AWS CLI - AuthFailure

Hello to my fellow cloud engineers. In this blog we will discuss about the solution of a common AWS issue.

ERROR: An error occurred (AuthFailure) when calling the DescribeInstances operation: AWS was not able to validate the provided access credentials

We get this error mostly because of 2 Reasons either we have provided wrong credentials while configuring CLI or the date/time is set incorrectly on the server.

Prerequisite

Setting up AWS CLI

# pip3 install awscli

# aws configure

Enter the access_key, secret_key and the region and you're done setting up aws cli on your machine.

Test the aws configuration

# aws configure list

# aws ec2 describe-instances

An error occurred (AuthFailure) when calling the DescribeInstances operation: AWS was not able to validate the provided access credentials

I kept wondering why I am getting AuthFailure message as I was able to run the CLI commands on other system with the same credentials. Later I realized that this was happening due to mismatch of system clock time and the actual TimeZone time.

# timedatectl set-timezone 'Asia/Kolkata'

Setting the timezone didn't help as the timezone was already the same but the system time was incorrectly set.

To sync the time I tried to enable the NTP (Network Time Protocol)

# timedatectl set-ntp yes

Failed to set ntp: NTP not supported.

I have to install the NTP service as it was not present in my case.

# yum install ntp

# systemctl start ntpd

# timedatectl set-ntp yes 

(This command ran successfully this time)

Able to run the aws commands through CLI successfully

# aws ec2 start-instances --instance-ids i-07ca6e35eed6c5692

This is how I was able to run AWS CLI commands after resolving the AuthFailure issue. I will be glad if this has resolved your issue too, else you can reach out to me through comments/email will be happy to help.