash value in hexadecimal, and your account ID and vault
name.

$ aws glacier complete-multipart-upload --checksum $TREEHASH --archive-size 3145728 --

upload-id $UPLOADID --account-id - --vault-name myvault
{
"archiveId": "d3AbWhE0YE1m6f_fI1jPG82F8xzbMEEZmrAlLGAAONJAzo5QdP-
N83MKqd96Unspoa5H5lItWX-sK8-QS0ZhwsyGiu9-R-kwWUyS1dSBlmgPPWkEbeFfqDSav053rU7FvVLHfRc6hg",
"checksum": "9628195fcdbcbbe76cdde932d4646fa7de5f219fb39823836d81f0cc0e18aa67",
"location": "/123456789012/vaults/myvault/archives/
d3AbWhE0YE1m6f_fI1jPG82F8xzbMEEZmrAlLGAAONJAzo5QdP-N83MKqd96Unspoa5H5lItWX-sK8-
QS0ZhwsyGiu9-R-kwWUyS1dSBlmgPPWkEbeFfqDSav053rU7FvVLHfRc6hg"
}

You can also check the status of the vault using the describe-vault command.

$ aws glacier describe-vault --account-id - --vault-name myvault

{
"SizeInBytes": 3178496,
"VaultARN": "arn:aws:glacier:us-west-2:123456789012:vaults/myvault",
"LastInventoryDate": "2018-12-07T00:26:19.028Z",
"NumberOfArchives": 1,
"CreationDate": "2018-12-06T21:23:45.708Z",
"VaultName": "myvault"
}

Note
Vault status is updated about once per day. See Working with Vaults for more information.

Now it's safe to remove the chunk and hash ﬁles that you created.

$ rm chunk* hash*

For more information on multipart uploads, see Uploading Large Archives in Parts and Computing
Checksums in the Amazon S3 Glacier Developer Guide.

Using AWS Identity and Access Management from

the AWS CLI
Introduction to AWS Identity and Access Management

You can access the features of AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) using the AWS Command
Line Interface (AWS CLI). To list the AWS CLI commands for IAM, use the following command.

aws iam help

This topic shows examples of AWS CLI commands that perform common tasks for IAM.

Before you run any commands, set your default credentials. For more information, see Conﬁguring the
AWS CLI (p. 45).

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Creating IAM users and groups

For more information on the IAM service, see the AWS Identity and Access Management User Guide.

Topics
• Creating IAM users and groups (p. 183)
• Attaching an IAM managed policy to an IAM user (p. 184)
• Setting an initial password for an IAM user (p. 185)
• Create an access key for an IAM user (p. 185)

Creating IAM users and groups

This topic describes how to use AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) commands to create an AWS
Identity and Access Management (IAM) group and a new IAM user, and then add the user to the group.
For more information on the IAM service, see the AWS Identity and Access Management User Guide.

Before you run any commands, set your default credentials. For more information, see Conﬁguring the
AWS CLI (p. 45).

To create an IAM group and add a new IAM user to it

1. Use the create-group command to create the group.

$ aws iam create-group --group-name MyIamGroup

{
"Group": {
"GroupName": "MyIamGroup",
"CreateDate": "2018-12-14T03:03:52.834Z",
"GroupId": "AGPAJNUJ2W4IJVEXAMPLE",
"Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:group/MyIamGroup",
"Path": "/"
}
}

2. Use the create-user command to create the user.

$ aws iam create-user --user-name MyUser

{
"User": {
"UserName": "MyUser",
"Path": "/",
"CreateDate": "2018-12-14T03:13:02.581Z",
"UserId": "AIDAJY2PE5XUZ4EXAMPLE",
"Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/MyUser"
}
}

3. Use the add-user-to-group command to add the user to the group.

$ aws iam add-user-to-group --user-name MyUser --group-name MyIamGroup

4. To verify that the MyIamGroup group contains the MyUser, use the get-group command.

$ aws iam get-group --group-name MyIamGroup

{
"Group": {
"GroupName": "MyIamGroup",
"CreateDate": "2018-12-14T03:03:52Z",
"GroupId": "AGPAJNUJ2W4IJVEXAMPLE",

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"Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:group/MyIamGroup",
"Path": "/"
},
"Users": [
{
"UserName": "MyUser",
"Path": "/",
"CreateDate": "2018-12-14T03:13:02Z",
"UserId": "AIDAJY2PE5XUZ4EXAMPLE",
"Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/MyUser"
}
],
"IsTruncated": "false"
}

Attaching an IAM managed policy to an IAM user

This topic describes how to use AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) commands to attach an AWS
Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy to an IAM user. The policy in this example provides the
user with "Power User Access". For more information on the IAM service, see the AWS Identity and Access
Management User Guide.

Before you run any commands, set your default credentials. For more information, see Conﬁguring the
AWS CLI (p. 45).

To attach an IAM managed policy to an IAM user

1. Determine the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the policy to attach. The following command uses
list-policies to ﬁnd the ARN of the policy with the name PowerUserAccess. It then stores
that ARN in an environment variable.

$ export POLICYARN=$(aws iam list-policies --query 'Policies[?

PolicyName==`PowerUserAccess`].{ARN:Arn}' --output text) ~
$ echo $POLICYARN
arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/PowerUserAccess

2. To attach the policy, use the attach-user-policy command, and reference the environment
variable that holds the policy ARN.

$ aws iam attach-user-policy --user-name MyUser --policy-arn $POLICYARN

3. Verify that the policy is attached to the user by running the list-attached-user-policies
command.

$ aws iam list-attached-user-policies --user-name MyUser

{
"AttachedPolicies": [
{
"PolicyName": "PowerUserAccess",
"PolicyArn": "arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/PowerUserAccess"
}
]
}

For more information, see Access Management Resources. This topic provides links to an overview of
permissions and policies, and links to examples of policies for accessing Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, and
other services.

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Setting an initial password for an IAM user

Setting an initial password for an IAM user

This topic describes how to use AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) commands to set an initial
password for an AWS Identity and Access Management( IAM) user. For more information on the IAM
service, see the AWS Identity and Access Management User Guide.

Before you run any commands, set your default credentials. For more information, see Conﬁguring the
AWS CLI (p. 45).

The following command uses create-login-profile to set an initial password on the specified user. When
the user signs in for the first time, the user is required to change the password to something that only
the user knows.

$ aws iam create-login-profile --user-name MyUser --password My!User1Login8P@ssword --

password-reset-required
{
"LoginProfile": {
"UserName": "MyUser",
"CreateDate": "2018-12-14T17:27:18Z",
"PasswordResetRequired": true
}
}

You can use the update-login-profile command to change the password for an IAM user.

$ aws iam update-login-profile --user-name MyUser --password My!User1ADifferentP@ssword

Create an access key for an IAM user

This topic describes how to use AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) commands to create a set of
access keys for an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user. For more information on the IAM
service, see the AWS Identity and Access Management User Guide.

Before you run any commands, set your default credentials. For more information, see Conﬁguring the
AWS CLI (p. 45).

You can use the create-access-key command to create an access key for an IAM user. An access key is
a set of security credentials that consists of an access key ID and a secret key.

An IAM user can create only two access keys at one time. If you try to create a third set, the command
returns a LimitExceeded error.

$ aws iam create-access-key --user-name MyUser

{
"AccessKey": {
"UserName": "MyUser",
"AccessKeyId": "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE",
"Status": "Active",
"SecretAccessKey": "wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY",
"CreateDate": "2018-12-14T17:34:16Z"
}
}

Use the delete-access-key command to delete an access key for an IAM user. Specify which access
key to delete by using the access key ID.

$ aws iam delete-access-key --user-name MyUser --access-key-id AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE

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Amazon S3

Using Amazon S3 with the AWS CLI

Introduction to Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) - Cloud Storage on AWS

You can access the features of Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) using the AWS Command
Line Interface (AWS CLI). The AWS CLI provides two tiers of commands for accessing Amazon S3:

• The s3 tier consists of high-level commands that simplify performing common tasks, such as creating,
manipulating, and deleting objects and buckets.
• The s3api tier behaves identically to other AWS services by exposing direct access to all Amazon S3
API operations. It enables you to carry out advanced operations that might not be possible with the
following tier's high-level commands alone.

Topics in this guide:

• Using high-level (s3) commands with the AWS CLI (p. 186)
• Using API-Level (s3api) commands with the AWS CLI (p. 194)
• Amazon S3 bucket lifecycle operations scripting example (p. 195)

Note
The AWS CLI supports copying, moving, and syncing from Amazon S3 to Amazon S3 using the
server-side COPY operation provided by Amazon S3. This means that your ﬁles are kept in the
cloud, and are not downloaded to the client machine, then back up to Amazon S3.
When operations such as these can be performed completely in the cloud, only the bandwidth
necessary for the HTTP request and response is used.

Using high-level (s3) commands with the AWS CLI

This topic describes how you can manage Amazon S3 buckets and objects using the aws s3 commands
in the AWS CLI.

The high-level aws s3 commands simplify managing Amazon S3 objects. These commands enable you
to manage the contents of Amazon S3 within itself and with local directories.
Note
When you use aws s3 commands to upload large objects to an Amazon S3 bucket, the AWS CLI
automatically performs a multipart upload. You can't resume a failed upload when using these
aws s3 commands.
If the multipart upload fails due to a timeout, or if you manually canceled in the AWS CLI,
the AWS CLI stops the upload and cleans up any ﬁles that were created. This process can take
several minutes.
If the multipart upload or cleanup process is canceled by a kill command or system failure, the
created ﬁles remain in the Amazon S3 bucket. To clean up the multipart upload, use the s3api
abort-multipart-upload command.
For more information, see Multipart upload overview in the Amazon Simple Storage Service
Developer Guide.

Topics
• Prerequisites (p. 187)
• Create a bucket (p. 187)
• List buckets and objects (p. 187)
• Delete buckets (p. 188)
• Delete objects (p. 188)
• Move objects (p. 189)

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High-level (s3) commands

• Copy objects (p. 189)

• Sync objects (p. 190)
• Frequently used options for s3 commands (p. 192)
• Resources (p. 194)

Prerequisites
To run the s3 commands, you need to:

Create a bucket
Use the s3 mb command to make a bucket. Bucket names must be globally unique (unique across all of
Amazon S3) and should be DNS compliant.

Bucket names can contain lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens, and periods. Bucket names can start and
end only with a letter or number, and cannot contain a period next to a hyphen or another period.

Syntax

$ aws s3 mb <target> [--options]

s3 mb examples

The following example creates the s3://bucket-name bucket.

$ aws s3 mb s3://bucket-name

List buckets and objects

To list your buckets, folders, or objects, use the s3 ls command. Using the command without a target
or options lists all buckets.

Syntax

$ aws s3 ls <target> [--options]

For a few common options to use with this command, and examples, see Frequently used options for
s3 commands (p. 192). For a complete list of available options, see s3 ls in the AWS CLI Command
Reference.

s3 ls examples

The following example lists all of your Amazon S3 buckets.

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High-level (s3) commands

$ aws s3 ls
2018-12-11 17:08:50 my-bucket
2018-12-14 14:55:44 my-bucket2

The following command lists all objects and prefixes in a bucket. In this example output, the prefix
example/ has one file named MyFile1.txt.

$ aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name
PRE example/
2018-12-04 19:05:48 3 MyFile1.txt

You can filter the output to a specific prefix by including it in the command. The following command
lists the objects in bucket-name/example/ (that is, objects in bucket-name filtered by the prefix
example/).

$ aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name/example/
2018-12-06 18:59:32 3 MyFile1.txt

Delete buckets
To delete a bucket, use the s3 rb command.

Syntax

$ aws s3 rb <target> [--options]

s3 rb examples
The following example removes the s3://bucket-name bucket.

$ aws s3 rb s3://bucket-name

By default, the bucket must be empty for the operation to succeed. To remove a bucket that's not empty,
you need to include the --force option. If you're using a versioned bucket that contains previously
deleted—but retained—objects, this command does not allow you to remove the bucket. You must ﬁrst
remove all of the content.

The following example deletes all objects and preﬁxes in the bucket, and then deletes the bucket.

$ aws s3 rb s3://bucket-name --force

Delete objects
To delete objects in a bucket or your local directory, use the s3 rm command.

Syntax

$ aws s3 rm <target> [--options]

For a few common options to use with this command, and examples, see Frequently used options for s3
commands (p. 192). For a complete list of options, see s3 rm in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

s3 rm examples
The following example deletes filename.txt from s3://bucket-name/example.

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High-level (s3) commands

$ aws s3 rm s3://bucket-name/example/filename.txt --recursive

The following example deletes all objects from s3://bucket-name/example using the --recursive
option.

$ aws s3 rm s3://bucket-name/example --recursive

Move objects
Use the s3 mv command to move objects from a bucket or a local directory.

Syntax

$ aws s3 mv <source> <target> [--options]

For a few common options to use with this command, and examples, see Frequently used options for
s3 commands (p. 192). For a complete list of available options, see s3 mv in the AWS CLI Command
Reference.

s3 mv examples

The following example moves all objects from s3://bucket-name/example to s3://my-bucket/.

$ aws s3 mv s3://bucket-name/example s3://my-bucket/

The following example moves a local ﬁle from your current working directory to the Amazon S3 bucket
with the s3 cp command.

$ aws s3 mv filename.txt s3://bucket-name

The following example moves a ﬁle from your Amazon S3 bucket to your current working directory,
where ./ speciﬁes your current working directory.

$ aws s3 mv s3://bucket-name/filename.txt ./

Copy objects
Use the s3 cp command to copy objects from a bucket or a local directory.

Syntax

$ aws s3 cp <source> <target> [--options]

You can use the dash parameter for ﬁle streaming to standard input (stdin) or standard output
(stdout).
Warning
If you're using PowerShell, the shell might alter the encoding of a CRLF or add a CRLF to piped
input or output, or redirected output.

The s3 cp command uses the following syntax to upload a ﬁle stream from stdin to a speciﬁed bucket.

Syntax

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$ aws s3 cp - <target> [--options]

The s3 cp command uses the following syntax to download an Amazon S3 ﬁle stream for stdout.

Syntax

$ aws s3 cp <target> [--options] -

For a few common options to use with this command, and examples, see Frequently used options for s3
commands (p. 192). For the complete list of options, see s3 cp in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

s3 cp examples

The following example copies all objects from s3://bucket-name/example to s3://my-bucket/.

$ aws s3 cp s3://bucket-name/example s3://my-bucket/

The following example copies a local ﬁle from your current working directory to the Amazon S3 bucket
with the s3 cp command.

$ aws s3 cp filename.txt s3://bucket-name

The following example copies a ﬁle from your Amazon S3 bucket to your current working directory,
where ./ speciﬁes your current working directory.

$ aws s3 cp s3://bucket-name/filename.txt ./

The following example uses echo to stream the text "hello world" to the s3://bucket-name/
filename.txt ﬁle.

$ echo "hello world" | aws s3 cp - s3://bucket-name/filename.txt

The following example streams the s3://bucket-name/filename.txt ﬁle to stdout and prints the
contents to the console.

$ aws s3 cp s3://bucket-name/filename.txt -
hello world

The following example streams the contents of s3://bucket-name/pre to stdout, uses the bzip2
command to compress the ﬁles, and uploads the new compressed ﬁle named key.bz2 to s3://
bucket-name.

$ aws s3 cp s3://bucket-name/pre - | bzip2 --best | aws s3 cp - s3://bucket-name/key.bz2

Sync objects
The s3 sync command synchronizes the contents of a bucket and a directory, or the contents of two
buckets. Typically, s3 sync copies missing or outdated ﬁles or objects between the source and target.
However, you can also supply the --delete option to remove ﬁles or objects from the target that are
not present in the source.

Syntax

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$ aws s3 sync <source> <target> [--options]

For a few common options to use with this command, and examples, see Frequently used options for s3
commands (p. 192). For a complete list of options, see s3 sync in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

s3 sync examples

The following example synchronizes the contents of an Amazon S3 preﬁx named path in the bucket
named my-bucket with the current working directory.

s3 sync updates any files that have a size or modified time that are different from files with the same
name at the destination. The output displays specific operations performed during the sync. Notice that
the operation recursively synchronizes the subdirectory MySubdirectory and its contents with s3://
my-bucket/path/MySubdirectory.

$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path

upload: MySubdirectory\MyFile3.txt to s3://my-bucket/path/MySubdirectory/MyFile3.txt
upload: MyFile2.txt to s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile2.txt
upload: MyFile1.txt to s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile1.txt

The following example, which extends the previous one, shows how to use the --delete option.

// Delete local file

$ rm ./MyFile1.txt

// Attempt sync without --delete option - nothing happens

$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path

// Sync with deletion - object is deleted from bucket

$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path --delete
delete: s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile1.txt

// Delete object from bucket

$ aws s3 rm s3://my-bucket/path/MySubdirectory/MyFile3.txt
delete: s3://my-bucket/path/MySubdirectory/MyFile3.txt

// Sync with deletion - local file is deleted

$ aws s3 sync s3://my-bucket/path . --delete
delete: MySubdirectory\MyFile3.txt

// Sync with Infrequent Access storage class

$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path --storage-class STANDARD_IA

When using the --delete option, the --exclude and --include options can filter files or objects
to delete during an s3 sync operation. In this case, the parameter string must specify files to exclude
from, or include for, deletion in the context of the target directory or bucket. The following shows an
example.

Assume local directory and s3://my-bucket/path currently in sync and each contains 3 files:
MyFile1.txt
MyFile2.rtf
MyFile88.txt
'''

// Sync with delete, excluding files that match a pattern. MyFile88.txt is deleted, while
remote MyFile1.txt is not.
$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path --delete --exclude "path/MyFile?.txt"
delete: s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile88.txt
'''

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// Sync with delete, excluding MyFile2.rtf - local file is NOT deleted

$ aws s3 sync s3://my-bucket/path . --delete --exclude "./MyFile2.rtf"
download: s3://my-bucket/path/MyFile1.txt to MyFile1.txt
'''

// Sync with delete, local copy of MyFile2.rtf is deleted

$ aws s3 sync s3://my-bucket/path . --delete
delete: MyFile2.rtf

Frequently used options for s3 commands

The following options are frequently used for the commands described in this topic. For a complete list
of options you can use on a command, see the speciﬁc command in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

acl

s3 sync and s3 cp can use the --acl option. This enables you to set the access permissions
for ﬁles copied to Amazon S3. The --acl option accepts private, public-read, and public-
read-write values. For more information, see Canned ACL in the Amazon Simple Storage Service
Developer Guide.

$ aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path --acl public-read

exclude

When you use the s3 cp, s3 mv, s3 sync, or s3 rm command, you can ﬁlter the results by using
the --exclude or --include option. The --exclude option sets rules to only exclude objects
from the command, and the options apply in the order speciﬁed. This is shown in the following
example.

Local directory contains 3 files:

MyFile1.txt
MyFile2.rtf
MyFile88.txt

// Exclude all .txt files, resulting in only MyFile2.rtf being copied

$ aws s3 cp . s3://my-bucket/path --exclude "*.txt"

// Exclude all .txt files but include all files with the "MyFile*.txt" format,
resulting in, MyFile1.txt, MyFile2.rtf, MyFile88.txt being copied
$ aws s3 cp . s3://my-bucket/path --exclude "*.txt" --include "MyFile*.txt"

// Exclude all .txt files, but include all files with the "MyFile*.txt" format,
but exclude all files with the "MyFile?.txt" format resulting in, MyFile2.rtf and
MyFile88.txt being copied
$ aws s3 cp . s3://my-bucket/path --exclude "*.txt" --include "MyFile*.txt" --exclude
"MyFile?.txt"

include

When you use the s3 cp, s3 mv, s3 sync, or s3 rm command, you can filter the results using
the --exclude or --include option. The --include option sets rules to only include objects
specified for the command, and the options apply in the order specified. This is shown in the
following example.

Local directory contains 3 files:

MyFile1.txt
MyFile2.rtf
MyFile88.txt

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// Include all .txt files, resulting in MyFile1.txt and MyFile88.txt being copied
$ aws s3 cp . s3://my-bucket/path --include "*.txt"

// Include all .txt files but exclude all files with the "MyFile*.txt" format,
resulting in no files being copied
$ aws s3 cp . s3://my-bucket/path --include "*.txt" --exclude "MyFile*.txt"

// Include all .txt files, but exclude all files with the "MyFile*.txt" format, but
include all files with the "MyFile?.txt" format resulting in MyFile1.txt being copied

$ aws s3 cp . s3://my-bucket/path --include ".txt" --exclude "MyFile.txt" --include

"MyFile?.txt"

grant

The s3 cp, s3 mv, and s3 sync commands include a --grants option that you can use to
grant permissions on the object to speciﬁed users or groups. Set the --grants option to a list of
permissions using the following syntax. Replace Permission, Grantee_Type, and Grantee_ID
with your own values.

Syntax

--grants Permission=Grantee_Type=Grantee_ID
[Permission=Grantee_Type=Grantee_ID ...]

Each value contains the following elements:

• Permission – Specifies the granted permissions. Can be set to read, readacl, writeacl, or
full.
• Grantee_Type – Specifies how to identify the grantee. Can be set to uri, emailaddress, or id.
• Grantee_ID – Specifies the grantee based on Grantee_Type.
• uri – The group's URI. For more information, see Who is a grantee?
• emailaddress – The account's email address.
• id – The account's canonical ID.

For more information about Amazon S3 access control, see Access control.

The following example copies an object into a bucket. It grants read permissions on the object to
everyone, and full permissions (read, readacl, and writeacl) to the account associated with
[email protected].

$ aws s3 cp file.txt s3://my-bucket/ --grants read=uri=http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/

global/AllUsers [email protected]

You can also specify a nondefault storage class (REDUCED_REDUNDANCY or STANDARD_IA) for
objects that you upload to Amazon S3. To do this, use the --storage-class option.

$ aws s3 cp file.txt s3://my-bucket/ --storage-class REDUCED_REDUNDANCY

recursive

When you use this option, the command is performed on all files or objects under the specified
directory or prefix. The following example deletes s3://my-bucket/path and all of its contents.

$ aws s3 rm s3://my-bucket/path --recursive

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Resources
AWS CLI reference:

• aws s3
• aws s3 cp
• aws s3 mb
• aws s3 mv
• aws s3 ls
• aws s3 rb
• aws s3 rm
• aws s3 sync

Service reference:

• Working with Amazon S3 buckets in the Amazon Simple Storage Service Developer Guide
• Working with Amazon S3 objects in the Amazon Simple Storage Service Developer Guide
• Listing keys hierarchically using a preﬁx and delimiter in the Amazon Simple Storage Service Developer
Guide
• Abort multipart uploads to an S3 bucket using the AWS SDK for .NET (low-level) in the Amazon Simple
Storage Service Developer Guide

Using API-Level (s3api) commands with the AWS CLI

The API-level commands (contained in the s3api command set) provide direct access to the Amazon
Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) APIs, and enable some operations that are not exposed in the high-
level s3 commands. These commands are the equivalent of the other AWS services that provide API-
level access to the services' functionality.

This topic provides examples that demonstrate how to use the lower-level commands that map to the
Amazon S3 APIs. In addition, you can ﬁnd examples for each S3 API command in the s3api section of the
CLI Reference Guide.

Before you run any commands, set your default credentials. For more information, see Conﬁguring the
AWS CLI (p. 45).

Apply a custom ACL

With high-level commands, you can use the --acl option to apply predeﬁned access control lists (ACLs)
to Amazon S3 objects. But you can't use that command to set bucket-wide ACLs. However, you can do
this by using the put-bucket-acl API-level command.

The following example shows how to grant full control to two AWS users ([email protected] and
[email protected]) and read permission to everyone. The identiﬁer for "everyone" comes from a
special URI that you pass as a parameter.

$ aws s3api put-bucket-acl --bucket MyBucket --grant-full-control

'emailaddress="[email protected]",emailaddress="[email protected]"' --grant-read
'uri="http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AllUsers"'

For details about how to construct the ACLs, see PUT Bucket acl in the Amazon Simple Storage Service
API Reference. The s3api ACL commands in the CLI, such as put-bucket-acl, use the same shorthand
argument notation.

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Conﬁgure a logging policy

The API command put-bucket-logging conﬁgures a bucket logging policy.

In the following example, the AWS user [email protected] is granted full control over the log ﬁles, and
all users have read access to them. Notice that the put-bucket-acl command is also required to grant
the Amazon S3 log delivery system (speciﬁed by a URI) the permissions needed to read and write the
logs to the bucket.

$ aws s3api put-bucket-acl --bucket MyBucket --grant-read-acp 'URI="http://

acs.amazonaws.com/groups/s3/LogDelivery"' --grant-write 'URI="http://acs.amazonaws.com/
groups/s3/LogDelivery"'
$ aws s3api put-bucket-logging --bucket MyBucket --bucket-logging-status file://
logging.json

The logging.json ﬁle in the previous command has the following content.

{
"LoggingEnabled": {
"TargetBucket": "MyBucket",
"TargetPrefix": "MyBucketLogs/",
"TargetGrants": [
{
"Grantee": {
"Type": "AmazonCustomerByEmail",
"EmailAddress": "[email protected]"
},
"Permission": "FULL_CONTROL"
},
{
"Grantee": {
"Type": "Group",
"URI": "http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AllUsers"
},
"Permission": "READ"
}
]
}
}

Amazon S3 bucket lifecycle operations scripting

example
This topic uses a bash scripting example for Amazon S3 bucket lifecycle operations using the AWS
Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). This scripting example uses the aws s3api set of commands. Shell
scripts are programs designed to run in a command line interface.

Topics
• Before you start (p. 195)
• About this example (p. 196)
• Files (p. 196)
• References (p. 204)

Before you start

Before you can run any of the below examples, the following things need to be completed.

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• As an AWS best practice, grant this code least privilege, or only the permissions required to perform a
task. For more information, see Grant Least Privilege in the IAM User Guide.
• This code has not been tested in all AWS Regions. Some AWS services are available only in speciﬁc
Regions. For more information, see Service Endpoints and Quotas in the AWS General Reference Guide.
• Running this code can result in charges to your AWS account. It is your responsibility to ensure that any
resources created by this script are removed when you are done with them.

The Amazon S3 service uses the following terms:

• Bucket — A top level Amazon S3 folder.

• Preﬁx — An Amazon S3 folder in a bucket.
• Object — Any item hosted in an Amazon S3 bucket.

About this example

This example demonstrates how to interact with some of the basic Amazon S3 operations using a
set of functions in shell script files. The functions are located in the shell script file named bucket-
operations.sh. You can call these functions in another file. Each script file contains comments
describing each of the functions.

To see the intermediate results of each step, run the script with a -i parameter. You can view the current
status of the bucket or its contents using the Amazon S3 console. The script only proceeds to the next
step when you press enter at the prompt.

For the full example and downloadable script ﬁles, see Amazon S3 Bucket Lifecycle Operations in the
AWS Code Examples Repository on GitHub.

Files
The example contains the following ﬁles:

bucket-operations.sh

This main script file can be sourced from another file. It includes functions that perform the
following tasks:
• Creating a bucket and verifying that it exists
• Copying a file from the local computer to a bucket
• Copying a file from one bucket location to a different bucket location
• Listing the contents of a bucket
• Deleting a file from a bucket
• Deleting a bucket

Code

source ./awsdocs_general.sh

###############################################################################
# function bucket_exists

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#
# This function checks to see if the specified bucket already exists.
#
# Parameters:
# $1 - The name of the bucket to check
#
# Returns:
# 0 if the bucket already exists
# 1 if the bucket doesn't exist
###############################################################################
function bucket_exists {
be_bucketname=$1

# Check whether the bucket already exists.

# We suppress all output - we're interested only in the return code.

aws s3api head-bucket \

--bucket $be_bucketname \
>/dev/null 2>&1

if [[ ${?} -eq 0 ]]; then

return 0 # 0 in Bash script means true.
else
return 1 # 1 in Bash script means false.
fi
}
###############################################################################
# function create-bucket
#
# This function creates the specified bucket in the specified AWS Region, unless
# it already exists.
#
# Parameters:
# -b bucket_name -- The name of the bucket to create
# -r region_code -- The code for an AWS Region in which to
# create the bucket
#
# Returns:
# The URL of the bucket that was created.
# And:
# 0 if successful
# 1 if it fails
###############################################################################
function create_bucket {
local BUCKET_NAME REGION_CODE RESPONSE
local OPTION OPTIND OPTARG # Required to use getopts command in a function

function usage {
echo "function create_bucket"
echo "Creates an Amazon S3 bucket. You must supply both of the following
parameters:"
echo " -b bucket_name The name of the bucket. It must be globally unique."
echo " -r region_code The code for an AWS Region in which the bucket is
created."
echo ""
}

# Retrieve the calling parameters

while getopts "b:r:" OPTION; do
case "${OPTION}"
in
b) BUCKET_NAME="${OPTARG}";;
r) REGION_CODE="${OPTARG}";;
h) usage; return 0;;
\?) echo "Invalid parameter"; usage; return 1;;
esac

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done

if [[ -z "$BUCKET_NAME" ]]; then

errecho "ERROR: You must provide a bucket name with the -b parameter."
usage
return 1
fi

if [[ -z "$REGION_CODE" ]]; then

errecho "ERROR: You must provide an AWS Region code with the -r parameter."
usage
return 1
fi

iecho "Parameters:\n"
iecho " Bucket name: $BUCKET_NAME"
iecho " Region code: $REGION_CODE"
iecho ""

# If the bucket already exists, we don't want to try to create it.

if (bucket_exists $BUCKET_NAME); then
errecho "ERROR: A bucket with that name already exists. Try again."
return 1
fi

# The bucket doesn't exist, so try to create it.

RESPONSE=$(aws s3api create-bucket \

--bucket $BUCKET_NAME \
--create-bucket-configuration LocationConstraint=$REGION_CODE)

if [[ ${?} -ne 0 ]]; then

errecho "ERROR: AWS reports create-bucket operation failed.\n$RESPONSE"
return 1
fi
}

###############################################################################
# function copy_file_to_bucket
#
# This function creates a file in the specified bucket.
#
# Parameters:
# -b bucket_name$1 - The name of the bucket to copy the file to
# $2 - The path and file name of the local file to copy to the bucket
# $3 - The key (name) to call the copy of the file in the bucket
#
# Returns:
# 0 if successful
# 1 if it fails
###############################################################################
function copy_file_to_bucket {
cftb_bucketname=$1
cftb_sourcefile=$2
cftb_destfilename=$3
local RESPONSE

RESPONSE=$(aws s3api put-object \

--bucket $cftb_bucketname \
--body $cftb_sourcefile \
--key $cftb_destfilename)

if [[ ${?} -ne 0 ]]; then

errecho "ERROR: AWS reports put-object operation failed.\n$RESPONSE"
return 1

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fi
}

###############################################################################
# function copy_item_in_bucket
#
# This function creates a copy of the specified file in the same bucket.
#
# Parameters:
# $1 - The name of the bucket to copy the file from and to
# $2 - The key of the source file to copy
# $3 - The key of the destination file
#
# Returns:
# 0 if successful
# 1 if it fails
###############################################################################
function copy_item_in_bucket {
ciib_bucketname=$1
ciib_sourcefile=$2
ciib_destfile=$3
local RESPONSE

RESPONSE=$(aws s3api copy-object \

--bucket $ciib_bucketname \
--copy-source $ciib_bucketname/$ciib_sourcefile \
--key $ciib_destfile)

if [[ $? -ne 0 ]]; then

errecho "ERROR: AWS reports s3api copy-object operation failed.\n$RESPONSE"
return 1
fi
}

###############################################################################
# function list_items_in_bucket
#
# This function displays a list of the files in the bucket with each file's
# size. The function uses the --query parameter to retrieve only the Key and
# Size fields from the Contents collection.
#
# Parameters:
# $1 - The name of the bucket
#
# Returns:
# The list of files in text format
# And:
# 0 if successful
# 1 if it fails
###############################################################################
function list_items_in_bucket {
liib_bucketname=$1
local RESPONSE

RESPONSE=$(aws s3api list-objects \

--bucket $liib_bucketname \
--output text \
--query 'Contents[].{Key: Key, Size: Size}' )

if [[ ${?} -eq 0 ]]; then

echo "$RESPONSE"
else
errecho "ERROR: AWS reports s3api list-objects operation failed.\n$RESPONSE"
return 1
fi
}

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###############################################################################
# function delete_item_in_bucket
#
# This function deletes the specified file from the specified bucket.
#
# Parameters:
# $1 - The name of the bucket
# $2 - The key (file name) in the bucket to delete

# Returns:
# 0 if successful
# 1 if it fails
###############################################################################
function delete_item_in_bucket {
diib_bucketname=$1
diib_key=$2
local RESPONSE

RESPONSE=$(aws s3api delete-object \

--bucket $diib_bucketname \
--key $diib_key)

if [[ $? -ne 0 ]]; then

errecho "ERROR: AWS reports s3api delete-object operation failed.\n$RESPONSE"
return 1
fi
}

###############################################################################
# function delete_bucket
#
# This function deletes the specified bucket.
#
# Parameters:
# $1 - The name of the bucket

# Returns:
# 0 if successful
# 1 if it fails
###############################################################################
function delete_bucket {
db_bucketname=$1
local RESPONSE

RESPONSE=$(aws s3api delete-bucket \

--bucket $db_bucketname)

if [[ $? -ne 0 ]]; then

errecho "ERROR: AWS reports s3api delete-bucket failed.\n$RESPONSE"
return 1
fi
}

test-bucket-operations.sh

The shell script ﬁle test-bucket-operations.sh demonstrates how to call the functions by
sourcing the bucket-operations.sh ﬁle and calling each of the functions. After calling functions,
the test script removes all resources that it created.

Code

source ./awsdocs_general.sh

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source ./bucket_operations.sh

function usage {
echo "This script tests Amazon S3 bucket operations in the AWS CLI."
echo "It creates a randomly named bucket, copies files to it, then"
echo "deletes the files and the bucket."
echo ""
echo "To pause the script between steps so you can see the results in the"
echo "AWS Management Console, include the parameter -i."
echo ""
echo "IMPORTANT: Running this script creates resources in your Amazon"
echo " account that can incur charges. It is your responsibility to"
echo " ensure that no resources are left in your account after the script"
echo " completes. If an error occurs during the operation of the script,"
echo " then resources can remain that you might need to delete manaully."
}

# Set default values.

INTERACTIVE=false
VERBOSE=false

# Retrieve the calling parameters

while getopts "ivh" OPTION; do
case "${OPTION}"
in
i) INTERACTIVE=true;VERBOSE=true; iecho;;
v) VERBOSE=true;;
h) usage; return 0;;
\?) echo "Invalid parameter"; usage; return 1;;
esac
done

if [ "$INTERACTIVE" == "true" ]; then iecho "Tests running in interactive mode."; fi

if [ "$VERBOSE" == "true" ]; then iecho "Tests running in verbose mode."; fi

iecho "*SETUP STEPS****"

BUCKETNAME=$(generate_random_name s3test)
REGION="us-west-2"
FILENAME1=$(generate_random_name s3testfile)
FILENAME2=$(generate_random_name s3testfile)

iecho "BUCKETNAME=$BUCKETNAME"
iecho "REGION=$REGION"
iecho "FILENAME1=$FILENAME1"
iecho "FILENAME2=$FILENAME2"

iecho "END OF STEPS****"

run_test "1. Creating bucket with missing bucket_name" \

"create_bucket -r $REGION" \
1 \
"ERROR: You must provide a bucket name" \

run_test "2. Creating bucket with missing region_name" \

"create_bucket -b $BUCKETNAME" \
1 \
"ERROR: You must provide an AWS Region code"

run_test "3. Creating bucket with valid parameters" \

"create_bucket -r $REGION -b $BUCKETNAME" \
0

run_test "4. Creating bucket with duplicate name and region" \

"create_bucket -r $REGION -b $BUCKETNAME" \

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1 \
"ERROR: A bucket with that name already exists"

run_test "5. Copying local file (copy of this script) to bucket" \

"copy_file_to_bucket $BUCKETNAME ./$0 $FILENAME1" \
0

run_test "6. Duplicating existing file in bucket" \

"copy_item_in_bucket $BUCKETNAME $FILENAME1 $FILENAME2" \
0

run_test "7. Listing contents of bucket" \

"list_items_in_bucket $BUCKETNAME" \
0

run_test "8. Deleting first file from bucket" \

"delete_item_in_bucket $BUCKETNAME $FILENAME1" \
0

run_test "9. Deleting second file from bucket" \

"delete_item_in_bucket $BUCKETNAME $FILENAME2" \
0

run_test "10. Deleting bucket" \

"delete_bucket $BUCKETNAME" \
0

echo "Tests completed successfully."

awsdocs-general.sh

The script ﬁle awsdocs-general.sh holds general purpose functions used across advanced code
examples for the AWS CLI.

Code

# Set global defaults:

VERBOSE=false

DESCRIPTION="$1"
COMMAND="$2"
EXPECTED_ERR_CODE="$3"
if [[ -z "$4" ]]; then EXPECTED_OUTPUT="$4"; else EXPECTED_OUTPUT=""; fi

iecho -n "Running test: $DESCRIPTION..."

RESPONSE="$($COMMAND)"
ERR="${?}"

# Check to see if we got the expected error code.

if [[ "$EXPECTED_ERR_CODE" -ne "$ERR" ]]; then
test_failed "The test \"$DESCRIPTION\" returned an unexpected error code: $ERR"
fi

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Bucket lifecycle scripting example (s3api)

#now check the error message, if we provided other than "".

if [[ -n "$EXPECTED_OUTPUT" ]]; then
MATCH=$(echo "$RESPONSE" | grep "$EXPECTED_OUTPUT")
# If there was no match (it's an empty string), then fail.
if [[ -z "$MATCH" ]]; then
test_failed "The test \"$DESCRIPTION\" returned an unexpected output:
$RESPONSE"
fi
fi

iecho "OK"
ipause
}

function test_failed {

errecho ""
errecho "===TEST FAILED==="
errecho "$@"
errecho ""
errecho " One or more of the tests failed to complete successfully. This means that
any"
errecho " tests after the one that failed test didn't run and might have left
resources"
errecho " still active in your account."
errecho ""
errecho "IMPORTANT:"
errecho " Resources created by this script can incur charges to your AWS account. If
the"
errecho " script did not complete successfully, then you must review and manually
delete"
errecho " any resources created by this script that were not automatically removed."
errecho ""
exit 1
}

###############################################################################

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Bucket lifecycle scripting example (s3api)

# function ipause
#
# This function enables the script to pause after each command if interactive
# mode is set (by including -i on the script invocation command).
###############################################################################
function ipause {
if [[ $INTERACTIVE == true ]]; then
read -r -p "Press ENTER to continue..."
fi
}

# Initialize the shell's RANDOM variable

RANDOM=$$
###############################################################################
# function generate_random_name
#
# This function generates a random file name with using the specified root
# followed by 4 groups that each have 4 digits.
# The default root name is "test"
function generate_random_name {

ROOTNAME="test"
if [[ -n $1 ]]; then
ROOTNAME=$1
fi

# Initialize the filename variable

FILENAME="$ROOTNAME"
# Configure random number generator to issue numbers between 1000 and 9999, inclusive
DIFF=$((9999-1000+1))

for _ in {1..4}
do
rnd=$(($((RANDOM%DIFF))+X))
# make sure that the number is 4 digits long
while [ "${#rnd}" -lt 4 ]; do rnd="0$rnd"; done
FILENAME+="-$rnd"
done
echo $FILENAME
}

References
AWS CLI reference:

• aws s3api
• aws s3api create-bucket
• aws s3api copy-object
• aws s3api delete-bucket
• aws s3api delete-object
• aws s3api head-bucket
• aws s3api list-objects
• aws s3api put-object

Other reference:

• Working with Amazon S3 buckets in the Amazon Simple Storage Service Developer Guide
• Working with Amazon S3 objects in the Amazon Simple Storage Service Developer Guide

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Amazon SNS

• To view and contribute to AWS SDK and AWS CLI code examples, see the AWS Code Examples
Repository on GitHub.

Using Amazon SNS with the AWS CLI

Getting Started with Amazon SNS - Push Notiﬁcation Service on AWS

You can access the features of Amazon Simple Notiﬁcation Service (Amazon SNS) using the AWS
Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). To list the AWS CLI commands for Amazon SNS, use the following
command.

aws sns help

Before you run any commands, set your default credentials. For more information, see Conﬁguring the
AWS CLI (p. 45).

This topic shows examples of CLI commands that perform common tasks for Amazon SNS.

Topics
• Create a topic (p. 205)
• Subscribe to a topic (p. 205)
• Publish to a topic (p. 206)
• Unsubscribe from a topic (p. 206)
• Delete a topic (p. 206)

Create a topic
To create a topic, use the create-topic command and specify the name to assign to the topic.

$ aws sns create-topic --name my-topic

{
"TopicArn": "arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:123456789012:my-topic"
}

Make a note of the response's TopicArn, which you use later to publish a message.

Subscribe to a topic
To subscribe to a topic, use the subscribe command.

The following example speciﬁes the email protocol and an email address for the notification-
endpoint.

$ aws sns subscribe --topic-arn arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:123456789012:my-topic --

protocol email --notification-endpoint [email protected]
{
"SubscriptionArn": "pending confirmation"
}

AWS immediately sends a conﬁrmation message by email to the address you speciﬁed in the subscribe
command. The email message has the following text.

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Publish to a topic

You have chosen to subscribe to the topic:

arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:123456789012:my-topic
To confirm this subscription, click or visit the following link (If this was in error no
action is necessary):
Confirm subscription

After the recipient clicks the Conﬁrm subscription link, the recipient's browser displays a notiﬁcation
message with information similar to the following.

Subscription confirmed!

You have subscribed [email protected] to the topic:my-topic.

Your subscription's id is:

arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:123456789012:my-topic:1328f057-de93-4c15-512e-8bb22EXAMPLE

If it was not your intention to subscribe, click here to unsubscribe.

Publish to a topic
To send a message to all subscribers of a topic, use the publish command.

The following example sends the message "Hello World!" to all subscribers of the speciﬁed topic.

$ aws sns publish --topic-arn arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:123456789012:my-topic --message "Hello

World!"
{
"MessageId": "4e41661d-5eec-5ddf-8dab-2c867EXAMPLE"
}

In this example, AWS sends an email message with the text "Hello World!" to [email protected].

Unsubscribe from a topic

To unsubscribe from a topic and stop receiving messages published to that topic, use the unsubscribe
command and specify the ARN of the topic you want to unsubscribe from.

$ aws sns unsubscribe --subscription-arn arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:123456789012:my-

topic:1328f057-de93-4c15-512e-8bb22EXAMPLE

To verify that you successfully unsubscribed, use the list-subscriptions command to conﬁrm that the ARN
no longer appears in the list.

$ aws sns list-subscriptions

Delete a topic
To delete a topic, run the delete-topic command.

$ aws sns delete-topic --topic-arn arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:123456789012:my-topic

To verify that AWS successfully deleted the topic, use the list-topics command to conﬁrm that the topic
no longer appears in the list.

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Amazon SWF

$ aws sns list-topics

Using Amazon Simple Workﬂow Service with the

AWS CLI
Amazon Simple Workﬂow

You can access the features of Amazon Simple Workﬂow Service (Amazon SWF) using the AWS
Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).

To list the AWS CLI commands for Amazon SWF, use the following command.

aws swf help

Before you run any commands, set your default credentials. For more information, see Conﬁguring the
AWS CLI (p. 45).

The following topics show examples of CLI commands that perform common tasks for Amazon SWF.

Topics
• List of Amazon SWF commands by category (p. 207)
• Working with Amazon SWF domains using the AWS CLI (p. 210)

List of Amazon SWF commands by category

You can use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to create, display, and manage workﬂows in
Amazon Simple Workﬂow Service (Amazon SWF).

This section lists the reference topics for Amazon SWF commands in the AWS CLI, grouped by functional
category.

For an alphabetic list of commands, see the Amazon SWF section of the AWS CLI Command Reference, or
use the following command.

$ aws swf help

You can also get help for an individual command, by placing the help directive after the command
name. The following shows an example.

$ aws swf register-domain help

Topics
• Commands related to activities (p. 208)
• Commands related to deciders (p. 208)
• Commands related to workﬂow executions (p. 208)
• Commands related to administration (p. 208)
• Visibility commands (p. 209)

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List of Amazon SWF Commands

Commands related to activities

Activity workers use poll-for-activity-task to get new activity tasks. After a worker receives an
activity task from Amazon SWF, it performs the task and responds using respond-activity-task-
completed if successful or respond-activity-task-failed if unsuccessful.

The following are commands that are performed by activity workers:

• poll-for-activity-task
• respond-activity-task-completed
• respond-activity-task-failed
• respond-activity-task-canceled
• record-activity-task-heartbeat

Commands related to deciders

Deciders use poll-for-decision-task to get decision tasks. After a decider receives a decision task
from Amazon SWF, it examines its workﬂow execution history and decides what to do next. It calls
respond-decision-task-completed to complete the decision task and provides zero or more next
decisions.

The following are commands that are performed by deciders:

• poll-for-decision-task
• respond-decision-task-completed

Commands related to workﬂow executions

The following commands operate on a workﬂow execution:

• request-cancel-workflow-execution
• start-workflow-execution
• signal-workflow-execution
• terminate-workflow-execution

Commands related to administration

Although you can perform administrative tasks from the Amazon SWF console, you can use the
commands in this section to automate functions or build your own administrative tools.

Activity management
• register-activity-type
• deprecate-activity-type

Workflow management
• register-workflow-type
• deprecate-workflow-type

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List of Amazon SWF Commands

Domain management
• register-domain
• deprecate-domain

For more information and examples of these domain management commands, see Working with
Amazon SWF domains using the AWS CLI (p. 210).

Workﬂow execution management

• request-cancel-workﬂow-execution
• terminate-workﬂow-execution

Visibility commands
Although you can perform visibility actions from the Amazon SWF console, you can use the commands in
this section to build your own console or administrative tools.

Activity visibility
• list-activity-types
• describe-activity-type

Workflow visibility
• list-workflow-types
• describe-workflow-type

Workﬂow execution visibility

• describe-workflow-execution
• list-open-workflow-executions
• list-closed-workflow-executions
• count-open-workflow-executions
• count-closed-workflow-executions
• get-workflow-execution-history

Domain visibility
• list-domains
• describe-domain

For more information and examples of these domain visibility commands, see Working with Amazon
SWF domains using the AWS CLI (p. 210).

Task list visibility

• count-pending-activity-tasks
• count-pending-decision-tasks

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Working with Amazon SWF Domains

Working with Amazon SWF domains using the AWS

CLI
You can use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to manage your Amazon Simple Workﬂow
Service (Amazon SWF) domains.

Topics
• List your domains (p. 210)
• Get information about a domain (p. 210)
• Register a domain (p. 211)
• Deprecate a domain (p. 211)

List your domains

To list the Amazon SWF domains that you have registered for your AWS account, you can use swf
list-domains. You must include --registration-status and specify either REGISTERED or
DEPRECATED.

Here's a minimal example.

$ aws swf list-domains --registration-status REGISTERED

{
"domainInfos": [
{
"status": "REGISTERED",
"name": "ExampleDomain"
},
{
"status": "REGISTERED",
"name": "mytest"
}
]
}

Note
For an example of using DEPRECATED, see Deprecate a domain (p. 211).

For more information, see list-domains in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

Get information about a domain

To get detailed information about a particular domain, use swf describe-domain. There is one
required parameter, --name, which takes the name of the domain you want information about, as shown
in the following example.

$ aws swf describe-domain --name ExampleDomain

{
"domainInfo": {
"status": "REGISTERED",
"name": "ExampleDomain"
},
"configuration": {
"workflowExecutionRetentionPeriodInDays": "1"
}
}

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Working with Amazon SWF Domains

For more information, see describe-domain in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

There are two required parameters: --name and --workflow-execution-retention-period-

in-days. The --name parameter takes the domain name to register. The --workflow-execution-
retention-period-in-days parameter takes an integer to specify the number of days to retain
workﬂow execution data on this domain, up to a maximum period of 90 days (for more information, see
the Amazon SWF FAQ).

If you specify zero (0) for this value, the retention period is automatically set at the maximum duration.
Otherwise, workﬂow execution data isn't retained after the speciﬁed number of days have passed. The
following example shows how to register a new domain.

$ aws swf register-domain --name MyNeatNewDomain --workflow-execution-retention-period-in-

days 0

The command doesn't return any output, but you can use swf list-domains or swf describe-
domain to see the new domain, as shown in the following example.

$ aws swf describe-domain --name MyNeatNewDomain

{
"domainInfo": {
"status": "REGISTERED",
"name": "MyNeatNewDomain"
},
"configuration": {
"workflowExecutionRetentionPeriodInDays": "0"
}
}

For more information, see register-domain in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

Deprecate a domain
To deprecate a domain (you can still see it, but cannot create new workﬂow executions or register types
on it), use swf deprecate-domain. It has a sole required parameter, --name, which takes the name of
the domain to deprecate.

$ aws swf deprecate-domain --name MyNeatNewDomain

As with register-domain, no output is returned. If you use list-domains to view the registered
domains, however, you will see that the domain no longer appears among them. You can also use --
registration-status DEPRECATED.

$ aws swf list-domains --registration-status DEPRECATED

{
"domainInfos": [
{
"status": "DEPRECATED",
"name": "MyNeatNewDomain"
}
]
}

For more information, see deprecate-domain in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

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Data Protection

Security in the AWS Command Line

Interface
Cloud security at AWS is the highest priority. As an AWS customer, you beneﬁt from a data center and
network architecture that is built to meet the requirements of the most security-sensitive organizations.

Security is a shared responsibility between AWS and you. The shared responsibility model describes this
as security of the cloud and security in the cloud:

• Security of the cloud – AWS is responsible for protecting the infrastructure that runs AWS services in
the AWS Cloud. AWS also provides you with services that you can use securely. Third-party auditors
regularly test and verify the eﬀectiveness of our security as part of the AWS Compliance Programs. To
learn about the compliance programs that apply to AWS Command Line Interface, see AWS Services in
Scope by Compliance Program.
• Security in the cloud – Your responsibility is determined by the AWS service that you use. You are also
responsible for other factors including the sensitivity of your data, your company’s requirements, and
applicable laws and regulations.

This documentation helps you understand how to apply the shared responsibility model when using the
AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). The following topics show you how to conﬁgure the AWS CLI
to meet your security and compliance objectives. You also learn how to use the AWS CLI to help you to
monitor and secure your AWS resources.

Topics
• Data protection in the AWS CLI (p. 212)
• Identity and Access Management for the AWS CLI (p. 213)
• Compliance validation for the AWS CLI (p. 214)
• Enforcing a minimum version of TLS 1.2 (p. 214)

Data protection in the AWS CLI

The AWS shared responsibility model applies to data protection in AWS Command Line Interface.
As described in this model, AWS is responsible for protecting the global infrastructure that runs all
of the AWS Cloud. You are responsible for maintaining control over your content that is hosted on
this infrastructure. This content includes the security conﬁguration and management tasks for the
AWS services that you use. For more information about data privacy, see the Data Privacy FAQ. For
information about data protection in Europe, see the AWS Shared Responsibility Model and GDPR blog
post on the AWS Security Blog.

For data protection purposes, we recommend that you protect AWS account credentials and set up
individual user accounts with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). That way each user is given
only the permissions necessary to fulﬁll their job duties. We also recommend that you secure your data
in the following ways:

• Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) with each account.

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Data encryption

• Use SSL/TLS to communicate with AWS resources. We recommend TLS 1.2 or later.
• Set up API and user activity logging with AWS CloudTrail.
• Use AWS encryption solutions, along with all default security controls within AWS services.
• Use advanced managed security services such as Amazon Macie, which assists in discovering and
securing personal data that is stored in Amazon S3.
• If you require FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic modules when accessing AWS through a command
line interface or an API, use a FIPS endpoint. For more information about the available FIPS endpoints,
see Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2.

We strongly recommend that you never put sensitive identifying information, such as your customers'
account numbers, into free-form ﬁelds such as a Name ﬁeld. This includes when you work with AWS CLI
or other AWS services using the console, API, AWS CLI, or AWS SDKs. Any data that you enter into AWS
CLI or other services might get picked up for inclusion in diagnostic logs. When you provide a URL to an
external server, don't include credentials information in the URL to validate your request to that server.

Data encryption
A key feature of any secure service is that information is encrypted when it is not being actively used.

Encryption at rest
The AWS CLI does not itself store any customer data other than the credentials it needs to interact with
the AWS services on the user's behalf.

If you use the AWS CLI to invoke an AWS service that transmits customer data to your local computer for
storage, then refer to the Security & Compliance chapter in that service's User Guide for information on
how that data is stored, protected, and encrypted.

Encryption in transit
By default, all data transmitted from the client computer running the AWS CLI and AWS service
endpoints is encrypted by sending everything through a HTTPS/TLS connection.

You don't need to do anything to enable the use of HTTPS/TLS. It is always enabled unless you explicitly
disable it for an individual command by using the --no-verify-ssl command line option.

Identity and Access Management for the AWS CLI

The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) uses the same users and roles to access your AWS resources
and their services. The policies that grant permissions are the same because the AWS CLI calls the same
API operations that are used by the service console. For more information, see the "Identity and Access
Management" section in the "Security" chapter of the AWS service that you want to use.

The only major diﬀerence is how you authenticate when using a standard IAM user and long-term
credentials. Although an IAM user requires a password to access an AWS service's console, that same IAM
user requires an access key pair to perform the same operations using the AWS CLI. All other short-term
credentials are used in the same way they are used with the console.

The credentials used by the AWS CLI are stored in plaintext ﬁles and are not encrypted.

• The $HOME/.aws/credentials ﬁle stores long-term credentials required to access your AWS
resources. These include your access key ID and secret access key.

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Compliance Validation

• Short-term credentials, such as those for roles that you assume, or that are for AWS Single Sign-
On services, are also stored in the $HOME/.aws/cli/cache and $HOME/.aws/sso/cache folders,
respectively.

Mitigation of Risk

• We strongly recommend that you configure your file system permissions on the $HOME/.aws folder
and its child folders and files to restrict access to only authorized users.
• Use roles with temporary credentials wherever possible to reduce the opportunity for damage if the
credentials are compromised. Use long-term credentials only to request and refresh short-term role
credentials.

Compliance validation for the AWS CLI

Third-party auditors assess the security and compliance of AWS services as part of multiple AWS
compliance programs. Using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to access a service does not
alter that service's compliance.

For a list of AWS services in scope of speciﬁc compliance programs, see AWS Services in Scope by
Compliance Program. For general information, see AWS Compliance Programs.

You can download third-party audit reports using the AWS Artifact. For more information, see
Downloading Reports in AWS Artifact.

Your compliance responsibility when using AWS CLI is determined by the sensitivity of your data, your
company's compliance objectives, and applicable laws and regulations. AWS provides the following
resources to help with compliance:

• Security and Compliance Quick Start Guides – These deployment guides discuss architectural
considerations and provide steps for deploying security- and compliance-focused baseline
environments on AWS.
• Architecting for HIPAA Security and Compliance Whitepaper – This whitepaper describes how
companies can use AWS to create HIPAA-compliant applications.
• AWS Compliance Resources – This collection of workbooks and guides might apply to your industry
and location.
• Evaluating Resources with Rules in the AWS Config Developer Guide – The AWS Config service assesses
how well your resource configurations comply with internal practices, industry guidelines, and
regulations.
• AWS Security Hub – This AWS service provides a comprehensive view of your security state within AWS
that helps you check your compliance with security industry standards and best practices.

Enforcing a minimum version of TLS 1.2

To add increased security when communicating with AWS services, you should conﬁgure your AWS
Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to use TLS 1.2 or later. When you use the AWS CLI, Python is used to
set the TLS version.

Based on your AWS CLI version, the steps you perform to enforce a TLS minimum of 1.2 varies.

Topics
• Conﬁguring the AWS CLI version 1 to enforce a minimum version of TLS 1.2 minimum (p. 215)
• Conﬁguring the AWS CLI version 2 to enforce a minimum version of TLS 1.2 (p. 217)

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Conﬁguring the AWS CLI version 1 to enforce
a minimum version of TLS 1.2 minimum

Conﬁguring the AWS CLI version 1 to enforce a

minimum version of TLS 1.2 minimum
To ensure the AWS CLI version 1 uses no TLS version earlier than TLS 1.2, you might need to recompile
OpenSSL to enforce this minimum and then recompile Python to use the newly built OpenSSL.

Determine your currently supported protocols

First, create a self-signed certiﬁcate to use for the test server and the Python SDK using OpenSSL.

$ openssl req -subj '/CN=localhost' -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -nodes -keyout key.pem -out
cert.pem -days 365

Then spin up a test server using OpenSSL.

$ openssl s_server -key key.pem -cert cert.pem -www

In a new terminal window, create a virtual environment and install the Python SDK.

$ python3 -m venv test-env

source test-env/bin/activate
pip install botocore

Create a new Python script named check.py that uses the SDK’s underlying HTTP library.

$ import urllib3
URL = 'https://localhost:4433/'

http = urllib3.PoolManager(
ca_certs='cert.pem',
cert_reqs='CERT_REQUIRED',
)
r = http.request('GET', URL)
print(r.data.decode('utf-8'))

Run your new script.

$ python check.py

This displays details about the connection made. Search for "Protocol : " in the output. If the output is
"TLSv1.2" or later, the SDK defaults to TLS v1.2 or later. If it's an earlier version, you need to recompile
OpenSSL and recompile Python.

However, even if your installation of Python defaults to TLS v1.2 or later, it's still possible for Python
to renegotiate to a version earlier than TLS v1.2 if the server doesn't support TLS v1.2 or later. To
check that Python doesn't automatically renegotiate to earlier versions, restart the test server with the
following.

$ openssl s_server -key key.pem -cert cert.pem -no_tls1_3 -no_tls1_2 -www

If you're using an earlier version of OpenSSL, you might not have the -no_tls_3 ﬂag available. If this is
the case, remove the ﬂag because the version of OpenSSL you're using doesn't support TLS v1.3. Then
rerun the Python script.

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Conﬁguring the AWS CLI version 1 to enforce
a minimum version of TLS 1.2 minimum

$ python check.py

If your installation of Python correctly doesn't renegotiate for versions earlier than TLS 1.2, you should
receive an SSL error.

$ urllib3.exceptions.MaxRetryError: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='localhost', port=4433): Max

retries exceeded with url: / (Caused by SSLError(SSLError(1, '[SSL: UNSUPPORTED_PROTOCOL]
unsupported protocol (_ssl.c:1108)')))

If you're able to make a connection, you need to recompile OpenSSL and Python to disable negotiation
of protocols earlier than TLS v1.2.

Compile OpenSSL and Python

To ensure the SDK or AWS CLI doesn't negotiate for anything earlier than TLS 1.2, you need to recompile
OpenSSL and Python. To do this, copy the following content to create a script and run it.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e

OPENSSL_VERSION="1.1.1d"
OPENSSL_PREFIX="/opt/openssl-with-min-tls1_2"
PYTHON_VERSION="3.8.1"
PYTHON_PREFIX="/opt/python-with-min-tls1_2"

curl -O "https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-$OPENSSL_VERSION.tar.gz"
tar -xzf "openssl-$OPENSSL_VERSION.tar.gz"
cd openssl-$OPENSSL_VERSION
./config --prefix=$OPENSSL_PREFIX no-ssl3 no-tls1 no-tls1_1 no-shared
make > /dev/null
sudo make install_sw > /dev/null

cd /tmp
curl -O "https://www.python.org/ftp/python/$PYTHON_VERSION/Python-$PYTHON_VERSION.tgz"
tar -xzf "Python-$PYTHON_VERSION.tgz"
cd Python-$PYTHON_VERSION
./configure --prefix=$PYTHON_PREFIX --with-openssl=$OPENSSL_PREFIX --disable-shared > /dev/
null
make > /dev/null
sudo make install > /dev/null

This compiles a version of Python that has a statically linked OpenSSL that doesn't automatically
negotiate anything earlier than TLS 1.2. This also installs OpenSSL in the /opt/openssl-with-min-
tls1_2 directory and installs Python in the /opt/python-with-min-tls1_2 directory. After you run
this script, conﬁrm installation of the new version of Python.

$ /opt/python-with-min-tls1_2/bin/python3 --version

This should print out the following.

$ Python 3.8.1

To conﬁrm this new version of Python doesn't negotiate a version earlier than TLS 1.2, rerun the steps
from Determine your currently supported protocols (p. 215) using the newly installed Python version
(that is, /opt/python-with-min-tls1_2/bin/python3).

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Conﬁguring the AWS CLI version 2 to
enforce a minimum version of TLS 1.2

Conﬁguring the AWS CLI version 2 to enforce a

minimum version of TLS 1.2
AWS CLI version 2 uses an internal Python script that's compiled to use a minimum of TLS 1.2 when the
service it's talking to supports it. No further steps are needed to enforce this minimum.

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General: Ensure you're running
a recent version of the AWS CLI.

Troubleshooting AWS CLI errors

General: Ensure you're running a recent version of
the AWS CLI.
If you receive an error that indicates that a command doesn't exist, or that it doesn't recognize a
parameter that the documentation says is available, we recommend that the ﬁrst thing you do (after
checking your command for spelling errors!) is to upgrade to the most recent version of the AWS CLI.
Updated versions of the AWS CLI are released almost every business day. New AWS services, features,
and parameters are introduced in those new versions of the AWS CLI. The only way to get access to those
new services, features, or parameters is to upgrade to a version that was released after that element was
ﬁrst introduced.

How you update your version of the AWS CLI depends on how you originally installed it. For example, if
you installed the AWS CLI using pip, run pip install --upgrade, as described in Install and uninstall
the AWS CLI version 1 using pip (p. 31).

If you used one of the bundled installers, you should remove the existing installation and download and
install the latest version of the bundled installer for your operating system.

General: Use the --debug option.

One of the ﬁrst things you should do when the AWS CLI reports an error that you don't immediately
understand, or produces results that you don't expect, is get more detail about the error. You can do
this by running the command again and including the --debug option at the end of the command line.
This causes the AWS CLI to report details about every step it takes to process your command, send the
request to the AWS servers, receive the response, and process the response into the output you see. The
details in the output can help you to determine in which step the error occurs and to get context that can
provide clues about what triggered it.

You can send the output to a text ﬁle to capture it for later review or to send it to AWS support when
asked for it.

Here's an example of a command run with and without the --debug option.

$ aws iam list-groups --profile MyTestProfile

{
"Groups": [
{
"Path": "/",
"GroupName": "MyTestGroup",
"GroupId": "AGPA0123456789EXAMPLE",
"Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:group/MyTestGroup",
"CreateDate": "2019-08-12T19:34:04Z"
}
]
}

When you include the --debug option, details include (among other things):

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• Looking for credentials

• Parsing the provided parameters
• Constructing the request sent to AWS servers
• The contents of the request sent to AWS
• The contents of the raw response
• The formatted output

$ aws iam list-groups --profile MyTestProfile --debug

2019-08-12 12:36:18,305 - MainThread - awscli.clidriver - DEBUG - CLI version: aws-
cli/1.16.215 Python/3.7.3 Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/1.12.205
2019-08-12 12:36:18,305 - MainThread - awscli.clidriver - DEBUG - Arguments entered to CLI:
['iam', 'list-groups', '--debug']
2019-08-12 12:36:18,305 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event session-initialized:
calling handler <function add_scalar_parsers at 0x7fdf173161e0>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,305 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event session-initialized:
calling handler <function register_uri_param_handler at 0x7fdf17dec400>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,305 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event session-initialized:
calling handler <function inject_assume_role_provider_cache at 0x7fdf17da9378>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,307 - MainThread - botocore.credentials - DEBUG - Skipping environment
variable credential check because profile name was explicitly set.
2019-08-12 12:36:18,307 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event session-initialized:
calling handler <function attach_history_handler at 0x7fdf173ed9d8>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,308 - MainThread - botocore.loaders - DEBUG - Loading JSON file: /home/
ec2-user/venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/botocore/data/iam/2010-05-08/service-2.json
2019-08-12 12:36:18,317 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event building-command-
table.iam: calling handler <function add_waiters at 0x7fdf1731a840>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,320 - MainThread - botocore.loaders - DEBUG - Loading JSON file: /home/
ec2-user/venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/botocore/data/iam/2010-05-08/waiters-2.json
2019-08-12 12:36:18,321 - MainThread - awscli.clidriver - DEBUG - OrderedDict([('path-
prefix', <awscli.arguments.CLIArgument object at 0x7fdf171ac780>), ('marker',
<awscli.arguments.CLIArgument object at 0x7fdf171b09e8>), ('max-items',
<awscli.arguments.CLIArgument object at 0x7fdf171b09b0>)])
2019-08-12 12:36:18,322 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event building-
argument-table.iam.list-groups: calling handler <function add_streaming_output_arg at
0x7fdf17316510>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,322 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event building-argument-
table.iam.list-groups: calling handler <function add_cli_input_json at 0x7fdf17da9d90>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,322 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event building-argument-
table.iam.list-groups: calling handler <function unify_paging_params at 0x7fdf17328048>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,326 - MainThread - botocore.loaders - DEBUG - Loading JSON file: /home/
ec2-user/venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/botocore/data/iam/2010-05-08/paginators-1.json
2019-08-12 12:36:18,326 - MainThread - awscli.customizations.paginate - DEBUG - Modifying
paging parameters for operation: ListGroups
2019-08-12 12:36:18,326 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event building-argument-
table.iam.list-groups: calling handler <function add_generate_skeleton at 0x7fdf1737eae8>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,326 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event
before-building-argument-table-parser.iam.list-groups: calling handler
<bound method OverrideRequiredArgsArgument.override_required_args of
<awscli.customizations.cliinputjson.CliInputJSONArgument object at 0x7fdf171b0a58>>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,327 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event
before-building-argument-table-parser.iam.list-groups: calling handler
<bound method GenerateCliSkeletonArgument.override_required_args of
<awscli.customizations.generatecliskeleton.GenerateCliSkeletonArgument object at
0x7fdf171c5978>>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,327 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event operation-
args-parsed.iam.list-groups: calling handler functools.partial(<function
check_should_enable_pagination at 0x7fdf17328158>, ['marker', 'max-items'], {'max-
items': <awscli.arguments.CLIArgument object at 0x7fdf171b09b0>}, OrderedDict([('path-
prefix', <awscli.arguments.CLIArgument object at 0x7fdf171ac780>), ('marker',
<awscli.arguments.CLIArgument object at 0x7fdf171b09e8>), ('max-items',
<awscli.customizations.paginate.PageArgument object at 0x7fdf171c58d0>), ('cli-
input-json', <awscli.customizations.cliinputjson.CliInputJSONArgument object at

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0x7fdf171b0a58>), ('starting-token', <awscli.customizations.paginate.PageArgument

object at 0x7fdf171b0a20>), ('page-size', <awscli.customizations.paginate.PageArgument
object at 0x7fdf171c5828>), ('generate-cli-skeleton',
<awscli.customizations.generatecliskeleton.GenerateCliSkeletonArgument object at
0x7fdf171c5978>)]))
2019-08-12 12:36:18,328 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event load-cli-
arg.iam.list-groups.path-prefix: calling handler <awscli.paramfile.URIArgumentHandler
object at 0x7fdf1725c978>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,328 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event load-cli-
arg.iam.list-groups.marker: calling handler <awscli.paramfile.URIArgumentHandler object at
0x7fdf1725c978>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,328 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event load-cli-
arg.iam.list-groups.max-items: calling handler <awscli.paramfile.URIArgumentHandler object
at 0x7fdf1725c978>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,328 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event load-cli-
arg.iam.list-groups.cli-input-json: calling handler <awscli.paramfile.URIArgumentHandler
object at 0x7fdf1725c978>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,328 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event load-cli-
arg.iam.list-groups.starting-token: calling handler <awscli.paramfile.URIArgumentHandler
object at 0x7fdf1725c978>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,328 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event load-cli-
arg.iam.list-groups.page-size: calling handler <awscli.paramfile.URIArgumentHandler object
at 0x7fdf1725c978>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,328 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event
load-cli-arg.iam.list-groups.generate-cli-skeleton: calling handler
<awscli.paramfile.URIArgumentHandler object at 0x7fdf1725c978>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,329 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG
- Event calling-command.iam.list-groups: calling handler
<bound method CliInputJSONArgument.add_to_call_parameters of
<awscli.customizations.cliinputjson.CliInputJSONArgument object at 0x7fdf171b0a58>>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,329 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG -
Event calling-command.iam.list-groups: calling handler <bound
method GenerateCliSkeletonArgument.generate_json_skeleton of
<awscli.customizations.generatecliskeleton.GenerateCliSkeletonArgument object at
0x7fdf171c5978>>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,329 - MainThread - botocore.credentials - DEBUG - Looking for
credentials via: assume-role
2019-08-12 12:36:18,329 - MainThread - botocore.credentials - DEBUG - Looking for
credentials via: assume-role-with-web-identity
2019-08-12 12:36:18,329 - MainThread - botocore.credentials - DEBUG - Looking for
credentials via: shared-credentials-file
2019-08-12 12:36:18,329 - MainThread - botocore.credentials - INFO - Found credentials in
shared credentials file: ~/.aws/credentials
2019-08-12 12:36:18,330 - MainThread - botocore.loaders - DEBUG - Loading JSON file: /home/
ec2-user/venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/botocore/data/endpoints.json
2019-08-12 12:36:18,334 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event choose-service-name:
calling handler <function handle_service_name_alias at 0x7fdf1898eb70>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,337 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event creating-client-
class.iam: calling handler <function add_generate_presigned_url at 0x7fdf18a028c8>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,337 - MainThread - botocore.regions - DEBUG - Using partition endpoint
for iam, us-west-2: aws-global
2019-08-12 12:36:18,337 - MainThread - botocore.args - DEBUG - The s3 config key is not a
dictionary type, ignoring its value of: None
2019-08-12 12:36:18,340 - MainThread - botocore.endpoint - DEBUG - Setting iam timeout as
(60, 60)
2019-08-12 12:36:18,341 - MainThread - botocore.loaders - DEBUG - Loading JSON file: /home/
ec2-user/venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/botocore/data/_retry.json
2019-08-12 12:36:18,341 - MainThread - botocore.client - DEBUG - Registering retry handlers
for service: iam
2019-08-12 12:36:18,342 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event before-parameter-
build.iam.ListGroups: calling handler <function generate_idempotent_uuid at 0x7fdf189b10d0>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,342 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event before-
call.iam.ListGroups: calling handler <function inject_api_version_header_if_needed at
0x7fdf189b2a60>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,343 - MainThread - botocore.endpoint - DEBUG - Making
request for OperationModel(name=ListGroups) with params: {'url_path': '/',

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'query_string': '', 'method': 'POST', 'headers': {'Content-Type': 'application/x-

www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8', 'User-Agent': 'aws-cli/1.16.215 Python/3.7.3
Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/1.12.205'}, 'body': {'Action':
'ListGroups', 'Version': '2010-05-08'}, 'url': 'https://iam.amazonaws.com/', 'context':
{'client_region': 'aws-global', 'client_config': <botocore.config.Config object at
0x7fdf16e9a4a8>, 'has_streaming_input': False, 'auth_type': None}}
2019-08-12 12:36:18,343 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event request-
created.iam.ListGroups: calling handler <bound method RequestSigner.handler of
<botocore.signers.RequestSigner object at 0x7fdf16e9a470>>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,343 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event choose-
signer.iam.ListGroups: calling handler <function set_operation_specific_signer at
0x7fdf18996f28>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,343 - MainThread - botocore.auth - DEBUG - Calculating signature using
v4 auth.
2019-08-12 12:36:18,343 - MainThread - botocore.auth - DEBUG - CanonicalRequest:
POST
/

content-type:application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8
host:iam.amazonaws.com
x-amz-date:20190812T193618Z

content-type;host;x-amz-date
5f776d91EXAMPLE9b8cb5eb5d6d4a787a33ae41c8cd6eEXAMPLEca69080e1e1f
2019-08-12 12:36:18,344 - MainThread - botocore.auth - DEBUG - StringToSign:
AWS4-HMAC-SHA256
20190812T193618Z
20190812/us-east-1/iam/aws4_request
ab7e367eEXAMPLE2769f178ea509978cf8bfa054874b3EXAMPLE8d043fab6cc9
2019-08-12 12:36:18,344 - MainThread - botocore.auth - DEBUG - Signature:
d85a0EXAMPLEb40164f2f539cdc76d4f294fe822EXAMPLE18ad1ddf58a1a3ce7
2019-08-12 12:36:18,344 - MainThread - botocore.endpoint - DEBUG - Sending http request:
<AWSPreparedRequest stream_output=False, method=POST, url=https://iam.amazonaws.com/,
headers={'Content-Type': b'application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8',
'User-Agent': b'aws-cli/1.16.215 Python/3.7.3 Linux/4.14.133-113.105.amzn2.x86_64
botocore/1.12.205', 'X-Amz-Date': b'20190812T193618Z', 'Authorization': b'AWS4-HMAC-
SHA256 Credential=AKIA01234567890EXAMPLE-east-1/iam/aws4_request, SignedHeaders=content-
type;host;x-amz-date, Signature=d85a07692aceb401EXAMPLEa1b18ad1ddf58a1a3ce7EXAMPLE',
'Content-Length': '36'}>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,344 - MainThread - urllib3.util.retry - DEBUG - Converted retries
value: False -> Retry(total=False, connect=None, read=None, redirect=0, status=None)
2019-08-12 12:36:18,344 - MainThread - urllib3.connectionpool - DEBUG - Starting new HTTPS
connection (1): iam.amazonaws.com:443
2019-08-12 12:36:18,664 - MainThread - urllib3.connectionpool - DEBUG - https://
iam.amazonaws.com:443 "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 570
2019-08-12 12:36:18,664 - MainThread - botocore.parsers - DEBUG - Response headers: {'x-
amzn-RequestId': '74c11606-bd38-11e9-9c82-559da0adb349', 'Content-Type': 'text/xml',
'Content-Length': '570', 'Date': 'Mon, 12 Aug 2019 19:36:18 GMT'}
2019-08-12 12:36:18,664 - MainThread - botocore.parsers - DEBUG - Response body:
b'<ListGroupsResponse xmlns="https://iam.amazonaws.com/doc/2010-05-08/">\n
<ListGroupsResult>\n <IsTruncated>false</IsTruncated>\n <Groups>\n
<member>\n <Path>/</Path>\n <GroupName>MyTestGroup</GroupName>
\n <Arn>arn:aws:iam::123456789012:group/MyTestGroup</Arn>\n
<GroupId>AGPA1234567890EXAMPLE</GroupId>\n <CreateDate>2019-08-12T19:34:04Z</
CreateDate>\n </member>\n </Groups>\n </ListGroupsResult>\n <ResponseMetadata>\n
<RequestId>74c11606-bd38-11e9-9c82-559da0adb349</RequestId>\n </ResponseMetadata>\n</
ListGroupsResponse>\n'
2019-08-12 12:36:18,665 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event needs-
retry.iam.ListGroups: calling handler <botocore.retryhandler.RetryHandler object at
0x7fdf16e9a780>
2019-08-12 12:36:18,665 - MainThread - botocore.retryhandler - DEBUG - No retry needed.
2019-08-12 12:36:18,665 - MainThread - botocore.hooks - DEBUG - Event after-
call.iam.ListGroups: calling handler <function json_decode_policies at 0x7fdf189b1d90>
{
"Groups": [
{

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"Path": "/",
"GroupName": "MyTestGroup",
"GroupId": "AGPA123456789012EXAMPLE",
"Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:group/MyTestGroup",
"CreateDate": "2019-08-12T19:34:04Z"
}
]
}

I get the error "command not found" when I run

aws.
Possible cause: The operating system "path" was not
updated during installation.
This error means that the operating system can't ﬁnd the AWS CLI program. The installation might be
incomplete.

If you use pip to install the AWS CLI, you might need to add the folder that contains the aws program to
your operating system's PATH environment variable, or change its mode to make it executable.

You might need to add the aws executable to your operating system's PATH environment variable.
Follow the steps in the appropriate procedure:

• Windows – Add the AWS CLI version 1 executable to your command line path (p. 41)
• macOS – Add the AWS CLI version 1 executable to your macOS command line path (p. 38)
• Linux – Add the AWS CLI version 1 executable to your command line path (p. 32)

I get "access denied" errors.

Possible cause: The AWS CLI program ﬁle doesn't
have "run" permission.
On Linux or macOS, ensure that the aws program has run permissions for the calling user. Typically, the
permissions are set to 755.

To add run permission for your user, run the following command, substituting ~/.local/bin/aws with
the path to the program on your computer.

$ chmod +x ~/.local/bin/aws

Possible cause: Your IAM identity doesn't have

permission to perform the operation.
When you run a AWS CLI command, AWS operations are performed on your behalf, using credentials
that associate you with an IAM user or role. The policies attached to that IAM user or role must grant you
permission to call the API actions that correspond to the commands that you run with the AWS CLI.

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I get an "invalid credentials" error.

Most commands call a single action with a name that matches the command name. However, custom
commands like aws s3 sync call multiple APIs. You can see which APIs a command calls by using the
--debug option.

If you are sure that the user or role has the proper permissions assigned by policy, ensure that your AWS
CLI command is using the credentials you expect. See the next section about credentials (p. 223) to
verify that the credentials the AWS CLI is using are the ones you expect.

For information about assigning permissions to IAM users and roles, see Overview of Access
Management: Permissions and Policies in the IAM User Guide.

I get an "invalid credentials" error.

Possible cause: The AWS CLI is reading credentials
from an unexpected location.
The AWS CLI might be reading credentials from a diﬀerent location than you expect. You can run aws
configure list to conﬁrm which credentials are used.

The following example shows how to check the credentials used for the default proﬁle.

$ aws configure list

Name Value Type Location
---- ----- ---- --------
profile <not set> None None
access_key ****************XYVA shared-credentials-file
secret_key ****************ZAGY shared-credentials-file
region us-west-2 config-file ~/.aws/config

The following example shows how to check the credentials of a named proﬁle.

$ aws configure list --profile saanvi

Name Value Type Location
---- ----- ---- --------
profile saanvi manual --profile
access_key **************** shared-credentials-file
secret_key **************** shared-credentials-file
region us-west-2 config-file ~/.aws/config

Possible cause: Your computer's clock is out of sync.

If you are using valid credentials, your clock may be out of sync. On Linux or macOS, run date to check
the time.

$ date

If your system clock is not correct within a few minutes, use ntpd to sync it.

$ sudo service ntpd stop

$ sudo ntpdate time.nist.gov
$ sudo service ntpd start
$ ntpstat

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I get a "signature does not match" error.

On Windows, use the date and time options in the Control Panel to conﬁgure your system clock.

I get a "signature does not match" error.

When the AWS CLI runs a command, it sends an encrypted request to the AWS servers to perform the
appropriate AWS service operations. Your credentials (the access key and secret key) are involved in the
encryption and enable AWS to authenticate the person making the request. There are several things that
can interfere with the correct operation of this process, as follows.

Possible cause: Your clock is out of sync with the AWS

servers.
To help protect against replay attacks, the current time can be used during the encryption/decryption
process. If the time of the client and server disagree by more than the allowed amount, the process can
fail and the request is rejected. This can also happen when you run a command in a virtual machine
whose clock is out of sync with the host machine's clock. One possible cause is when the virtual machine
hibernates and takes some time after waking up to resync the clock with the host machine.

On Linux or macOS, run date to check the time.

$ date

If your system clock is not correct within a few minutes, use ntpd to sync it.

$ sudo service ntpd stop

$ sudo ntpdate time.nist.gov
$ sudo service ntpd start
$ ntpstat

On Windows, use the date and time options in the Control Panel to conﬁgure your system clock.

Possible cause: Your operating system is mishandling

AWS secret keys that contain certain special
characters.
If your AWS secret key includes certain special characters, such as -, +, /, or %, some operating system
variants process the string improperly and cause the secret key string to be interpreted incorrectly.

If you process your access keys and secret keys using other tools or scripts, such as tools that build the
credentials ﬁle on a new instance as part of its creation, those tools and scripts might have their own
handling of special characters that causes them to be transformed into something that AWS no longer
recognizes.

The easy solution is to regenerate the secret key to get one that does not include the special character.

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File encoding environment variable

Breaking changes – Migrating from

AWS CLI version 1 to version 2
This topic describes the changes in behavior between AWS CLI version 1 and AWS CLI version 2 that
might require you to make changes to scripts or commands to get the same behavior in version 2 as you
did in version 1.

Topics
• AWS CLI version 2 now uses environment variable to set text ﬁle encoding (p. 225)
• AWS CLI version 2 now passes binary parameters as base64-encoded strings by default (p. 225)
• AWS CLI version 2 improves Amazon S3 handling of ﬁle properties and tags when performing
multipart copies (p. 226)
• AWS CLI version 2 no longer automatically retrieves http:// or https:// URLs for
parameters (p. 227)
• AWS CLI version 2 uses a paging program for all output by default. (p. 227)
• AWS CLI version 2 now returns all timestamp output values in ISO 8601 format (p. 228)
• AWS CLI version 2 improves handling of AWS CloudFormation deployments that result in no
changes (p. 228)
• AWS CLI version 2 uses Amazon S3 keys more consistently (p. 229)
• AWS CLI version 2 uses the correct Amazon S3 regional endpoint for us-east-1 Region (p. 229)
• AWS CLI version 2 uses regional AWS STS endpoints by default (p. 229)
• AWS CLI version 2 replaces ecr get-login with ecr get-login-password (p. 229)
• AWS CLI version 2 support for plugins is changing (p. 230)
• AWS CLI version 2 no longer supports "hidden" aliases (p. 230)

AWS CLI version 2 now uses environment variable

to set text file encoding
By default, text files use the same encoding as the installed locale. To set encoding for text files to be
different from the locale, use the AWS_CLI_FILE_ENCODING environment variable. The below example
sets the CLI to open text files using UTF-8 on windows.

AWS_CLI_FILE_ENCODING=UTF-8

For more information, see Environment variables to conﬁgure the AWS CLI (p. 68) .

AWS CLI version 2 now passes binary parameters

as base64-encoded strings by default
AWS CLI version 1 didn't always make it easy to pass binary parameters from the output of one
command to the input of another command without requiring some intermediate processing. Some

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handling during s3 copy operations

commands required base64-encoded strings, others required UTF8-encoded byte strings. AWS CLI
version 2 makes handling binary parameters more consistent to enable more reliable passing of values
from one command to another.

By default, the AWS CLI version 2 now passes all binary input and binary output parameters as base64-
encoded strings. A parameter that requires binary input has its type specified as blob (binary large
object) in the documentation. To pass binary data as a file to a CLI parameter, the AWS CLI version 2
enables you to specify the file using the following prefixes:

• file:// – The AWS CLI treats the ﬁle content as base64-encoded text. For example: --some-param
file://~/my/path/file-with-base64.txt
• fileb:// – The AWS CLI treats the ﬁle content as unencoded binary. For example: --some-param
fileb://~/my/path/file-with-raw-binary.bin

You can tell the AWS CLI version 2 to revert to the AWS CLI version 1 behavior by specifying the
following line in the ~/.aws/config ﬁle for a proﬁle.

cli_binary_format=raw-in-base64-out

You can also revert the setting for an individual command, overriding the active proﬁle setting, by
including the parameter --cli-binary-format raw-in-base64-out on the command-line.

If you revert to the AWS CLI version 1 behavior and specify a ﬁle for a binary parameter using either
file:// or fileb://, the AWS CLI treats the ﬁle content as unencoded raw binary.

AWS CLI version 2 improves Amazon S3 handling

of file properties and tags when performing
multipart copies
When you use the AWS CLI version 1 version of commands in the aws s3 namespace to copy a file
from one Amazon S3 bucket location to another Amazon S3 bucket location, and that operation uses
multipart copy, no file properties from the source object are copied to the destination object.

By default, the AWS CLI version 2 commands in the s3 namespace that perform multipart copies now
transfer all tags and the following set of properties from the source to the destination copy: content-
type, content-language, content-encoding, content-disposition, cache-control,
expires, and metadata.

This can result in additional AWS API calls to the Amazon S3 endpoint that would not have been
made if you used AWS CLI version 1. These can include: HeadObject, GetObjectTagging, and
PutObjectTagging.

If you need to change this default behavior in AWS CLI version 2 commands, use the --copy-props
parameter to specify one of the following options:

• default – The default value. Specifies that the copy includes all tags attached to the source object
and the properties encompassed by the --metadata-directive parameter used for non-multipart
copies: content-type, content-language, content-encoding, content-disposition,
cache-control, expires, and metadata.
• metadata-directive – Specifies that the copy includes only the properties that are encompassed by the
--metadata-directive parameter used for non-multipart copies. It doesn't copy any tags.
• none – Specifies that the copy includes none of the properties from the source object.

226
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
No automatic retrieval of webpages for parameters

AWS CLI version 2 no longer automatically

retrieves http:// or https:// URLs for
parameters
The AWS CLI version 2 no longer performs a GET operation when a parameter value begins with
http:// or https://, and then using the returned content as the value of the parameter. If you need
to retrieve a URL and pass the contents read from that URL as the value of a parameter, we recommend
that you use curl or a similar tool to download the contents of the URL to a local ﬁle. Then use the
file:// syntax to read the contents of that ﬁle and use it as the parameter's value.

For example, the following command no longer tries to retrieve the contents of the page found at
http://www.google.com and pass those contents as the parameter. Instead, it passes the literal text
string https://google.com as the parameter.

$ aws ssm put-parameter --value http://www.google.com --name prod.microservice1.db.secret

--type String 2

If you really do want to retrieve and use the contents of a web URL as a parameter, you can do the
following in version 2.

$ curl https://my.example.com/mypolicyfile.json -o mypolicyfile.json

$ aws iam put-role-policy --policy-document file://./mypolicyfile.json --role-name MyRole
--policy-name MyReadOnlyPolicy

In the previous example, the -o parameter tells curl to save the file in the current folder with the same
name as the source file. The second command retrieves the content of that downloaded file and passes
the content as the value of --policy-document.

AWS CLI version 2 uses a paging program for all

output by default.
By default, AWS CLI version 2 returns all output through your operating system’s default pager program.
By default this program is the less program on Linux and macOS, and the more program on Windows.
This can make it easier for you to navigate a large amount of output from a service by displaying that
output one page at a time. However, you sometimes want all the output without needing to press a
key to get each page, such as when you are running scripts. To do this, you can configure the AWS CLI
version 2 to use a different paging program or none at all. To do this, configure either the AWS_PAGER
environment variable or the cli_pager setting in your ~/.aws/config file and specify the command
you want to use. You can specify a command that is in your search path, or specify the full path and file
name for any command available on your computer.

You can completely disable all use of an external paging program by setting the variable to an empty
string as shown in the following examples.

By setting an option in the ~/.aws/config ﬁle

The following example shows setting it for the default profile, but you can add the setting to any
profile in your ~/.aws/config file.

[default]

227
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
All date/time values in ISO 8601 format

cli_pager=

By setting an environment variable

Linux or macOS:

$ export AWS_PAGER=""

Windows:

C:\> setx AWS_PAGER ""

AWS CLI version 2 now returns all timestamp

output values in ISO 8601 format
By default, AWS CLI version 2 returns all timestamp response values in the ISO 8601 format. In AWS
CLI version 1, commands returned timestamp values in whatever format was returned by the HTTP API
response, which could vary from service to service.

ISO 8601 formatted timestamps look like the following examples. The ﬁrst example shows the time in
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) by including a Z after the time. The date and the time are separated
by a T.

2019-10-31T22:21:41Z

To specify a diﬀerent time zone, instead of the Z, specify a + or - and the number of hours the desired
time zone is ahead of or behind UTC, as a two-digit value. The following example shows the same time
as the previous example but adjusted to Paciﬁc Standard time, which is eight hours behind UTC.

2019-10-31T14:21:41-08

To see timestamps in the format returned by the HTTP API response, add the following line to your
.aws/config proﬁle.

cli_timestamp_format = wire

AWS CLI version 2 improves handling of AWS

CloudFormation deployments that result in no
changes
In AWS CLI version 1, if you deployed a AWS CloudFormation template that resulted in no changes, by
default, the AWS CLI failed with an error code. This could be a problem if you didn't consider that to be
an error and wanted your script to continue. You could work around this in AWS CLI version 1, by adding
the ﬂag -–no-fail-on-empty-changeset which returns 0 and doesn't cause an error in your script.

Because this is the common case scenario, the AWS CLI version 2 now defaults to returning a successful
exit code of 0 when there is no change caused by the deployment and the operation returns an empty
changeset.

228
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Consistent Amazon S3 keys and paths

In AWS CLI version 2, to revert to the original behavior, you must add the new ﬂag --fail-on-empty-
changeset.

AWS CLI version 2 uses Amazon S3 keys more

consistently
For the Amazon S3 customization commands in the s3 namespace, we improved the consistency of how
paths are shown. In the AWS CLI version 2, paths are always displayed relative to the relevant key. The
AWS CLI version 1 sometimes showed paths in absolute form and sometimes in relative form.

AWS CLI version 2 uses the correct Amazon S3

regional endpoint for us-east-1 Region
When you conﬁgure AWS CLI version 1 to use the us-east-1 region, the AWS CLI used the global
s3.amazonaws.com endpoint which was physically hosted in the us-east-1 region. AWS CLI version 2
now uses the true regional endpoint s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com when that region is speciﬁed. To
force the AWS CLI version 2 to use the global endpoint, you can set the Region for a command to aws-
global.

AWS CLI version 2 uses regional AWS STS

endpoints by default
By default, AWS CLI version 2 sends all AWS STS API requests to the regional endpoint for the currently
conﬁgured AWS Region.

By default, AWS CLI version 1 sends AWS STS requests to the global AWS STS endpoint. You can control
this default behavior in V1 by using the sts_regional_endpoints (p. 57) setting.

AWS CLI version 2 replaces ecr get-login with

ecr get-login-password
The AWS CLI version 2 replaces the command aws ecr get-login with the new aws ecr get-
login-password command that improves automated integration with container authentication.

The aws ecr get-login-password command reduces the risk of exposing your credentials in the
process list, shell history, or other log ﬁles. It also improves compatibility with the docker login
command, allowing better automation.

The aws ecr get-login-password command is available in the AWS CLI version 1.17.10 and later,
and the AWS CLI version 2. The older aws ecr get-login command is still available in the AWS CLI
version 1 for backward compatibility.

The aws ecr get-login-password command enables you to replace the following code that
retrieves a password.

229
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
Changing support for [plugins]

$(aws ecr get-login -no-include-email)

To reduce the risk of exposing the password to the shell history or logs, use the following example
command instead. In this example, the password is piped directly to the docker login command,
where it is assigned to the password parameter by the --password-stdin option.

aws ecr get-login-password | docker login --username AWS --password-stdin MY-REGISTRY-URL

AWS CLI version 2 support for plugins is changing

Plugin support in the AWS CLI version 2 is completely provisional and intended to help users migrate
from AWS CLI version 1 until a stable, updated, plugin interface is released. There are no guarantees
that a particular plugin or even the CLI plugin interface will be supported in future versions of the
AWS CLI version 2. If you rely on plugins, be sure to lock to a particular version of the CLI and test the
functionality of your plugin when you do upgrade.

To enable plugin support, create a [plugins] section in your ~/.aws/config.

[plugins]
cli_legacy_plugin_path = <path-to-plugins>/python3.7/site-packages
<plugin-name> = <plugin-module>

In the [plugins] section, begin by defining the cli_legacy_plugin_path variable and setting
its value to the Python site packages path that your plugin module lives in. Then you can configure a
plugin by providing a name for the plugin (plugin-name), and the file name of the Python module,
(plugin-module), that contains the source code for your plugin. The CLI loads each plugin by importing
its plugin-module and calling its awscli_initialize function.

AWS CLI version 2 no longer supports "hidden"

aliases
AWS CLI version 2 no longer supports the following hidden aliases that were supported in version 1.

In the following table, the ﬁrst column displays the service, command, and parameter that work in all
versions, including AWS CLI version 2. The second column displays the alias that no longer works in AWS
CLI version 2

Working Service, Command, and Parameter Obsolete Alias

cognito-identity create-identity-pool open-id-connect-provider- open-id-connect-provider-ar-ns

arns

storagegateway describe-tapes tape-arns tape-ar-ns

storagegateway.describe-tape-archives.tape-arns tape-ar-ns

storagegateway.describe-vtl-devices.vtl-device-arns vtl-device-ar-ns

storagegateway.describe-cached-iscsi-volumes.volume-arns volume-ar-ns

storagegateway.describe-stored-iscsi-volumes.volume-arns volume-ar-ns

230
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide
No hidden aliases

Working Service, Command, and Parameter Obsolete Alias

route53domains.view-billing.start-time start

deploy.create-deployment-group.ec2-tag-set ec-2-tag-set

deploy.list-application-revisions.s3-bucket s-3-bucket

deploy.list-application-revisions.s3-key-preﬁx s-3-key-preﬁx

deploy.update-deployment-group.ec2-tag-set ec-2-tag-set

iam.enable-mfa-device.authentication-code1 authentication-code-1

iam.enable-mfa-device.authentication-code2 authentication-code-2

iam.resync-mfa-device.authentication-code1 authentication-code-1

iam.resync-mfa-device.authentication-code2 authentication-code-2

importexport.get-shipping-label.street1 street-1

importexport.get-shipping-label.street2 street-2

importexport.get-shipping-label.street3 street-3

lambda.publish-version.code-sha256 code-sha-256

lightsail.import-key-pair.public-key-base64 public-key-base-64

opsworks.register-volume.ec2-volume-id ec-2-volume-id

231
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide

AWS CLI user guide document

history
The following table describes important additions to the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide,
beginning in January 2019. For notiﬁcation about updates to this documentation, you can subscribe to
the RSS feed.

update-history-change update-history-description update-history-date

Added AWS CLI alias information Added AWS CLI alias March 11, 2021
information. Aliases are
shortcuts you can create in the
AWS Command Line Interface
(AWS CLI) to shorten commands
or scripts that you frequently
use.

Updated ﬁlter output Updated information for ﬁlters February 1, 2021

information and moved to their own page.

Deprecation announcement for Python 2.7 was deprecated by January 29, 2021
Python 2.7, 3.4, and 3.5 the Python Software Foundation
on January 1, 2020. Going
forward, customers using
the AWS CLI version 1 should
transition to using Python 3,
with a minimum of Python
3.6. Python 2.7 support is
deprecated for new versions of
the AWS CLI version 1 starting
7/19/2021. Python 3.4 and 3.5
is deprecated starting 2/1/2021.

Added information for Wizards Added AWS CLI version 2 wizard November 20, 2020
information.

Updated auto-prompt Updated the AWS CLI version 2 November 10, 2020
auto-prompt information with
current features.

Added s3 scripting example Added an s3 lifecycle scripting October 15, 2020

example.

Added ec2 scripting example Added an ec2 instance type October 15, 2020
scripting example.

Added retries information Added a retries page for features September 17, 2020
and behavior of retries in the
AWS CLI.

Server-side and client-side Updated pagination information August 17, 2020

pagination page and centralized on a single page.

232
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide

Updated s3 commands page Updated the high-level s3 July 30, 2020

commands page with new
examples and resources.

Updated installation information The install, update, and uninstall May 19, 2020
information for Linux, macOS,
and Windows are updated.

Added information for text file By default, AWS CLI version 2 May 14, 2020
encoding on the AWS CLI version uses the same text file encoding
2 as the local. You can now use
environment variables to set text
file encoding.

Oﬃcial Docker image for the The oﬃcial support Docker March 31, 2020
AWS CLI version 2 released image for the AWS CLI version 2
is released for all Linux, macOS,
and Windows.

Added information regarding By default, AWS CLI version 2 February 19, 2020
client-side pagers for AWS CLI uses the pager program less
version 2 for all client-side output.

AWS Command Line Interface The AWS CLI version 2 is February 10, 2020
(AWS CLI) Version 2 is oﬃcially generally available and is the
released recommended version for
customers to install.

macOS installer for AWS CLI The macOS installer for AWS CLI February 3, 2020
version 2 is now an Apple version 2 has been updated from
Package installer .pkg file. a .zip file with a shell script to
full macOS Installer package.
This simplifies installation and
makes it compatible with the
newest macOS releases.

Added content for AWS CLI By default, AWS CLI version January 13, 2020
version 2's improved default 2 now directs requests for
handling of S3 and STS regional the Amazon S3 and AWS
endpoints STS services to the currently
conﬁgured regional endpoint
instead of the global endpoint.

Updated to remove support for As of January 10th, 2020, AWS January 10, 2020
Python 2.6 and 3.3 from AWS CLI version 1 no longer supports
CLI version 1 using Python versions 2.6 or
3.3. You must update to a newer
version of Python to use AWS
CLI version 1.17 or later.

Developer preview release for Announcing preview release November 7, 2019

AWS CLI version 2 of AWS CLI version 2. Added
instructions about installing
version 2. Add Migration topic
to discuss diﬀerences between
versions 1 and 2.

233
AWS Command Line Interface User Guide

Added support for AWS Single AWS CLI version 2 adds support November 7, 2019
Sign-On to AWS CLI named for creating a named proﬁle that
proﬁles can directly login to an AWS
SSO user account and get AWS
temporary credentials for use in
subsequent AWS CLI commands.

New MFA section Added a new section describing May 3, 2019

how to access the CLI using
multi-factor authentication and
roles.

Update to "Using the CLI" Major improvements and March 7, 2019

section additions to the usage
instructions and procedures.

Update to "Installing the CLI" Major improvements and March 7, 2019

section additions to the CLI installation
instructions and procedures.

Update to "Conﬁguring the CLI" Major improvements March 7, 2019

section and additions to the CLI
conﬁguration instructions and
procedures.

234

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