Create the AWS credentials file from a Chef Data Bag

When a process on a server instance needs access to an AWS account, the user who will execute the AWS CLI commands needs to be able to automatically authenticate in AWS.

For automatic AWS authentication, the AWS CLI creates two files in the .aws directory:

• config and
• credentials.

The location of this directory depends on the operating system and the type of user.

• On Linux, the location is ~/.aws ( the user’s home directory )
• On Windows, it is located at C:\Users\USER_NAME\.aws
• On Windows, if the file was created by SYSTEM, the location is C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\.aws

Store the AWS key values

To create these files, you need to store the AWS Access Key and Secret Key. The safest place for these values is an encrypted data bag. To automatically generate the AWS files, create a data bag file and name it the same as the “id” in the following structure:

{
  "id": "MY_DATA_BAG_ITEM_NAME",
  "MY_PROFiLE_1": {
    "region": "MY_REGION_1",
    "aws_access_key_id": "MY_ACCESSKEY_1",
    "aws_secret_access_key": "MY_SECRET_KEY_1"
  },
  "MY_PROFiLE_2": {
    "region": "MY_REGION_2",
    "aws_access_key_id": "MY_ACCESSKEY_2",
    "aws_secret_access_key": "MY_SECRET_KEY_2"
  }
}

To create and encrypt the data bag see my post on Chef Data Bags

Create the AWS authentication files

1. In your Chef recipe, first install the AWS CLI and reboot the server, so the new path entry will be available for the Chef process.
2. The following Chef code will create the AWS config and credential files. The script
   1. opens and decrypts the data bag,
   2. loads it into a hash table,
   3. iterates through the hash items,
   4. skips the “id” item,
   5. stores the AWS key values in a temporary file,
   6. executes the “aws configure” command to generate the AWS config and credential files.

  # Iterate through the data bag and create the credentials file

  puts "***** Creating the AWS credentials file"

  # Load the encrypted data bag into a hash
  aws_credentials = Chef::EncryptedDataBagItem.load('MY_DATA_BAG_NAME', 'MY_DATA_BAG_ITEM_NAME').to_hash

  # Iterate through the items, skip the "id"
  aws_credentials.each_pair do |key, value|

    # skip the "id"
    next if key == "id"

    # Add the credentials to the .aws/credentials file
    puts "Account #{key}, Region #{value['region']}"

    batch "add_aws_credentials_#{key}" do
      code <<-EOF echo #{value["aws_access_key_id"]}> input.txt
        echo #{value["aws_secret_access_key"]}>> input.txt
        echo #{value["region"]}>> input.txt
        echo.>> input.txt
        aws configure --profile #{key} < input.txt
      EOF
    end

  end