AWS : The config profile (MyName) could not be found

Question

Every time I want to config something with AWS I get the following error :

"The config profile (myname) could not be found" 

like : aws configure

I'm using Python 3.4 and I want to use AWS CLI Keyring to encrypt my credentials..

Answer 1

I think there is something missing from the AWS documentation in http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/setup-awscli.html, it did not mention that you should edit the file ~/.aws/config to add your username profile. There are two ways to do this:

1. edit ~/.aws/config or

2. aws configure --profile "your username"

Answer 2

I ran into this problem when I moved to a new machine, carrying with me my AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE environment variable, but not my ~/.aws directory. I couldn't get any awscli commands to work until I unset that variable or properly configured the named profile. But even the aws configure command was broken, making things a bit tricky. Assuming you have a Unix-like shell handy:

• To determine what AWS-specific variables you might have in your session: env | grep AWS_
  • if you don't see AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE or AWS_PROFILE listed here, this answer is not applicable to you.
• To temporarily remove the default profile: unset AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE and/or unset AWS_PROFILE
• To configure the profile in question: aws --profile foo configure
• To reset the default profile variable: exec $SHELL
• To test your new setup: aws iam get-user