Boto3: Unable to locate credentials

Recently I've been working on a Dockerized Python application that connects to AWS resources using the boto3 library. I stumbled upon an error where the app could not find the aws credentials within the docker container.

botocore.exceptions.NoCredentialsError: Unable to locate credentials

Later on, I realized that the problem lies in the fact that the docker is unable locate the credentials from the .aws folder. As much as docker is concerned, there are no credentials to be found within the running container.

Solution

The solution I've found to is add the configuration as follows:

If you are using docker run:

docker run -v ~/.aws/:/root/.aws:ro your_image -e AWS_PROFILE=default

If you are using a docker-compose.yml file,

version: '3'

services:
  service-name:
    image: docker-image-name:latest
    environment:
      - AWS_PROFILE=default
    volumes:
      - ~/.aws/:/root/.aws:ro

Explanation:

~/.aws/:/root/.aws:ro is a volume definition that mounts the .aws folder of your local machine to the root of our docker container. :ro stands for a readonly volume, and we must make the volume readonly so that we are sure the credentials cannot be modified.

We set our environment as AWS_PROFILE=default so that boto3 will know to read the configuration for the default environment. For multiple environments you can configure AWS_PROFILE=<your environment here>

I hope this article will be of help to anyone who encounters a similar issue. 😄 👍