Use the following information to help you diagnose and fix common issues that you might encounter when working with IAM.
Topics
- I am not authorized to perform an action
- I am not authorized to perform iam:PassRole
- I want to view my access keys
- I'm an administrator and want to allow others to access AWS resources
- I want to allow people outside of my AWS account to access my resources
If the AWS Management Console tells you that you're not authorized to perform an action, then you must contact your administrator for assistance. Your administrator is the person that provided you with your user name and password.
The following example error occurs when the mateojackson IAM user tries to use the console to view details about a my-example-resource but does not have prefix:Action permissions.
User: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/mateojackson is not authorized to perform: prefix:Action on resource: my-example-resource
In this case, Mateo asks his administrator to update his policies to allow him to access the my-example-resource using the prefix:Action.
If you receive an error that you're not authorized to perform the iam:PassRole action, then you must contact your administrator for assistance. Your administrator is the person that provided you with your user name and password. Ask that person to update your policies to allow you to pass a role to a service.
Some AWS services allow you to pass an existing role to that service, instead of creating a new service role or service-linked role. To do this, you must have permissions to pass the role to the service.
The following example error occurs when an IAM user named marymajor tries to use the console to perform an action in a service. However, the action requires the service to have permissions granted by a service role. Mary does not have permissions to pass the role to the service.
User: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/marymajor is not authorized to perform: iam:PassRole
In this case, Mary asks her administrator to update her policies to allow her to perform the iam:PassRole action.
After you create your IAM user access keys, you can view your access key ID at any time. However, you can't view your secret access key again. If you lose your secret key, you must create a new access key pair.
Access keys consist of two parts: an access key ID (for example, AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE) and a secret access key (for example, wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY). Like a user name and password, you must use both the access key ID and secret access key together to authenticate your requests. Manage your access keys as securely as you do your user name and password.
Important
Do not provide your access keys to a third party, even to help find your canonical user ID. By doing this, you might give someone permanent access to your account.
When you create an access key pair, you are prompted to save the access key ID and secret access key in a secure location. The secret access key is available only at the time you create it. If you lose your secret access key, you must add new access keys to your IAM user. You can have a maximum of two access keys. If you already have two, you must delete one key pair before creating a new one. To view instructions, see Managing Access Keys in the IAM User Guide.
To allow others to access a service, you must create an IAM entity (user or role) for the person or application that needs access. They will use the credentials for that entity to access AWS. You must then attach a policy to the entity that grants them the correct permissions in AWS.
To get started right away, see Creating Your First IAM Delegated User and Group in the IAM User Guide.
You can create a role that users in other accounts or people outside of your organization can use to access your resources. You can specify who is trusted to assume the role. For services that support resource-based policies or access control lists (ACLs), you can use those policies to grant people access to your resources.
To learn more, consult the following:
- To learn whether a service supports these features, see How AWS services work with IAM.
- To learn how to provide access to your resources across AWS accounts that you own, see Providing Access to an IAM User in Another AWS Account That You Own in the IAM User Guide.
- To learn how to provide access to your resources to third-party AWS accounts, see Providing Access to AWS Accounts Owned by Third Parties in the IAM User Guide.
- To learn how to provide access through identity federation, see Providing Access to Externally Authenticated Users (Identity Federation) in the IAM User Guide.
- To learn the difference between using roles and resource-based policies for cross-account access, see How IAM Roles Differ from Resource-based Policies in the IAM User Guide.