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Troubleshooting IAM

This topic covers some common errors that you may see while using Amazon EKS with IAM and how to work around them.

AccessDeniedException

If you receive an AccessDeniedException when calling an AWS API operation, then the IAM principal credentials that you're using don't have the required permissions to make that call.

An error occurred (AccessDeniedException) when calling the DescribeCluster operation: 
User: arn:aws:iam::111122223333:user/user_name is not authorized to perform: 
eks:DescribeCluster on resource: arn:aws:eks:region:111122223333:cluster/my-cluster

In the previous example message, the user does not have permissions to call the Amazon EKS DescribeCluster API operation. To provide Amazon EKS admin permissions to an IAM principal, see Amazon EKS identity-based policy examples.

For more general information about IAM, see Controlling access using policies in the IAM User Guide.

Can't see Nodes on the Compute tab or anything on the Resources tab and you receive an error in the AWS Management Console

You may see a console error message that says Your current user or role does not have access to Kubernetes objects on this EKS cluster. Make sure that the IAM principal user that you're using the AWS Management Console with has the necessary permissions. For more information, see Required permissions.

aws-auth ConfigMap does not grant access to the cluster

The AWS IAM Authenticator doesn't permit a path in the role ARN used in the ConfigMap. Therefore, before you specify rolearn, remove the path. For example, change arn:aws:iam::111122223333:role/team/developers/eks-admin to arn:aws:iam::111122223333:role/eks-admin.

I am not authorized to perform iam:PassRole

If you receive an error that you're not authorized to perform the iam:PassRole action, your policies must be updated to allow you to pass a role to Amazon EKS.

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 Amazon EKS. However, the action requires the service to have permissions that are 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's policies must be updated to allow her to perform the iam:PassRole action.

If you need help, contact your AWS administrator. Your administrator is the person who provided you with your sign-in credentials.

I want to allow people outside of my AWS account to access my Amazon EKS resources

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:

Pod containers receive the following error: An error occurred (SignatureDoesNotMatch) when calling the GetCallerIdentity operation: Credential should be scoped to a valid region

Your containers receive this error if your application is explicitly making requests to the AWS STS global endpoint (https://sts.amazonaws) and your Kubernetes service account is configured to use a regional endpoint. You can resolve the issue with one of the following options: