CLI: Command Line Interface

Add user credentials locally using this command:

$ aws configure

If you are using multiple AWS accounts, you can add custom profiles with seperate credentials using this command:

$ aws configure --profile {my-other-aws-account}
if you you'd like to execute commands on a specific profile:
- example: aws s3 ls --profile {my-other-aws-account}
if you don't specify the aws profile, the commands will be executed to your default profile

AWS CLI on EC2

IAM roles can be attached to EC2 instances
IAM roles can come with a policy authorizing exactly what the EC2 instance should be able to do. This is the best practice.
EC2 Instances can then use these profiles automatically without any additional configurations

CLI STS Decode Errors

When you run API calls and they fail, you can get a long, encoded error message code
This error can be decoded using STS
run the command: aws sts decode-authorization-message --encoded-message {encoded_message_code}
your IAM user must have the correct permissions to use this command by adding the STS service to your policy