gcloud: The user does not have access to service account "default"

Question

I attempting to use an activated service account scoped to create and delete gcloud container clusters (k8s clusters), using the following commands:

gcloud config configurations create my-svc-account \
   --no-activate \
   --project myProject


gcloud auth activate-service-account [email protected] \
   --key-file=/path/to/keyfile.json \
   --configuration my-svc-account

gcloud container clusters create a-new-cluster \
   --configuration my-svc-account \
   --project= my-project
   --zone "my-zone"

I always receive the error:

...ERROR: (gcloud.container.clusters.create) ResponseError: code=400, message=The user does not have access to service account "default".

How do I grant my-svc-account access to the default service account for GKE?

Answer 1

After talking to Google Support, the issue was that the service account did not have a "Service Account User" permissions activated. Adding "Service Account User" resolves this error.

Answer 2

Add the following role to the service account who makes the operation:

Service Account User

Also see:

• https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/how-to/iam#service_account_user

• https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/service-accounts#the_service_account_user_role

• https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/understanding-roles