AWS Glue cannot create database from crawler: permission denied

Question

I am trying to use an AWS Glue crawler on an S3 bucket to populate a Glue database. I run the Create Crawler wizard, select my datasource (the S3 bucket with the avro files), have it create the IAM role, and run it, and I get the following error:

Database does not exist or principal is not authorized to create tables. (Database name: zzz-db, Table name: avroavro_all) (Service: AWSGlue; Status Code: 400; Error Code: AccessDeniedException; Request ID: 78fc18e4-c383-11e9-a86f-736a16f57a42). For more information, see Setting up IAM Permissions in the Developer Guide (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/glue/latest/dg/getting-started-access.html).

I tried to create this table in a new blank database (as opposed to an existing one with tables), I tried prefixing the names, I tried sourcing different schemas, and I tried using an existing role with Admin access. I though the latter would work, but I keep getting the same error, and have no idea why.

To be explicit, the service role I created has several policies I assume a premissive enough to create tables:

The logs are vanilla:


19:52:52
[10cb3191-9785-49dc-8935-fb02dcbd69a3] BENCHMARK : Running Start Crawl for Crawler avro
19:53:22
[10cb3191-9785-49dc-8935-fb02dcbd69a3] BENCHMARK : Classification complete, writing results to database zzz-db
19:53:22
[10cb3191-9785-49dc-8935-fb02dcbd69a3] INFO : Crawler configured with SchemaChangePolicy {"UpdateBehavior":"UPDATE_IN_DATABASE","DeleteBehavior":"DEPRECATE_IN_DATABASE"}.
19:53:34
[10cb3191-9785-49dc-8935-fb02dcbd69a3] ERROR : Insufficient Lake Formation permission(s) on s3://zzz-data/avro-all/ (Database name: zzz-db, Table name: avroavro_all) (Service: AWSGlue; Status Code: 400; Error Code: AccessDeniedException; Request ID: 31481e7e-c384-11e9-a6e1-e78dc8223fae). For more information, see Setting up IAM Permissions in the Developer Guide (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/glu
19:54:44
[10cb3191-9785-49dc-8935-fb02dcbd69a3] BENCHMARK : Crawler has finished running and is in state READY

Answer 1

I had the same problem when I setup and ran a new AWS crawler after enabling Lake Formation (in the same AWS account). I've been running Glue crawler for a long time and was stumped when I saw this new error.

After some trial and error, I found that the root cause of the problem is when you enable Lake Formation, it adds an additional layer of permission on new Glue database(s) that are created via Glue Crawler and to any resource (Glue catalog, S3, etc) that you add it to the Lake Formation service.

To fix this problem, you have to grant the Crawler's IAM role, a proper set of Lake Formation permissions (CRUD) for the database.

You can manage these permissions in AWS Lake Formation console (UI) under the Permissions > Data permissions section or via awscli lake formation commands.