passing access and secret key aws cli

Question

I am trying to embed access and secret key along with aws cli. e.g.

aws ec2 describe-instances --aws-access-key <access_key> --aws-secret-key <secret_key> 

Also tried with -o and -w options for access and secret key respectively. It says : Unknown option aws-access-key and aws-secret-key

Answer 1

You can provide keys on the command line via envars:

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=ABCD AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=EF1234 aws ec2 describe-instances 

See http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/topic/config-vars.html#credentials

EDIT: @wisbucky noted this could leave secrets in your command history. One way around this in bash at least I think is to prepend your command with a blank space and the command should not propagate to your bash history.

Answer 2

You can set credentials with:

aws configure set aws_access_key_id <yourAccessKey> aws configure set aws_secret_access_key <yourSecretKey> 

Verify your credentials with:

aws sts get-caller-identity 

For more information on set command:

aws configure set help 

General pattern is:

aws <command> help aws <command> <subcommand> help 

Note: Before overriding your credentials, you may want to keep a copy of it:

aws configure get aws_access_key_id aws configure get aws_secret_access_key